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

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.