"The Tooth Fairy forgot to turn up last night, the boy was upset." Dawn was making idle chat whilst we were waiting for the office daily briefing.
I was tapping at my laptop with a side of coffee, mostly correcting the autocorrect that had just uncorrected my work. Others were putting the world to rights in the time-honoured fashion. Wasting time while the boss was doing whatever bosses do.
Dawn continued now that she had the attention of several of her friends. "The tooth was all wrapped up in tissue paper and tucked under his pillow but I forgot all about it. What a disaster; tears at breakfast. I managed to sort it out though, I managed to blame the person who popped the bubble-wrap."
The rest of the room turned to listen to the explanation as she continued, dead pan. "I told him that whenever a bubble-wrap was popped, a fairy died somewhere in the world. So someone, somewhere has finally popped the bubble that killed the Tooth Fairy."
Dawn really did have a dark humour. You'd never think it when you first met her; she appeared to be quite the plain Jane, quietly spoken and demure. She had a legendary streak though, she once turned up with a dead insect glued to her hand and slapped the boss firmly on the back of his head while he wasn't looking. When his head stopped vibrating she pretended to have saved him from being stung.
She was short and stocky but was a real dark horse; she was the one who swapped the dirtiest stories with her friends and could insert lewd innuendo into the most innocent of remarks.
Whilst we looked at her horrified at the thought of telling a child about bubble wrap and fairies, with perfect timing my network connection froze and I was left pounding a useless keyboard. Frustrated, I hammered loudly on random keys and imagined that it forced a bearded nerd in a stained sweater tucked into his underwear into action, running to replace a rubber band somewhere.
Dawn looked across, "Does that have any effect?"
I sighed, "No, but it makes me feel better."
"I find that whacking my mouse does it for me."
I struggled to find anything remotely polite to say to that. Luckily, just then the editor rushed into the room. Nothing strange there, he was always in a rush.
He was an old-timer journalist; stout and balding with a perma-stench of stale whisky and tobacco. He fancied that his local newspaper investigated international scandal, but in reality it was mostly a collection of lame stories about cat shows that filled the spaces between the adverts. If we were lucky we might have a complaint from an ornithologist that his binoculars had been stolen; that could fill a whole page with a sad face surrounded by pictures of birds and accounts of an extensive police investigation into a shocking crime wave.
How we longed for a good car crash.
Plenty of gore, that was what attracted the readers. Bent metal was better than nothing, but dismembered bodies sold serious copy. Even just a tiny puddle of blood increased sales out of all proportion. The macabre public did their best to assist, gathering about scenes to take photos and sending them in for publication, then leaving flowers wrapped in cellophane and posting crap on social media to pretend they cared. Hugs and thoughts, my arse.
This week, the highlight of this particular corner of the international press was the annual local Elvis festival. The town was becoming full of grown men with silly wigs and flared pants grunting "Uh huh" at each other. It was likely to fill column inches for several weeks, including summaries, post mortems, letters to the editor, plans for next year, court cases when the drunks who had been arrested came to trial...
The editor handed out some assignments. Someone to cover the main event hall, another for the street fringe scene, someone else to go around the pubs and bars for public interest items.
I always tried to make sure that I avoided that particular short straw and this year I had spent several weeks developing my own assignment specially timed to conflict with it. It was about some religion-sex-and-drugs swinger group and rumours abounded about people being indoctrinated and losing their personalities.
Someone had dubbed it the 'Twig Davidians', but at last I had something that I might possibly turn into a proper story.
As far as I could determine no-one at this group was being hurt even everything was true but it was my paid duty to bring this sad tale of hedonism to the cleansing eye of the prurient public. It wasn't even a closed commune, surely the first rule of such societies. It was just a weekend meeting of like spirits. Whatever was going on, it wasn't cult religion.
Our 'in' was an internet forum that I had joined, posting regularly to gain an on-line reputation and an invitation. It would be difficult to be accepted into the group as a single male so Dawn would be my pretend wife.
The event itself was a Halloween party -- the sort of thing that I'd normally hide from. Enforced jollity, stupid outfits, what was there to like? I couldn't see any serious cult having recruitment drives at fancy dress parties.
We had considered having Dawn go by herself but there were drawbacks. Firstly, I wanted to be there to escape the alternative. Secondly Dawn might need back-up, thirdly I'd seen a comment that unaccompanied females were regarded as unicorns. They might exist somewhere but certainly not here.
So that evening we met at the office, all dressed up ready to go and with a miniature camera in Dawn's handbag. She was in black heels and a red dress that was just a little too short and a little too tight. It showed off every bulge, even inventing a couple more of its own.
