Fucking carrots.

I work at a place called Horma Studios. Our movies make a lot of money, you might have heard of Cruel Embrace or The Year of the Plague, or how about Howl? Everybody loves Howl, Howl's a regular water cooler piece. Point is, with the amount of money we make, Horma Studios also runs an investigative division set up in one of their warehouses. We, uh... we look into things. You'll understand, just wait.

Head honcho came into my office today carrying a slip of paper; he waved it in front of my faceless and told me I had a big one. Considering Head honcho is a dog, that's kind of impressive.

"How big are we talking?" I asked.

"Big enough to fill your pockets for a year," he said. Threw the paper onto my desk. "Truckloads upon truckloads of you-know-whats."

"The V word?" I said.

"The V word," he said. "Now come out and play some darts with me."

Darts is one of our communal activities in the warehouse. The boys and I gather, we do things together, sometimes we talk business while we do it. It's a morale thing. Keeps people happy. Also lets me work on my throwing arm.

On this particular occasion, I was to investigate some illegal trucks we believed to be smuggling "the V word," and this time I had to go with a partner. The partner in this occasion was Coldems McBoy, head of McBoy and Gal's freezer comporium and professional darts champion. I don't get along well with him; he insists "comporium" is a word. But Head honcho insists, and when Head honcho insists you've got to abide. Otherwise he wouldn't be Head honcho. That's how the world works.

Here's another "how the world works:" A detective without a face cannot drive a car. Totally against the law. Something about "vision impairment." But anyway, this means Coldems had to take the wheel, and he's technically underage. That? The cops don't question that. Bizarre world we live in. I'm not one to use the phrase "police favouritism," but...

The job took us to a river under a bridge. Specifically the kind of "river under a bridge" where there's also still enough room for seven sixteen-wheeler trucks to drive on land under the bridge without actually being in the river. You know the kind. It's iconic. We stepped out of the car, walked up to the nearest truck, and pried its storage doors open with a crowbar.

Say. I just realized I've yet to provide an adequate physical description for Coldems McBoy. Allow me to break away from the narrative impetus to indulge that tangent: He's got fairly blue skin, the skin that brings to mind a morgue-sleeper. Dead body. That's the one. Orange hair, curly, he looks like a carrot. A blue carrot with curly orange hair, to be specific. The kind of carrot you'd throw in the bin, then throw the bin in a fire, then douse the fire with chemicals, then get arrested for toxic dumpage, then to watch your family disown you in tears as they wonder how their beloved could ever do something so horrible, where did they ever go so wrong, and you tell them they didn't go wrong anywhere, you tell them that this was all a misunderstanding of some sorts, this was all because of a blue carrot with curly orange hair, but they won't listen. They never do. That's why you became an ace detective, because your parents filed a restraining order and you want to prove to yourself you've still got it in you, you don't need them, you don't need anyone, you're independent. And you can never look at a carrot the same way ever again. Coldems also likes to wear wooly jumpers. Fuck him.

Inside the truck, and in fact every truck under that bridge, were hundreds of boxes filled with DV tapes.

I looked at Coldems, and Coldems looked at me.

"Vlogs," Coldems said with disgust.

We confiscated those things and took them downtown before remembering our offices are actually closer to the suburbs. Long drive, but at least we got the name of the company on the side of those trucks:

Grotty Videoz Corp.
A subsidiary of Viacom

I knew next we'd have to pay a visit to our longtime frienemy: Mister Grot, Esquire.