Sleaze Land – Chapter 12 (The Clock Struck One) Part 2

Sleaze Land – Chapter 12 (The Clock Struck One) Part 2



     “Your silence will not protect you.”  Audre Lorde





“It’s pronounced UUURBANE,” the grumpy old man said, as he tried to suck his sagging gut in at the same time.

“Look, man. I don’t give a shit how you say it.  Ya?  So, get your shit together, and then go and find Ackles.  He’s gonna point ya in the right direction, as well as get you set up with your first punishment,” the dainty-ish thirty-two-year-old said, as he twirled on the spot, as if to once-again show off the fact he wasn’t wearing any bloomers.

“Look,” the very British man with the very British accent began, but Tiny just shoved him over the side of the pontoon, into the dark murky water that surrounded the rather large island that was located at the center of Lake Michigan, about thirty-five miles dead-east from Zion, Wisconsin.  

It was a part of the lake that marked the intersection between Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan. 

A place that technically was under no one’s strict jurisdiction.  No one other than the crumbling federal government, that is.

“Why’d you do that?” a thin, once-red-headed man asked, though only in a tiny voice, one that didn’t really demand an answer.  And so Tiny just smiled widely, and then shoved his ass off the boat as well.

“If anyone else wants to stand around gabbing, they will do it with the fishes.  Got it?” the large man in the tiny little brown shorts barked, though he looked to be having a gay old time.

“Hey, isn’t that… Elaine?  From that show?” another one of the new arrivals asked in a small voice of his own, as he jumped from the boat out onto the dock.

“Yeah, that looks like a real person…” a long-haired man dressed only in a tiny white bath towel remarked, as he moved along the dock himself, towards the large pile of bags Tiny had thrown in a pile on the rock-strewn beach.

And for a moment several of them all stopped to stare at the old woman who had been painted to look like a much younger version of herself.  

The all-too-familiar woman was dressed in oversized semi-casual business attire, from the eighties, and had an incredibly bad wig of frizzy brown hair arranged haphazardly on top of her head.

“Hey, are you that chick from that TV show?” a friend of Ackles asked, though no one on the island could readily recall his name, and so it didn’t get included in any of the official logs.

However, the woman could only nod her head, because a second later another spurt of water came shooting out of her mouth, to land unceremoniously into the pool she was standing in.

“Is that her punishment?  I thought only dudes were being sentenced to Sleaze Land,” a man Tiny thought looked just like Matt Damon asked, out of what looked like absolute desperation.

“Oh, dudes aaaaaand chicks that acted like and got paid like… duuuuudes.  It all washes out in the end.  Ain’t that right… Elaine?” the smarmy little-girl-like middle-aged man asked in his coquettish tone that made most women want to strangle him instantly.

But once again, the living-statue of the woman once named Elaine couldn’t remark, because all she could do was spigot some more of the now-somewhat-disgustingly-filtered lake water out of her mouth and into the surrounding pool.

“Damn.  Seems kinda harsh.  What is she guilty of?” the man with the pronunciation fetish asked in a pretty-damn-demanding tone, especially considering he was still spitting out his own share of lake water.

“What has she done?” the Dorothy look-a-like barked back sarcastically, as he spun, once again revealing his obvious lack of undergarments.

And then he strode right out into the center of that water-fountain pool, and began stroking the woman’s pale and overly-tightened face.

“What she did… was thrive in an environment that laid-waste to the majority of her kind.  Why, Elaaaaine here rose to the top of an absolute shit heap – and then reveled in it.  And then, of course, had the gall to pretend she had somehow gotten there through some merits of her own.  When in all reality it was just her silence, and her complete acquiescence to absolute immorality that saw her float to the tippy-top of that cesspool.”

The Harry-Styles look-a-like (in the tiny little dress with the ruby-painted cheeks) tweaked the pale woman’s nose, and then turned away in disgust, just as she once again started spewing water out of her mouth.

“And it took us quite a few attempts to get her plumbed in, mind you.  So, don’t think about getting any ideas… about… you know… a late-night rendezvous with our silent spigot of sustenance.”

“Sustenance?” a man whose mother obviously hated him asked.

“Oh?  Didn’t I tell everyone?  This here is the only water fit to drink on the entire island.  I mean, you can risk drinking the water straight out of the lake, if you want to.  However, since the flood, when all them superfund sites all got flooded… well… let’s just say, 3M and Honeywell sure aren’t letting their CEO’s touch any of it.  Ever.  Let alone drink it.”

“But… it’s coming out of her mouth…” a man they all called ‘Squeegee’ whined, as he came up to wash his hands.

“And you should see where it goes in!  It’s not pretty, let me tell you.  Still… it’s a whole heck of a lot safer than drinking them toxins straight out of the lake.  Fecal matter, and all.”

“Fecal matter?” the man who was naked except for the tiny bath towel asked, in such a whiny voice, Tiny had to turn around to make sure a fifteen-year-old girl hadn’t somehow snuck aboard their last trip.

But there was no time to talk about it just then, because just then there was a shout from a set of boats that had been rowing in a circle around the island.

“He’s overboard!” a man yelled, as he stood and pointed his finger towards a runner.  Or… rather… a swimmer in this instance, who had taken it in his mind just then to flee his punishment and the island.

“If that stupid Aussie thinks he can swim the thirty-five miles back to land I think we should just let him try,” Tiny remarked dryly, as he took a bite of some cold braai that he’d had shoved in his pocket since the previous evening.

“Get a drone on that wanker, now!” the man who liked to be called Dorothy barked at his giant of a side-kick.

“Yip, on it, boss,” the grey-bearded man with the kind eyes said, just before he tossed a rock and hit the one they called ‘Squeege’ in the head.  

“Don’t dip your nasty seed in that water, ya hear?  Everyone’s gotta drink that water, ya sick fucking bastard,” he told the man, after the overly-offended former-batman looked over at him in absolute contempt.

“Just don’t do it.  Ya hear?  Cuz if you do, I’m cutting it off.  I don’t care what the home-office says.  I’m cutting it off with a dull and rusty blade, and ya can bleed out right here.  Ya nasty fucking wanker.”

And then the large bare-footed man was off and running, almost plowing over the frail former red-head with the willowy disposition, who was still standing there staring at his old (like really-really old) friend.

“I’m so sorry they did this to you,” he told her in the smallest of voices, so that none of the others could hear.

But in all reality, it was she who should have been apologizing to him; one of the oldest and dumbest members of the island.  

Because if she’d just opened her mouth about all of the ways he’d been benefitting from the complete and total suppression of her people, he might not have gone along with it all them many long years.

I mean, he probably would have, considering Emma Thompson and a whole shit-ton of other professional women had screamed about it the entire length of his extremely long and lucrative career, and – quite frankly – none of that had impacted him, at all.

At least not enough for him to actually find a voice to do anything about any of it.

A voice worth remembering, that is.

And so, as part of his punishment, for lack of there being any real substance to his name, his name had been stricken from all records.  

Including all birth certificates, as well as all sources of documentation; written, electronic, or spoken.

In fact, his name had been super-scrubbed, by AI’s designed simply for this task.  For the task of rewriting history.

So, from now on people were only allowed to address him as ‘Red’.




© Raena Exe 2022
 
 
*Inspired by life.
*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.

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