It was the end of the day, and not a good one, so I'd decided to drown my sorrows at the office. Hell, it wasn't like I had a dame to rush home for. I poured another.

That's when she walked in.

"We're closed", I said, without looking up.

"I need your help", she said, casting a long shadow from the doorway.

"Come by tomorrow. Preferably around noon." I had a feeling my date with the bottle was going to go all the way. I emptied the glass and looked at her for the first time. I was suddenly overcome with sympathy for this troubled dame, though for some reason my swelling sympathy situtated itself almost entirely in my groinal region.

She stood there in a figure-hugging red dress, with hair to match. It was as if she was aflame, and I could feel the temperature increasing. She had legs that went down to her feet, and skin as white as porcelin, and a chubby face that whilst normally jovial was now deeply troubled.

I could sense she could sense the change in my mood, for she moved swiftly towards the desk, and pushed her bountiful, four foot frame up against it.

"You're my only hope. Please, Mr..."

"Jerk", I said. My friends call me "Cricle", but it was a long time since anyone had called me that.

I sat up and put my elbows on the table, as if ready to get down to business, hoping she hadn't noticed my swelling sympathy.

"Please, Mr Jerk", she said as she took the seat opposite.

I looked into her eyes, wide and expressive (but not in an anime way) and I straight away knew her story. She suspected her husband was cheating. Two to one he was copying furry porn fan-fiction and passing it off as his own. A tale as old as time.

"My brother is missing." she said, sliding a black and white photograph across the desk. Fraternal, obviously. The resemblance was remarkable.

Hell, with a different outfit, I'd find plenty sympathy for him too.

"You see," she paused, as if she could barely utter what came next. "He's a writer".

I let out a low whistle. The poor bastard. Evens he was right this second locked up in some cheap cockroach motel jerking himself silly to the waifu tentacle manga he would someday start writing, if only he could find someone to draw those tentacles for an equal share of the self-published profits.

"I'm not sure there is much I can do", I said as I slid the photograph back across the desk. I didn't have the heart to tell her that he'd likely return in a couple of days, filthy and exhausted, smelling of sweat and shame, and hands sticky enough to climb walls, if it wasn't for extensive carpel tunnel syndrome (and not the kind you get by typing).

"I know what you're thinking", she said, "but he isn't like that. All he ever wanted to do was to write literary fiction. He wasn't into that... stuff."

The poor dame really believed it too. Hell, she was so sincere that I nearly believed her. But I'd been in this game a long time, and if there's one thing I know, it's never trust a writer (or shake thier hand).

She leaned over the desk and I considered it a professional courtesy to maintain eye contact and not drool into her heaving badonkadonks.

"If it's money, that's not a problem." With that, she reached into her purse and dropped a handful of coins onto the table. Gold. Hell, this broad must be loaded.

"Tell me what happened, and I'll see what I can do", I said as I poured a stiff one.

"It's the plot", she said, "he's lost it."