Wits End | A Short Detective Story
by Iris
Wits End
Iris
Whitney had been restless and weary, working tirelessly.
Tidings borne from lifetimes of wicked lies had taught her much of the world. People were lying, almost always was how it seemed, and for reasons which were easier to see than they would likely believe. Everything was stowed, and only just beneath the surface for those people who loved to lose.
America had become a land of the lost losers.
Cora was a winner. She made everything make sense to Whitney from the moment she was spotted on Tinder. Whitney swiped right and with emphasis, praying in the moment, pleading to something within. Whitney wanted to serve that woman with her mouth, and all over her body. It was an immediate and insatiable notion when seeing their gorgeous, trans, Puerto Rican formations.
Whitney needed nothing more than to be allowed a consummation of something gorgeous with her tongue and lips—her whole face, in fact. As long as they smelled sweet, and then she would for a very long time. She had decided that. Whomever her face’s fate’s victor was, they would be suffering ecstasy quite completely alongside her.
In the meantime, it was activities—those were how Whitney would bide her time. That, along with rigorous departures into her bedroom for fisticuffs with her little fellow and the rear porthole.
She had been biding her time since registering her L.L.C.
Although nobody had hired her yet, Whitney was a private investigator by trade. Gregariousness had people doubting the efficacy of Whitney’s detective work.
The way people disregarded Whitney, particularly her mother, and especially when they said, “You’re sick and you need help,” felt oddly unconsidered. Especially considering how innately and practically qualified she was.
Her website didn’t seem to be generating much attention either.
Whitney had long since realized things happened in tandems. Mysterious happenings were those often of pairs, entwined and fated notions would hold in patterns. Fours would bore from twos and back into her blankness.
She was a zero. The calculation didn’t quite make sense.
People were triangular, and of boxiness. Everything about them was round. Whitney knew something from her bones, and it seemed too odd to your average fellow. Her only hope was that someone hot and smart might witness her in passing and get obsessed. At least, that someone like Cora might utilize her more base abilities of investigation—that was what Whitney really needed.
Whitney was just good at things. She really liked making people feel happy too. And there was nothing more balancing to a gorgeous, infinitely malleable mind than a babe.
She really needed a babe to have her back. Whitney wanted backrubs too. Being a large trans woman who was smarter than everyone else had its challenges, most of all was finding someone to tame her.
Tough cookies were everywhere. They all wanted Whitney to break them, or just go way, while she only wanted one of the hot ones to break her back.
It was the mystery of mysteries — the how — and finding that answer had led Whitney to become something of a psychological savant. She was seeing right through people these days, and for the worse.
Awaiting another exciting response from Cora, who seemed flattered to abide Whitney’s honesty, she was tempering excitement. Every loose second had been spent thinking of wrapping her mouth around, or putting her tongue inside, whatever they might find beneath Cora’s shorts.
It was a tantalizing mystery. Every solution felt more rewarding than the other in its own plethora of ways. Deepest down, beneath her black, Whitney hoped Cora would be the one to ultimately lead her towards getting rid of the thing herself. Somebody had to, so Whitney was putting that on everybody.
“Can I get the salami—nine-inch?” Whitney asked the sandwich lady.
As they were plugging the order in with their sandwich fingers, rattling the plastic stand of the ineffective touchpad, Whitney thought that lady seemed sad somehow. It was obvious they were fighting overwhelm.
Whitney stole a lot of extras on the way out.
People didn’t really look at her. They were working the hardest not to that, in fact. And there were benefits to her station as the most visible-invisible person around. It also helped she was white and kind. Nobody could believe, even as they worked the check stand at their own business, that the thing she had in her hand or cart was not accounted for somehow. In fact, they did not even begin the calculation. For Whitney was one of the few who was immune to all witnessing.
It was how she became such a great detective.
When she was on the street, walking home, enjoying the first half of her newest free candy bar, Whitney was thinking about sucking Cora’s little cock, or big one, or whatever. Her salami sandwich could wait if needed. She flipped her phone upward, open, pining for the banner of hope—a message from Cora would have made the plug inside twinge. Yet, what she saw was less than expected.
Whitney had an email, her first at whitneyPI@whitneyPI.com.
It wasn’t anything like what she expected. They were someone like her, but all turned around, and inside-out too, though they seemed unsure about why. She could tell just from their name.
