The Laundress of Silver Lake
The Laundress of Silver Lake
By Julie Jansen
Copyright 2011 by Julie Jansen
Cover Copyright 2011 by Dara England and Untreed Reads Publishing
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
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This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.
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The Laundress of Silver Lake
By Julie Jansen
Josephine Fritzkiev used Silver Lake’s granite boulders as washboards. She scrubbed until the sweat and grime disappeared from every citizen’s shirt. She rinsed, swirled, and spun clothes in the lake until they turned whiter than white.
“You have a magic touch,” the townspeople said. “How do you make our shirts so white?”
“Shhh,” she’d say and touch a pruned finger to her lips. She never told.
On a dreadful day in 2270, Josephine Fritzkiev vanished just like one of her stains. In fact, the entire population of Silver Lake met their demise that same day. The town vaporized in a massive solar flare.
Some blamed the disaster on Josephine. They said she fused naturally occurring elements that never should have been mixed, creating a radioactive nightmare. Perhaps the people of Silver Lake wore clean shirts coated in a mineral abomination that attracted the sun’s rays like a magnet.
Arvid knew the theory was hogwash. Meter readings showed no elevated radiation in the area.
He’d come to Silver Lake working on his first article for the magazine
Lifestyles of the Presumed Dead and Mysterious.
A story about Silver Lake’s Laundress was the current assignment. As he sailed across the lake, he focused his binoculars on the site of the once prosperous settlement.
He imagined the town in its heyday: hovercraft outside offices, children playing, a man walking his dog, and the genetically reproduced baby plesiosaurs huddled near the incubator at the zoo. Now the streets were empty except for stone rubble baked black by the infernal heat of that fateful day. There was not a human in sight.
Yet so many tales existed of Josephine Fritzkiev after the disaster, healthy, alive, and still washing clothes. She’d become an urban legend. Children’s books portrayed her as a girlish figure with bouncy blonde curls who sported a blue apron over a white dress and carried a green plastic laundry basket. Arvid reasoned, however, if the woman was still living, she’d be 83 years old.
The last person to see her was Mr. Hans Clovax, of Clovax Industrial Cleaning Corporation. Clovax knew the woman before the decimation of the town. He wanted Josephine’s secret detergent recipe. He wanted it so bad he offered to pay her five million kubacs. But she disappeared before she could give him an answer.
In 2283, after a cluster of Josephine sightings, Hans Clovax went to the west bank of Silver Lake. He got a tip about the mineral alkalonite in a cave there. Clovax suspected alkalonite held the answer to Josephine’s cleaning wizardries. However, anyone could have found just as easily as Arvid the love letters between Josephine and Carmine Bundquist, the hunchbacked town hermit, who resided in the west bank caves.
Clovax never returned from his expedition, just the same as many of the others who went searching for her, who vanished without a trace.
While the town was void of life, the crystal clear lake overflowed with species. Arvid watched a school of flying fish leap and soar across the surface. One of his oars caught in a carpet of kelp-like foliage. He brought it in close and saw a dozen frogs hiding within the leaves. Even Spenser, the long-necked plesiosaur, made the lake his home. He was the only inhabitant of the Silver Lake Zoo that survived the 2270 event. He surfaced and chewed on a mouthful of grass like a cow with its cud.
Arvid approached the west bank shore. He hopped into the water and tied the boat to the remnants of a dock.
Glistening white granite with millions of black freckles lined the west bank of Silver Lake. Arvid stepped gingerly from boulder to boulder until he found a smooth area between them, like a natural walkway. Amongst the rocks, Arvid spotted pieces of cloth. He picked up one of them.
“Ouch!” Arvid said after turning a piece of material over and crushing it in the palm of his hand. He unfurled his fingers. That tiny square of fabric drew blood. He didn’t notice a small but very sharp piece of glass nestled within the fibers. The blood soaked through and dripped onto the left knee of the white pants he’d worn in memory of Silver Lake’s Laundress.
Arvid looked around. Josephine wasn’t there to help him with the stain. She remained silent in his time of need. He called out to her. “Josephine Fritzkiev! I mean no harm to you or your hermit lover!”
All he heard in response were birds as they chattered and swooped at clumsy insects flying close to the water’s surface.
He sat down on a boulder, warm from the mid-morning sun, and applied direct pressure to his palm to control the bleeding.
