Press Delete - Part 2

Previously on Press Delete, our muck-raker hero James was wallowing in self-pity, earning the disgust of his object of lust, and receiving a creative - but undeniably thorough - bollocking from his superior.

Part 2 picks up immediately post-bollocking, so get reading and let me know what you think.



PRESS DELETE - PART 2

Once my bowels were sufficiently unclenched, I left Ye Olde Cocke Tavern and marched directly to my car, hidden behind a pair of dumpsters at the back of the Waitrose. I opened the boot. It looked like how I felt.

I rummaged through the folders, empty fag packets, newspapers and laptop cables until I found The Disc. I put into the front zipped pocket of my laptop bag and closed the boot.

I got into the car, found a warm can of supermarket-own-brand energy drink and lit up a fag.

Normally a couple of gulps of taurine diluted in sugar, combined with several sharp blasts on a fag gave me the strength to cock-punch God, but today, right now, the experience made me feel like a body rejecting a donor organ.

I needed something, or someone.

Lissa would be back in the office by now, working feverishly in an effort to remove what I had told her from her mind. Being published daily must be a bitch.

As my mind wandered away in search of someone else who could help, I seemed to find Lissa again, as though I was in a house of mirrors. Her eyes, disgusted. Her mouth, perfect. Her legs, cock-straightening. Her eyes no longer seemed so hateful. They were narrowed still, but now her mouth parted just slightly as her tongue caressed the upper lip. She was wearing a silk dressing gown that barely covered her arse, looking at me over her shoulder, her feet in towering heels.

The dressing gown fell to the floor.

‘Jesus!’ I exclaimed, sitting up straight, violently shaken from my doze by the sound of someone coughing.

A man in a high-vis jacket was stood in front of my car, staring at me.

He glanced at my burgeoning erection.

He didn’t even flinch, simply shaking his head and walking away.

‘Fuck off!’ I shouted, blasting the horn.

I moved around in my seat, trying to find a way of sitting that didn’t exacerbate my current predicament.

I grabbed the paper from the passenger seat.

Page after page of tits, with faces above them that looked more and more like Lissa.

After staring intently at the crossword for about ten minutes, I was finally able to sit comfortably. I glanced at the laptop bag on the back seat, giving it an accusatory look for harbouring the thing that would destroy me.

In the beginning, it was a terribly good business.

Information and the way it was found and traded was changing constantly, with every major innovation in technology. When I started, the Nokia 3210 was the must-have gadget. Now, I have a toaster with more computing power.

It was never just a knack for technology that you needed in this line of work. You had to have an innate lust for discovery.

Sure, I could work for months on the most tiresome topics, but even the most boring things, the most tedious targets, I genuinely lusted for their secrets.

I miss those days.

To think I almost did that start-up company with Gary in Manchester, a million years ago. Instead I used my gifts for evil.

Once I got myself established after a few months of networking and name-dropping, it all started happening fast. Soon editors, not just reporters, were calling me directly. For about three months I had fooled myself I was engaged in a noble pursuit.

I was uncovering corruption, sinister forces, backroom deals. I made several reporters famous with my information.

Now I was something else. A parasite. Something to be flushed. Hacks could smell me coming. They didn’t need to ask what I did or who I was, they just knew on first sight.

They say you are what you eat, and I eat sleaze. It starts to change you, ooze out of your pores, make you into a reflection of everything you despise.

I could pretend that my lack of productivity in the past week was down to moral reasons. The truth was that ever since I took on the Gower story, I had felt impotent. I was dealing with things that were, by anybody’s definition, morally repugnant, and this was something that if I really believed was wrong, I could fight it, or reveal it.

But I hadn’t. All I had, besides a car boot full of junk and a hard drive full of sleaze and speculation, was the feeling that no matter what I did, I was a bad person and a failed human being.

That was what The Disc represented.

After twenty minutes of drawing beards onto the faces of all the beautiful tit-owners in the paper, I finally left the delivery bay of Waitrose and drove to the office.