Whitney knew the sort. It was a boy.
They were a female boy and not one thing was ever shone more immediately, or clearly to Whitney, about any one person, then that fact. A lot of self-important, and self-defined women’s women were boys. Those sorts would often confide the fact to Whitney in private, underhandedly, knowing what they were saying—expecting her to know but not—then blame her for hearing them and respecting that.
It was another Moss. That was a staple-name of the sort. That name choice was the closeted, binary-trans-man halfie-version of Luna.
Whitney whished Luna wasn’t so overused by her trans foresisters.
She would have loved that name.
Whitney responded to Moss’s single line inquiry, ‘I need to talk about a disappearance,’ and she did it with her usual style of underhanded panache, summoned wholly before its delivery, while unawares of what exactly was about to come through her dainty-massive fingertips.
‘I’m here for you.’ Whitney typed first, before ignoring all wording which might emote, scrunching her forehead to find the correct nomenclature of suppliance, catering towards the type of person who needed to presume themself in control of every interaction with a transgender woman.
She found the perfect finishing note to keep from scaring them way.
Please contact me anytime you would like to set up a consultation.
-Whitney
That had hit the spot, she thought. Whitney didn’t want to frighten Moss by anticipating their needs and making them feel led. Half-hidden boy people with vaginas often hated everything that made them feel in the presence of earnest and heartful intelligence. The only correct answer was to be as much of a lie as they were. For a trans woman to be found carrying that kind of intuitive wit, would focus their resentful ire of projected self-disgust into modern witch burning. All the while it stunk, she could tell they loved her in their bellies, and Whitney could infer she was in a hell of some kind.
She had wanted one of those boys to take a place beside her most of all.
It was just impossible. At least when they were pretending to be women. Especially when they were loving her and hating her for the reflection. ‘Women’ like them only approved of trans women whom they could control with infantilizing gaslighting. If Whitney hadn’t learned to give them what they wanted with an elevated, loving, and consciously humored maliciousness, she might never have gotten a single case.
All her kinds of men were broken out of existence in the world. Most of them, at least.
By the time Whitney got back home, clamoring keys ajangle at her front door, excited more than anything for taking a big bite of her salami sub sandwich, thrumming to pound it down with the overwhelm-donated energy drink and cookies, she felt a pulse from the phone still held in her hand.
Moss had responded bluntly, and clearly wishing to meet as quickly as possible, with an urgency below the words which spoke to desires of meeting that very afternoon.
“Do you have any time next week?”
Whitney did, in fact, have that time. She was wide open right through the next week. And so, she responded how the situation demanded.
She linked them to her calendar with a prewritten signature-email.
Whitney didn’t personalize it one bit.
They weren’t talking much on the road. Whitney was trying not to be too nerdy about the way Cora made her feel.
She was just so cool. There was a protective spirit emanated by Cora—and for herself—which made everything better to a person like Whitney, who did the same. Standing beside another person, let alone sitting in her car, who knew the struggle and walked it the same way, was a blessing Whitney rarely received.
In fact, she never had since learning to live with her mental transformation. Mutual respect of another’s intelligence was rare. To find it with a sister, who wanted to be a spicy friend too, was all she ever hoped towards wanting the most.
For her to be taking grasp of Whitney’s lead was unexpected.
Cora had let Whitney do all the talking until they met up. Then Whitney shut right up.
Whitney enjoyed nothing more than that rarest sort who could make her even the least bit nervous. Cora was a diamond who had that spark glowing in Whitney’s chest, and that was all truly needed for the forging of a peaceful place of rest and surrender beside someone.
“What kind of music do you want to listen to?” Cora prodded gently.
Whitney was warming to the fact she would be able to speak freely in Cora’s presence. So, she did what was always craved for and went straight for deepest secrets.
“What’s your favorite album?”
It didn’t take long for Cora to smile. She was the smartest sort of woman. There was a play in their conversation, a simplicity, and layers underneath of literacy towards each other which was profound.
Cora didn’t tell Whitney the answer. She just put it on.
Something wired and whispered was bubbling in the belly of Whitney. Her senses were tingling, and everything seemed as if leading to a head. Clarity was brought to the world while seeing Cora squinch her legs together.
