​Sleaze Land – Chapter 9 (The Mouse) Part 1

Sleaze Land – Chapter 9 (The Mouse) Part 1
 
 
 
    “You manage things; you lead people.”  Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper
 
 
 
As soon as her part was finished, Emma quickly tossed aside the VR glasses she’d been wearing in order to join the festivities in person, so to speak.
 
Because, quite honestly, the show-boating of the media-whore-duo was more than she could stomach. 
 
Still, the crowds had grown accustomed to their theatrics, and expected nothing less.
 
“Janet, tell me that wanker Clide is here for his two pm.”
 
“He is, Ms. Jorgensen.  Would you like me to show him into my office?”
 
“Your office,” Emma said, as the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood one-by-one on end.
 
“Yes ma’am.”
 
“No.  I mean, you called it ‘my office’, but what you should have said was, ‘your office’,” Emma corrected the relatively new AI she’d been tasked with, by The Ides.
 
“Ma’am?” the AI said into Emma’s earpiece.
 
“Just… show him in,” the plump woman with the robust appetite said, as she eyed the half-eaten salad which sat pushed aside on her desk.  And then she tucked it neatly into a drawer before the tall muscular man with the impossibly-wide smile appeared at her door.
 
“Come in,” she told him.  “Take a seat.”
 
The man was dressed well, but positively reeked of pot.  And his eyes had that forever-glossy look, that let most people in on the fact he wasn’t all the way there, ever.
 
“You rang?” he intoned with his perfect British accent, just before he popped his phone out of his back pocket.
 
“If you take a selfie in here, I swear to god you’ll live just long enough to regret it,” the well-dressed woman in the sensible shoes growled at the dense man.
 
Who just smiled and then, not-so-subtly, shoved his phone into his breast pocket.
 
“What’s up, doc?” he asked, still trying to get used to his new role as not really an actor, but not really responsible for anything at all, except standing around and smiling.
 
“You’re on the next boat to Sleaze Land”, Emma told him without looking up from her tablet, where she was not-so-subtly searching for a new credenza for her office.
 
“But I thought you made a deal with my wife.  That we made a deal.  That I’m just here to make it look like I did my part.  I’m not guilty… I didn’t… I…”
 
But Clide had known all along he’d pay for that hottie he’d had on his arm a few nights past.  Despite how hard he'd tried to keep the hook-up secret.
 
“Your wife called,” Emma said, looking up with a malevolent grin she’d been saving up all day, just for him.
 
“Did she?”
 
“Seems you don’t actually have the priorities that you promised her you had…  you know… to ‘love’, ‘honor’, and ‘cherish’.”
 
“I love my wife,” the man said in a voice that rivaled Forest Gump’s for simplicity.
 
“Yet sadly, you forgot about the honor and cherish part, as so many of you lime-light-knights tend to do.”
 
“But, what am I being tried for?” the dull-witted man whined.
 
“Aiding and abetting.  Which, simply put, is the worst amongst the worst.  And the worst crime of all.  Therefore, your trial is to be held last.  For effect.”
 
The woman’s eyes were bright blue orbs of nothing, nothing at all.
 
And it gave the large man’s ridiculously huge muscles goosebumps.
 
“Perhaps, and this is just an idea I had just now… you should have spent more time on your mind… and a bit less on all those muscles.  Ya?”
 
“But…”
 
“Janet, see that this man leaves, now.”
 
“Yes Mr. Jorgensen,” her AI chimed in her ear, just as a large surge of electricity jumped out of Mr. Standen’s phone and right into his chest.
 
“Ouch!” he yipped loudly, as he jumped from his chair.
 
“Ouch!” he yipped again, as it shocked his hand while he was removing it from his pocket.
 
“You were just now irradiated, sir, with Quad 9, a neurotoxin that reacts badly to all electronics.  Therefore, from this day forth you will no longer be able to touch anything with an electrical current flowing through it, without permanently damaging the item, as well as providing yourself with a swift punishment for the infraction of your new sentence,” the AI announced over Emma’s intercom.
 
“What?” the man whined, as he looked down at the now-shattered face on his dead phone.
 
“Permanently?” he asked with a gasp, as another part of his brain considered wrapping his large fists around Emma’s throat.
 
“Yes, permanently,” the AI said, before an automatic rifle appeared from a panel in the ceiling, and then pointed itself directly at him.
 
“The boat to Sleaze Land leaves just as soon as Mr. Ackles arrives.  You may wait for him in the lobby.”
 
“Ackles?  He’s going too?” the man asked of anyone who would answer, as he slowly backed out of Emma’s office.
 
“Oh… he’s more than going… he’s gonna be your mascot.”
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
© Raena Exe 2021
 
 
*Inspired by life.
*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.

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