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It moved across the road and silently skulked behind a parked car. The Detective pursued carefully, watching for any sudden movement, finger on the trigger of a loaded pistol. The Detective was strong and lean, muscles rippled up and down her legs - her reflexes were those of a jungle cat. She was also highly intelligent, winning every kind of contest, competition and scholarship around. Yet she was humble and down to earth. Yet brave. And kind hearted. She also had lots of friends. Everyone loved her. Yet she was only human and had flaws too.The Silent Skulking Thing suddenly leapt out from behind the car. The Detective moved forward and grabbed at the shadow, she missed it by an inch and it slipped away into the night. She let out a deep sigh into the cool evening, a long low whistle of sound that skipped off after the miscreant and vanished into the darkness.

The Struggle

The Detectives fatal flaw was a lack of self-confidence, a classic flaw. She therefore felt guilty about having let The Silent Skulking Thing go and chastised herself in her car (an old, down to earth vehicle that was a bit run down and on its last legs). Her lack of self-confidence had resulted in a drinking problem so she grabbed a half empty whisky bottle out of the dashboard and took a large gulp. The golden liquid stung her throat on the way down to her belly and gave her a little confidence boost, whilst numbing the emotional pain she felt from a tragedy that had happened earlier in her career which she couldn’t let go of.

The Antagonist

Jim Deadly worked in The Detectives office as an assistant. He made the tea and transported the mail and papers from desk to desk all day, every day. On the outside he smiled, but on the inside he plotted ways to kill the people he worked with that he felt slighted by. He had wild and vivid fantasies where he imagined every detail of their violent deaths. At night he worked on his manifesto of dastardly deeds.Jim particularly hated our protagonist The Detective, since he too had low self esteem and felt that The Detective was more successful in life than he was - a lowly tea boy.The Detective walked around the office under a cloud of gloom. Not looking where she was going, she crashed into Jim Deadly sending tea and post high up into the sky before the boiling liquid landed on him with a soft patter. Jim yelped in pain and thought the blackest of thoughts, before passively smiling at the detective and reassuring her that no harm had been done. As he walked away his eyes were narrowed and yellow like a snake’s, he quietly hissed to himself at the thought of a mysterious and evil plot he was working on to take down The Detective. Rubbing his hands together he did a little jig with his feet.

The Trigger

The Chief of Police was not having a good day. He paced his office feeling increasing pressure from the board of Governors to catch The Silent Skulking Thing. He looked at a picture of his wife and children and felt the knots of stress in his upper back tighten and twinge. His wife would be angry that he had to work late this evening. And his kids - though he loved them with all his heart - drove him crazy. He longed for an evening where he didn’t have to play a game. An evening with no repetitive noises from his one year old. The insistent, and loud, ‘da-da-da’ sound his son made as he practiced using his mouth and vocal chords sometimes felt like a sonic drill boring into his mind and slowly crushing any free spirit that might have been in there. Having children had driven his relationship with his wife to the brink of collapse. Mentally and physically exhausted, they took their frustrations out on each other. Anxiety led to defensiveness, which led to blame, which led to resentments. They sniped away at each other like spitfires across the sky.The Chief threw his pen down irritably onto his desk. Leaning out of his office door he summoned The Detective and ushered her into his room. He saw the resigned look that crossed her face - she knew what he was going to say.The Detective sat down in the chair facing The Chief's desk. The Chief picked up his pen again and began twisting it between his fingers. ‘Can you give me any leads?’ he asked. ‘Have you got anywhere with this case?’ The Detective looked down at her strong legs and said nothing. The Chief dropped the pen. ‘I see.’ he said. Losing his temper he raised his voice ‘I’ve seen that whisky bottle that you keep in your top drawer. You were brilliant once, but you’re losing it. I’m not going down with your sinking ship. I’ve got a family to feed. Get me The Silent Skulking Thing by the end of the week or you’re out. That’s all I have to say.’ The Detective felt a wave of nausea rising in her stomach and left The Chief's office. As she walked out, Jim Deadly walked straight into her with his tea trolley, rolling one of the wheels over her toe. She glared at him with steely eyes. He glared back.The Detective left the office - she needed time to think. Driving back to her apartment she began to piece together the times that she had almost caught The Silent Skulking Thing. She pinned a large map of the surrounding area to the wall of her living room and marked out the date and time of every location. She sat back on her sofa and looked at the marks. She tried to find a pattern. Nothing. She got up and padded on bare feet into the kitchen where she poured herself a large scotch over a few cubes of ice. She looked into the glass and noticed a change in the room. The shadows lengthened, something felt wrong. She glanced towards the window and saw a shadow moving outside. She rushed to the front door, grabbing her gun from the table as she moved. Her neighbours were already outside their houses whispering and pointing – The Silent Skulking Thing was on the loose! The Detective gave chase, sprinting off after it. The neighbours stared, gossiping and speculating.A few hours later, The Detective returned to her apartment. She trudged up the path dejectedly, seeing the same familiar ant trail, the burnt grass and the chipped pavement that were there every day. None of them cared how she was feeling, the ants carried on marching, the grass continued to decompose and the concrete’s inert molecular structure remained unfazed. The Detective saw herself from outside of her body, a monkey-like animal rushing around talking to other members of her species, each of them with some kind of pressing ‘purpose’ – career, friends, family. Each of them needing a constant source of food, water, electricity, clothing, space to live, space to think. And each of them feeling that their happiness, their opinions, and their overall well being was important and to be respected. Each of them had an individual story. A thousand, thousand, thousand, and thousand more, individual stories – wanting attention, demanding attention, believing that they were entitled to attention.It was overwhelming. She flopped onto the sofa and poured herself a stiff drink. Once again The Silent Skulking Thing had escaped her. She would never catch it. She would lose her job and become homeless. She could see no solution, this case was clearly beyond her. She had now reached the climax of the story, the pit of despair, the worst of the worst, as bad is gets, we’re finally here!