Let’s Groove, from Earth, Wind & Fire was a blessing to the ears of a woman so lost in a culture of artlessness.
When finding herself absorbed by purest bliss, in shortest order, at-last beneath the trees, wind flowing in her hair let-down, Whitney was still feeling that song’s rhythms. The groove was inside and within Cora, and the effortlessness they used to claim Whitney’s attention was of grip and absorption. Cora was a most beautiful thing to see in movement.
To lose herself further, deeply within the woods, and feel the speed at which her heart was pulling forward—for that that to be with someone so reflective of the beauty she knew in her own intelligence, was a resounding wholesomeness towards Whitney’s spirit at-last achieved.
Every part of her which had been most concerned of finding a place between Cora’s legs was fading to the blaring of Whitney’s heart so shining to be lost in their grasp.
She felt it beginning there, and clearly, right up until she received that message and made the mistake of looking—when Moss ruined it.
They had originally scheduled for Monday, as expected. Their newfound impatience was helpful, however. Whitney would be able to catch a ride with her newest friend and follow the lead.
Grin brightening broadly, believing Cora would be up for the mystery—something deep within their connection having spoken to Whitney—she let the question slip out, “Can I have you help me with a case?”
Whitney’s blossomed bosom of becoming had bounded when Cora’s nearest eyebrow raised without a glance.
No matter where they had previously looked, Moss’s guidance wasn’t seeming apt at leading towards an actual lead.
After Moss scheduled the intake appointment—a Zoom call they made for pro-bono consultation—they messaged with all the information. Their brother was missing and the reason was shrouded.
Moss’s email had a picture attached. It was a man who resembled her brother’s best friend to a T, apparently. He was working at a Target, and one of Moss’s friends had shared the image on sight. Moss clearly had a lot of people working on their grassroots investigation.
Curling into the Target’s parking lot, after having unloaded the scoop to Cora. At least, most of it. Whitney expanded on the matter in a final blare.
“I think it’s definitely just this Moss guy being left out. I think it’s their family. They don’t have any honest information—which means something. I think this is gonna be easy.”
Cora wasn’t laughing at Whitney like other people. She didn’t think it was funny how Whitney believed in herself. There was some feedback loop found there between them. Cora knew that Whitney knew that she knew that they knew; they were already falling for each other.
Whitney didn’t get to talk to people who believed in themselves often.
Cora didn’t get to talk to people who believed in her the right way.
Taking to the parking lot had Whitney excited. That man’s picture made it clear he would be easy to spot. She was going to work him like a doll. And though Whitney expected Cora to stay in the car, she found her new friend kicking the door open as they parked.
Backing him down in an isle—watching him frozen—loving it—Whitney put on her sweetest gait and presentation. She was singing with sweetness of tune as she delivered her kind questioning most tuned to the reality of her station in the situation; he wouldn’t speak to her if she was honest.
Whitney wanted to play it underhandedly, with a layer of uncontrolled manipulative dissonance enforced by a calculative undertone they wouldn’t know how to comprehend or interpret. She was going to freeze him. It felt as if it would come out in subtext he wouldn’t grasp consciously, implying that both he and his proposedly lost friend had been present at her friend’s communal date rape.
It was a long shot that he would have been in a place with trans women. So, she had to play it disembodied, and beyond herself entirely. Whitney knew what she was planning to do, as if heard by instruction from herself, then laughed about it with whimsy of mercy to her kindest heart, before allowing that all to be ported back into her conscious intention with willful abandon. Still, the calculation regarding how it was to be spoken, or what that would jar loose which Whitney needed was beyond her.
She simply knew when to trust her guiding force of subconscious intelligence. Whitney was secretly quite disabled; a schizophrenic person in America who didn’t need medicine had to keep things quiet when they weren’t protected by a family.
People didn’t know it was a superpower when you wielded it correctly.
Whitney was especially worried about how nobody would fuck her if she said it straight up.
Still, the time had come and gone until she was before the man. He had a scruff, along with something obtuse behind it, which reminded Whitney of who she was so long ago, and that spoke volumes.
“You remember Emma—don’t you?”
That was all she said. It wasn’t what she originally thought of, to come at the man with such a harsh non-sequitur.
“Were you with David at Mark’s place last year?”
Moss’s brother David had no information truly provided about him, except an overlong story about his personal connection to drug addiction and dealers. Mark just sounded like a nicely fitting name. People were too jammed up in front of Whitney to think anyway.
“What?” Was all Connor said.
He didn’t know how to respond to words which had questions in them he wasn’t expecting. Connor was a robot.
Whitney took a deep breath as she felt the need to dive back in the deep end of communication with the imbecile, “I think you might know David Corinth. I think you and him might have raped my friend.”
Connor stepped back. He was reaching for his walkie-talkie when he saw Cora and froze, just enough, some divinity in the delay. It allowed Whitney to get one more thing in, as she stepped forward to scare the man into a body shock.
His nostrils flared, as Whitney delivered the line, “I’m gonna fuck you two up in the street, dude.”
Threats weren’t taken to kindly by losers. He had to ask her to leave as she already was. She had learned to go as soon as a threat was lobbed.
“Yeah, I got you—retard!” Was how Whitney responded to his blubbering authority play.
The last bit was uncontrollable for Whitney, drawing a bit of displayed hesitance from of Cora as her gaze was caught. That glow read on Whitney’s face, however, once turned, was of the joyous disregard she most often held post-smote. It was only a specialist-sort who would know it okay to smile along with her.
“Don’t mind me.” Whitney blurred as she passed.
Cora seemed uniquely stunned, but only just, and for that solitary breath which allowed Whitney’s pride to flare. Someone finally understood her. At least, enough for letting her get away with doing what she had to a mind-reject.
Even though she hadn’t met Connor before. Despite the fact that any less aware and expansive person would find her assumptions about the man’s character presumptive—lesser minds often projecting an armchair psychosis diagnosis towards Whitney—he had been responding affirmatively in body language the whole time, confirming complicity with the very kind of thing she was accusing him of. He hadn’t responded with a correct amount of disgust either—not if his friend was truly missing.
He had seemed to flinch at David’s name, and in a way beyond that of hurt he might carry for a missing friend. The whole thing was suspect, and Connor himself was found as unworthy of Whitney’s respect from that same voice she trusted forward in every moment.
Solving the case, proving her merit as a detective in the blind, would teach something fantastic to her new favorite person through action. Someone was finally going to see her. Whitney was going to have a believer and she could feel it.
They just needed to go get a pizza and wait for Connor to get off his shift.
She wasn’t wrong. Whitney wasn’t wrong at all. And not one bit. Not one little bit.
Whitney was correct about almost everything.
Fate was proving that over again, in each way imaginable, except by providing income, as it had for some time while following the nose of her heart. Her life was pointing at working that man, Conner; the self-proclaimed stud, seen in unknowable patterns, would be fell by flowing until her intuition made something else magnificent happen.
What? — That was clear. Whitney was cutting to the chase, for a quickest resolution of Moss’s case. Which was impossible as provided before.
How? — That was the question.
Why? — It was the money and the validation. Also, it had become about showing off to Cora, and keeping it interesting, for an added challenge of nuance which might stretch her intelligence.
They got pizza and there was trust involved. Whitney had no way of judging a robot-man’s shift length. He was clearly an — I don’t look at the clock — kind of guy. Still, her heart said to make things fun. That involved a quick stop for some weed, and Cora made it sweet by covering the charge.
Whitney worked well wasted. Only on the ganja, however, and with tobacco most of all. She adored almost nothing more than finding some form of smoking and kissing buddy.
Cora wasn’t the type for doing that all the time, and Whitney would be more than okay.
Whitney liked being a good girl the very best.
Once they waited the man out, and haphazardly tailed him in Cora’s ride, quite aware of his aimlessness, it became apparent that whatever Whitney was doing would feel easy.
She didn’t wait long after he had gone inside his home. Whitney was seeing patterns in the fact he was living in a shared rental, and it wasn’t an apartment complex. That nobody else seemed home. It was a luckiest happening which allowed a simple plan to generate.
“Can you wait here for me?” Whitney pleaded in a gentle vibration.
Cora didn’t protest, and Whitney could see the stakes. Whitney didn’t care that she could tell Cora would drive off and leave her if it took too long or got too weird. It was only their first date.
Whitney knew it a test she would pass. Somehow, in the pattern, was a victory she was ready for. It felt of multitudes, layered, and too good to be anything but success in all regards at once.
Even with that confidence in tow, while sneaking around the house. Even when finding the blessing of the back door being left to a hanging screen for pups. Realizing the cars which littered the driveway weren’t equating to other occupants by what she saw through the screen, and hearing Connor start the shower upstairs through a recently cracked window. Whitney decided to just do it. The signs were too clear.
“One step, two steps.” She spoke in plain while entering the kitchen.
Whitney eventually began to skitter, tip toeing in a dancing half-burst to the other side of the kitchen, before peeking through boldly into the darkened side-dining room. The word — flanking — had come to mind.
Sometimes Whitney resented her childhood the very most.
Regardless, she was checking her corners and sweeping the perimeter most thoroughly on her way. Glory was a notion finally realized at the home’s foundationally distraught entryway, some giant relief of success she had yet to understand; a riddle of an answer was right in front of her.
There was a purse in the hallway.
It also—somehow—made Whitney realize that man was about to masturbate vigorously in the shower. Nobody was home. His friend, or whatever, was the kind who went out to work and stayed late. Something in the purse had assured as much to Whitney. It was the dangling, golden chains.
She wished there was an awareness of what that really was about, or how the situation would pan out in any organized fashion. Whitney wanted to show off to Cora while solving her case like the intuitive mastermind she was.
Creeping up the stairs, Whitney was still lost at what her aim might be. For most of the trek through the side yard, Whitney was thinking she had been coming for a computer to steal.
Whitney couldn’t get into a locked phone, but a laptop could be less of a proposition.
By the time she reached the top of the staircase, Whitney had decided—the target was the purse bearer. Bitches with that kind of boho purse kept journals, and lots of them.
She went to the best door to have.
Planners were expected, and one was found immediately upon entering the master bedroom.
It was clearly not Connor’s space, and that was a sign for the best. Steps after the last had led Whitney directly to the sidetable and into its drawer, which she found empty. Then she performed a quick check under the bed for reasons beyond her.
When rising to think, it was something beneath the bed which spoke of the truth. There were yoga mats and a tent. She was clearly not using them often, and for the dust alone. It was the Summer too.
That woman was a poser, clearly.
Any journals she had would be old and tucked away—that could be perfect if she had known David through Conner. She would likely have something about him for Moss, some direction to work off at least.
The closet was a goldmine. There had been a whole tub of journals. One on top actually proved the woman was trying keeping up on self-work. Whitney put that inside and grabbed the whole thing.
It was awkward and she had to walk right past the cracked bathroom door’s steaming ether on the way back down the hall, which was emanating terrible music, and that made her think of Cora’s amazing tastes.
Nothing made more sense than getting back to her and out of the neighborhood. Something in the concept was of a smell and sight, blessings untold.
Whitney was practiced at moving just the right amount of stealthily, while efficiently, and maneuvering large things. She took oddest jobs which were made for a tallest lady with long arms.
Leaving the front door open, she nearly bounded when she reached the street and found Cora’s eyes lighting up. It sent Whitney into a full body roar of laughter, while Cora popped the back door of her Corolla open.
Cora was laughing too, in preparation for the evidence’s delivery.
Whitney was feeling conclusions resolve.
She dumped the box, not caring one bit for ultimate results of the missing person’s case. David was surely a sad and troubled gay man getting burnt out onto the street somewhere. Knowing she would help Moss track him down, Whitney was ready to claim her true prize.
Leaping into the passenger seat beside Cora, there wasn’t a hesitation. Whitney took the kiss, and as pure extension of her boldness, well earned.
Cora had received it quite well too. She grasped both sides of Whitney’s head, melting their neck backwards. Cora had taken the kiss for her own, and before pushing Whitney away into a matching pair of breathy gasps.
It was Cora who took the next and best kiss.
A shortest lived, longest felt moment later; Whitney’s hands were on Cora’s lap.
When Whitney finally pulled back of her own volition, she begged Cora.
“Drive. I want you to drive.”
Cora, perhaps, had known exactly what was lying in wait beneath Whitney’s words. She sure seemed to. She certainly had in retrospect, as taking to the road had Whitney plunging into her lap.
Luckily, the windows were tinted. Whitney wouldn’t want to be brash.
Art by kkingdeo