‘Just take a look at the sheer presumption of this fucking prick, John Smith, as he filed a wintertime story in late January of 2018, and had the gumption to call it “The Diary of Dirk Dickerson: A Madman Living in Kyiv”. Yeah, this is the one where he breaks open my diary – why, the very book I’m holding open right now! – and reads my most intimate torments. Hell! Not only that, he includes the very words I use in this journal in the filed report! For everyone to see!’
Dickerson – now almost always awkward in limb and movement, ever since his return as a fulltime agent to the offices of the All-American Proper Detective Agency, Kyiv Branch, following his harrowing collection of experiences in the local Podil District looney bin, from which he barely escaped as it burned to the ground – wincingly punches his computer keyboard with a couple of fingers to bring up the referenced report by Smith on the Kyiv Unedited website.
‘Ah… hm-ah… yes, here it is…’ He begins to read it from the top:
‘“John Smith enters the broken-up and frozen-over flat of his colleague Detective Dirk Dickerson through the window.
“Smith uses a penknife to pry open the window frame, then props it up with a paperback copy of ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ that he invariably carries on his person.
“Dickerson’s nowhere to be seen. Smith isn’t surprised but treads lightly through the barren rooms with characteristic professional caution, his cold blue revolver on ready in the pocket of his light-gray suit coat, the safety off, a round in the chamber.”
‘I mean, the nerve of this guy – he breaks and enters my flat, yet in the same breath calls me his colleague! And this climbing in through the window. How’d he do that? In the middle of winter? And I’m on the fifth floor!
‘No, Smith, not too much embellishment and overplayed mendacity. Probably just jimmied the lock on the front door like a snot-nosed amateur. Not too hard to do with my door, in any case. At least he found a use for “Pilgrim’s Progress”… In the report, that is. He never could stomach reading the thing. But it was Mack who made him carry it around…
‘And what’s with that fucking “cold blue revolver on ready”? What if I’d really been there, in my own apartment, small as it is, but he just didn’t see me? What if I was hitting the can, taking a dump? And then I flushed the toilet, threw the door open, and came out? Was he going to blast me in the gut? With his, what’s he call it, “characteristic professional caution”? Give me a fuckin’…
‘Oh, yeah – and here’s his very next report, filed only a couple days later; again, about me and my apartment; this one, written from the perspective of a detached, third-party observer. Why couldn’t he just leave my fucking place alone?!
‘And this one he called “The Devil and Dirk Dickerson”, the “Devil”, I suppose, being Smith’s omniscient narrator’s reference to the rook I’d sometimes find myself contending with – back during a period of my life when… my mind… Or is the rook supposed to be Smith’s euphemism, a symbol, a metaphor? For? For-for, for-for… imaginary… real… an utterly cruel and terrifying presence, overwhelming; just… hovering black above me… whirring, flapping… relentless, uncaring, midair… and me just in my socks and underwear… until I’d… back in a time of my life when my mind… wasn’t…’
Inside that mind that wasn’t, Dickerson forgets what he’s saying – and none too soon, too, because right then:
Jack Step steps into the room, grunting crudely with nasty satisfaction, having just emptied his morning bowels and thoroughly enjoying the rare occasion of getting the agency’s communal crapper all to himself. He proceeds to pour a coffee, intent on transferring the derived and much appreciated fulfillment from his constitutional to that blissful hot uplift from the young day’s first cup of joe – if only for a moment, were God to grant it him.
What’s with that Band-Aid on your cheek, Jack?
Which cheek is that, Dirk?
Wha… well, ah, your left cheek…
Ooohh, that one!
Yeah, Jack. What happened? Did you finally fall off your long wagon and land right on your long face?
No… no, Dirk. It’s more like after all these years, when I automatically lift my left to block, you still manage to punch right through it. Powerful right, that. Always envied you for it. I’m admitting it now, sure, and I guess I’m a little ashamed for it. Human nature, though – hard to help it.
What are you saying, Step?
Oh, I know… I know… envy’s a mortal sin, Dirk, but in the heat of the moment, with me, it’s like – gad, I wish I had a mortifyingly mighty right like Dirk (impossible in the first place, because I’m left-handed, and pretty off-centered with it at that) – well, then, I immediately get revolted by myself, feel guilty, you know, envying you something I was never given, much less meant to have. Juvenile of me, I know…
But with this one, Dirk, what actually bites my ass about it is that you still managed to break through with all that bullnecked power, notwithstanding the fact that both your hands have been permanently crippled by that madhouse fire, with silver-dollar-sized holes in your palms for mementos, and all, like, fucking bandaged up all the time. And then again, you’re in constant pain and all doped up because of it most of the time, and I’m not even talking about the being crazy part and getting crazier…
Crime Analyst Augustus Quarry pops his head in.
Hey, Jack, I finally filed that report for you – the one we’re calling “The Case of The Headless Man”. Sorry it took so long, but –
Oh, ah, don’t sweat it, Gus. Appreciate the hard work. I’m well aware of all the missing pieces you didn’t have to go on; and, anyway, I guess I wasn’t all that clear on timelines, and such. Not all that familiar yet with –
You’re doing great, Jack! Thanks, and talk to you later.
Yeah… thanks, Gus. I’ll come by your desk closer toward evening.
All right, Jack, take your time. I’ll be here. See ya…
I… I… did that, Jack? No fucking way!
Way, Dirk… way. Wanna feel the bump on the back of my head. Drove me right into a wall down inside that synagogue subbasement, and crumpled me up right on my ass against that wall, which I then held up with my back, like a real rummy, for the next 15 minutes, before I was finally able to start shaking myself back to life, but too late, of course, as the entire time I was out of commission, you spent smashing to smithereens all of The Heavy Hebe’s topline satellite spying equipment – and it wasn’t even his! He was leasing it, from Global Scumbags, Inc., or whatever, and he hadn’t even gotten it insured, yet. So, tough luck for the Hebe there, I guess. And hell, I don’t even care about my mug, or even the back of my head so much – it’s what hitting the wall did God knows how to my expensive, high-quality, charcoal-gray wool suit jacket. Yeah – hey, how’d you like to foot the bill of the couture Armenian tailor I took it to for delicate restitching? Took me a while to find, too, what with this war going on, and all…
No… no… there’s just –
Video evidence, is just what there is. Wanna see it? ‘Cause it wouldn’t be from my smartphone – ‘cause you fucking broke it. That Jewish subbasement has cameras – but why would anyone expect anything different?
Jean-Dan Asphalt, Homicide: Say, Jack?
Yeah, Jean, what’s up?
You know Gus just filed that report on the Headless Guy, so I thought I’d take a look at it now; or did you want to –
No, you go ahead, Jean. I won’t be getting to that thing for a while. Probably not until sometime tomorrow, at the earliest, so –
All right; I’ll just go ahead then.
Yep. Dig right in. And when I look at it, we can, you know –
Okay, Jack – see ya!
Ciao…
Say, Jack…
Yeah, Dirk.
Why is everyone coming to you for, like, direction, and to report, and for permission? What happened to… where’s Mack?
Well, Dirk, Mack hasn’t come around here for a while, so I guess the boys just began deferring to me as their authority, being here the longest, and so forth – well, next to Mack himself, that is…
Oh, ah… okay, Jack… okay, ah…
CONTINUED: next one…
Filed by One Who Shall Remain Unnamed, December 28, 2025 – yes, there is still time to get the hell out of this year…