The Climax

The Detective poured herself more whisky. The reason she drank, as mentioned earlier, was to dull her emotional trauma. When she was a brilliant ingénue at detective school, she had witnessed a terrible murder that she had been unable to stop happening. It was so terrible that the other detectives at the scene went to sleep that night and woke up the next morning with grey hair. Luckily The Detective had avoided this unfortunate outcome and her hair had remained a shimmering river of colour flowing down her back. Naturally each one of these detectives went on to be brilliant but afflicted with a lack of self-confidence and a drink problem. On the anniversary of the crime, The Detective would meet with the other detectives in a grubby bar on the dodgy side of town and they would do a silent shot of whisky and howl at the moon together in a long low expression of the bottomless self-hate they collectively felt.By now The Detective was extremely drunk and slipping in and out of consciousness. She stumbled up the stairs to her bedroom and missed her footing on the last step. She felt herself falling backwards, her limbs numb and rubbery as they bounced off the woodwork. ‘Bugger’ she heard herself say before she blacked out.

The Epiphany

The Detective awoke at the bottom of the stairs with sunlight streaming onto her face. Slowly and painfully she rolled over and made her way to an upright position before staggering into the kitchen to make coffee. ‘What an idiot I am’ she thought. 'I’m not really brilliant at all, it was all a lie.' She sank back onto the sofa - whisky bottle, hair shirt and self flagellation tools at the ready, when suddenly she noticed something on the map. The marks she had made looked like something. Yes, they definitely did. She grabbed a piece of charcoal that she had saved for drawing on rainy days and began to shade in between the areas marked out. A face began to emerge, then some shoulders, an arm, a hand carrying some post, and finally another hand carrying…a cup of tea! ‘Jim bloody Deadly!’ The Detective had always known there was something fishy about him, ever since that typical antagonist plotline when she bumped into him at the beginning of the story.She grabbed her car keys and gun and rushed out of the house, slamming the front door behind her with renewed vigour. She fired up the car engine. Giving an extra rev for renewed self-confidence and resolve, she sped off down the road to Deadly's house.

The Resolution

Once outside the house she slowed down and parked at a distance. It was Saturday and she could see Jim's smug little face as he pottered around in his front garden. She pulled a pair of binoculars from her bag and looked through them in order to see more detail. Jim was walking in the direction of a large shed. He unlocked a padlock. Through the shed door she could see movement, yes, affirmative, it was The Silent Skulking Thing! The Detective felt a twinge of nerves – was she up to this? Was The Chief right? Was she losing it? Maybe she was, but this is the moment when she has to believe in herself and over come her fear of making a mistake again. She thought of the grey haired detectives. She reached for her whisky, but since this is the moment where she finds herself again, she pushed it aside and got out of the car. She ran stealthily to Jim Deadly’s garden. Jim, who was now walking away from the shed, spotted The Detective. She held up her badge and he broke into a run towards the garden fence. The Detective chased after him, her strong legs carrying her with immense speed towards the antagonist. He jumped up but The Detective was one step ahead, leaping through the air she performed a flying Judo move and grabbed Jim in a strong hold between her giant thighs. ‘Jim Deadly!’ shouted The Detective. ‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of creating The Silent Skulking Thing – you have the right to remain silent!’Back at the police station The Chief congratulated The Detective. ‘Great work. I knew you could do it.’ The Detective smiled as her colleagues shook both her hands and slapped her on the back. They had opened the garden shed and found The Silent Skulking Thing. Deadly's fingerprints were everywhere and he had been taken into custody where he had admitted his guilt. He had written a statement explaining that his hatred of The Detective and his low self-esteem had driven him to it. Unfortunately he had not been able to overcome his problems in true self-destructive-hero style like The Detective, and had instead tried to solve the problem by getting rid of what he considered to be the source – i.e. The Detective. A dastardly and high risk (but arguably smarter?) tactic.The Detective left the police station as the sun went down over the city. The last few weeks had been a rough ride but she finally felt good about herself again. The nagging self-hatred finally released itself from her soul like a giant gallstone and she gave a little skip as she walked towards her car.