"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.
Really she should have chosen a dress that fitted loosely rather than try to convince herself that she was twenty years younger, twenty pounds lighter. Dawn was one of those ladies who are always on a diet, always at the gym but who never achieve that sylph-like figure that some manage without any real effort.
A pair of devil's horns and a forked scaly tail sufficed for the theme. The tail hung down from underneath the dress and the high heels raised her ass to a perky altitude. The phrase 'up at the crack of Dawn' came to mind.
I had my best suit on and a pink tie that may (or may not) have suggested that I was in touch with my sensitive side. I had bought a doll which I'd chopped the legs off and stuffed inside my shirt with some wadding, toy sausages and red make-up. The effect was supposed to be that a monster baby was erupting from my stomach. Underneath, duct tape kept it all in place. In the mirror I reckoned that it looked quite realistic.
Dawn had had a fresh hair-do for the occasion, on expenses of course. It actually suited her, adding a couple of inches to her height. At least it distracted the eye from her clinging dress which was cut short enough to give a glimpse of stocking-top, and low enough to offer a tantalising view of her cleavage -- especially when she sat.
That cleavage was legendary in the office. Pillow-soft white flesh that evoked a giddiness not unlike standing on the edge of a cliff. When looking at her chest you felt an irresistible urge to dive straight in and lose yourself. Bugger the consequences, as some submarine commander might have said. Brace yourselves, we dive at Dawn.
Yes, we liked our 'Dawn' jokes.
Few risked saying anything inappropriate to her face though, even in that environment where political correctness had not yet been invented there were some people that sane members of the human race just didn't make coarse comments to. No, such comments were not made in public.
We drove to the event, which was a house-party that hopefully would be attended by several of the alleged perverts. On the way Dawn was in philosophical mood. "They can programme a car to drive itself along the road, right? They fit cameras that can read road signs and make the car react accordingly. So how come they test whether you're not a robot by your ability to recognise a road sign in a picture?"
I didn't have any answer to that but just then we passed a shrine to a road accident that had filled several pages of last week's edition. Pink ribbon, cards and plastic covered dead vegetation. A wonderful heap of trash to celebrate a life lost. There was a board against a wall displaying the slogan 'Our Beautiful Daughter'.
"That always gets me. It's terrible when a beautiful girl is killed", Dawn sniffed theatrically. "I don't mind so much when it's an ugly one."
I laughed "You're a cold fish. It's someone's child for goodness sake."