A young brunette woman strode down Coral Lane and ducked into an alley.
The woman went by Renee Esper and she walked with concerned purpose. She wore a long brown jacket that covered her plain black dress. Her mid-length hair was done up haphazardly with too many pins.
Once she was in the thin, dark alley, Renee looked up and down the length of the walls for a dark red door. When she spotted it, she dashed towards it and hurried inside. Just as she had been instructed, she climbed up three sets of a thin metal staircase until she finally reached her destination.
The office door was heavy oak with a square window on the upper half. Written on the window with gold lettering was the following:
Mimi Rogers: Private Detective
Unlicensed
Specialization: Preventing Unwanted Bimbofication
Renee smiled and then walked in the door.
"Miss Rogers?" Renee asked before she was even fully inside.
"Miss Esper, I presume?" Mimi asked back,
"You have to help me, Miss Rogers," Renee gasped. "Monica isn't going to be Monica for more than another few days, I'm sure of it! Oh the look that Trevor gave me this morning sent chills down my spine! You have to believe me, there's just no time!"
"Please, Miss Esper," Mimi said calmly. "Sit down. I know I took some details over the phone, but I'll need the full picture if I'm going to help you. You said that Monica is your sister, right?"
"That's right," Renee said. She was clearly a little frazzled but she calmed down at Mimi's words and took a seat.
Mimi's office was larger than Renee expected considering how cramped the alley and building had been, but it was an absolute mess. There were files and books scattered all over the place and there were far more lamps than were being used and certainly far more than were necessary.
Still, the office had a warm and welcoming quality to it and the longer Renee sat on the large wooden chair with the worn out padding that she had been offered, the calmer she felt.
"Monica is my older sister," Renee continued. "She's 32. I'm 25. We've always looked after each other in different ways. We're always protective of each other when we enter relationships, but this guy, this... this GUY-"
"-Trevor?" Mimi asked calmly.
"Yes! Trevor!" Renee said and sat forward. "I knew that there was something creepy about him but then I saw that post - I linked you to it! - and I found out that he's done this before! You looked at it, right?!"
"I saved it," Mimi said. "But I wanted to talk to you first. I do things very deliberately, you see."
"We don't have time for that!" Renee insisted. "It's really quite dire!"
"Has your sister already begun to show signs of being Bimbofied?" Mimi asked.
"Well..." Renee replied.
"Forgetfulness? Increased giggling?" Mimi asked.
"Well no..." Renee said.
"Then we at least have a few days," Mimi replied. "I do take this seriously, but you will have to trust me if you're going to hire me. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Renee said and twisted her hands together in her lap. "I understand."
"Now tell me about Trevor," Mimi began. "Don't describe him through the lens of what you're feeling right now. Try to go back to the first time you met him. When your sister introduced you to him."
Renee huffed and adjusted herself in her seat.
"Well I guess I didn't think he was so bad when I first met him," Renee admitted. "He was handsome and charming and said all the right things. But I was a bit suspicious of him because of that."
"Because he was too nice?" Mimi asked.
"Because somebody with no flaws is hiding something," Renee said.
"But you said you're very protective of your sister," Mimi pressed. "Maybe you were just looking for a negative perspective?"
"Are you a private eye or are you a shrink?" Mimi quipped.
"Go on," Mimi said. "How long ago was that?"
"When I first met him?" Renee asked.
Mimi gave a nod.
"Just about six months," Renee said. "Monica is always so slow with everybody she dates, but it was different with Trevor. They moved in together after just two months. They're already talking about marriage."
"Any proposal yet?" Mimi asked.
"No proposal," Renee said. "As far as I know."
Mimi leaned back in her chair so that she could see her laptop. She clicked the link that Renee had sent her. It was to a screengrab of a social media post. Mimi was wary of screengrabs. It was easier than ever to doctor an image.
"So if Monica isn't showing any signs of Turning, then why are you so concerned?" Mimi asked.
"Turning?" asked Renee.
"It's another way to say getting Bimbofied," Mimi explained.
"Oh!" Renee said. "Well, I told you. I saw that post! He's done it before!"
"It seems a little extreme to get this up in arms about one little post," Mimi said. She skimmed the screengrab. There was a photoset and a paragraph of writing underneath it. Although Mimi couldn't expand the photos, it was clearly a progression of pictures of a man with his girlfriend, showing her in various stages of Bimbofication. Mimi recognized the man as Trevor from the information that Renee had sent over e-mail.
Under the photoset, the post read as the following: