Couldn’t get my flash fiction done on time yesterday because I was busy finishing my Patreon exclusive short for March (yo, you should sponsor me on Patreon!). So her it is today instead! It’s a silly little thing, based on a Seventh Sanctum prompt. Enjoy!
The police chief was my guiding star and the fire of my loins, but that’s a lie. Not that anybody cares. The journalists and the cops, the gossipers – they have their story. Case closed, article printed, time to go home and sleep safely knowing another dangerous vigilante is off the streets.
It’s a sexism thing. You’ll never convince me otherwise. A guy runs around punching bad guys, and everyone thinks he’s Batman or Daredevil (if he’s white, that is, let’s not pretend otherwise). He’s ascribed noble reasons, pure intentions. We assume a lust for justice and truth behind his actions, blame mistakes made on others for driving this noble savior to violence or rashness. If we really can’t defend his actions, we rewrite the story as a tragedy and say the world broke him. Either way nothing is his fault, everything his credit and his results irrelevant to his hero-status. Above all – we understand. We approve of his motivations, even if we disparage his methods.
But I’m a woman, not a man. Being repulsed by the evils of the world isn’t a good enough a motivation for us, nor is a longing for justice and peace. No, they came up with a better reason for why I did what I did: I am desperately in love with the police chief, and in a twisted attempt to gain his affection and approval I inserted myself into investigations, carelessly risking the lives of both officers and civilians in the process. That was their story; a steaming pile of sexist crap all wrapped up with a neat little bow. Careless… what a load of tripe! Batman doesn’t kill – I don’t even concuss. If I do my job right, there’s no need to, and I always do my job right. If I hadn’t, the police chief would be a smoldering corpse and the perp would have skipped town, instead one is in the ICU and the other in lockup. But I guess that’s irrelevant compared to wild speculations about my emotional motivations.
The funny thing is, I don’t know the police chief from Larry. Never met the guy, not even once. I only know his name now because it’s all over the news, all over my hearings. It’s hardly surprising we took an interest in the same sort of cases – time-sensitive cases, hard-to-crack cases, cases with minimal physical evidence, these were my area of focus. It’s only natural he’d take a special interest too, given his position. Once he wakes up, hopefully he can at least put the rumors of our affair to rest. I’ll still be locked up, but at least it’ll be for the right reasons.
It’s just my fucking luck – can’t even save a guy’s life without someone deciding you have a crush on him.