Dime Novel Degenerate #1: Kant, the hard-boiled detective

Shamin Chibba
Sep 7, 2018 · 3 min read

Welcome to Dime Novel Degenerate #1. Every now and then I will present the characters that did not make it into the lore of the American dime novel or its equivalent British penny dreadful.

I say every now and then because to commit to a regular weekly or monthly series like this one can prove to be challenging and perhaps too much of a demand for this wannabe burden-free writer.

I am not going to assess these characters, just present to you a part of their stories. You be the judge of why they did not make it.

In this edition, I present an extract from one of the adventures of that archetypical detective, Kant Pigeonhole, titled Breaking wind in a soundproofed room.


The night was a necrophile’s dream, cold and dry. It beats summer when it is so muggy my balls sweat and partner think I pissed myself.

The lifeless body was sprawled face-first in the dirt. The man was missing trousers, his shit-stained bare ass kissing the sky.

I knew what I was getting into when I took up this job. I knew my view mankind’s future would change from hope to despair. I knew I had to stomach all the blood and guts and ejected excrement.

But I was not prepared for the price of McMuffins going up by forty cents. I had to skip breakfast every second morning just so I could afford it. A cop’s salary is only enough to buy a daily newspaper to wipe your ass with (toilet paper is more expensive) and a discounted blowjob from the cheapest hooker in town once a month. It just happens that the cashier from whom I buy the newspaper moonlights as a hooker.

That reminds me, I have an appointment with her in an hour. I need to wrap this up quickly.

Just after I was transferred to homicide, my wife decided to leave me. For the last four years of our marriage, she was screwing a ventriloquist. Apparently, he could do things with his hands that would get her jabbering gibberish. It was transcendental, she said.

I didn’t stop her from leaving. She said I was living past her. I would sometimes enter our house and walk right past her writhing on that man’s lap. I would go straight to bed and crash. She’d scream so loud from her orgasms that she would wake up Mrs. Petticoat, who was deaf. I couldn’t hear a thing.

These thoughts were running through my mind while I was daydreaming and staring at the chow chows humping each other near the victim’s underwear. I could hear my partner’s voice, asking me to concentrate but I couldn’t. My life was in turmoil. At least for the dead guy, he was gone for good, never needing to dodge the shit that life flung at him ever again.

I admit I was feeling sorry for myself. I knew I had to snap out of it. But I didn’t know how. And just then, I got a call from the precinct. Apparently, a Ms. Tess Stickles was looking for me and she knew who the killer might have been.

I really wasn’t prepared for what was to happen next. My life was about to change from a belch in the breeze to a full-on fart in a hurricane.

The Daily Ablutions

News for a jaded nation

Shamin Chibba

Written by

More than thirteen years in this writing game and still eats beans on toast for breakfast. Based in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The Daily Ablutions

News for a jaded nation

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