The long neck of Spenser, the plesiosaur, emerged from the depths with a mouthful of grass and spurted a spray of water out his nostrils.
“You are a majestic creature!” Arvid called out to the beast and waved.
Chirping came from the rocks. Arvid turned. It was a small blue lizard with lime green eyes.
“Hello, little lizard,” he said.
“Chirp!” it said in response.
The lizard exhaled and produced a tweety kind of whistle. It bobbed its head up and down and jumped from side to side. Arvid thought it was communicating with him.
Arvid tried it too. Attempting a sort of Italian hand gesture he thought meant “nice day we’re having, isn’t it?”
he saluted the morning sun. In the process, the piece of fabric fell out of his hand and landed near the lizard.
“Chirp!” it said again, and rushed forward. It bit the fabric and dashed away into the rocks.
Arvid wondered why the lizard wanted the fabric. Maybe it used it as nesting material. Maybe it witnessed Arvid soil the fabric and wanted to wash it, to get the stain out before it set.
Arvid was intrigued by the bold little reptile. When the blue lizard reappeared with the piece of fabric still in its mouth, three more lizards accompanied it.
“Chirp!” one said.
“Chirp! Chirp!” said another.
The third lizard only bobbed its head.
“What do you little fellows know about Josephine Fritzkiev?” Arvid asked. “Tell me where she’s hiding!”
They cocked their heads and stared at him suspiciously.
“Josephine Fritzkiev!” he said again.
Lizard number 1 dropped the piece of fabric and pounced on Arvid’s leg.
Lizard number 2 rushed to the fabric, picked it up, and disappeared into the rocks.
Lizard number 3 hopped onto Arvid’s other leg. “Chirp!” it said.
Arvid noticed how striking their blue skin was against his bloodstained pants.
He and the lizards studied each other. It was a peaceful moment when one bonded with nature.
Lizard number1 sat on Arvid’s left knee. It shifted and left three soft brown pellets on his leg. The lizard stepped on one of the pellets and crushed it into the fabric.
Arvid shrugged. That knee was already stained with blood. Lizard poop wouldn’t make a difference. But then he noticed a miracle. The blood stain began to disappear. That brown lizard dropping worked like bleach.
Lizard number 2 looked at Lizard number 1. They stared for a moment, in a Mexican stand-off. Then Lizard number 1 lunged toward number 2. They snarled and hissed and tore at each other with razor-sharp teeth. These tiny creatures were not as sweet as Arvid originally thought.
Arvid reached out a hand to break up the fight, when all of a sudden, one of the lizards flew through the air and bit him on the right index finger.
More than one “ouch”
and several colorful four-letter words spewed from Arvid’s mouth. The lizard’s teeth sliced clear to the bone and held tight to the finger, like it was an extension of Arvid’s body. The lizard’s stomach swelled as it gorged itself with Arvid’s blood.
Out of the corner of his eye Arvid saw another lizard fly at him from out of nowhere. It headed straight for his nose. Using the current lizard attached to his finger as a bat, he swung at the airborne one, knocking it into the lake. In the water it squirmed and dog-paddled until finally it gasped for air and sank.
Blood dribbled from the affected finger and ran down the sleeve of his shirt. It dripped all over his chest and covered the knee area again. The fabric turned from white to chocolate brown. Arvid stood up and pried the lizard’s jaw open. He hurled it into the water. It too, squirmed, gasped, and sank.
Arvid turned and screamed. Nestled between two large granite boulders, was a human skeleton in a faded blue apron over a white shredded dress. Next to the skeleton rested a green plastic laundry basket.
“Josephine! You’re dead!” His heart beat loud in his chest as panic struck. An army of blue lizards raced toward him out of the rocks.
“Chirp! Chirp!”
One flew through the air and latched onto another of Arvid’s fingers.
“Foul, evil creatures,” Arvid roared. Silver Lake’s Laundress, spared vaporization by the 2270 solar flare, instead died at the hands of miniature bloodthirsty reptiles.
He wondered how she fended off the creatures before her death since they were obviously the source of her whitening magic. He shook the thought from his mind. Survival, not debunking mysteries, was now of the utmost importance.
His boat bobbed on the water where he’d left it, but lizards hovered in the rocks, waiting to ambush him.
He leapt from the rocks and ran in the opposite direction toward the water, ignoring the pain. Blood spilled from his fingers. He pried the lizard’s jaw loose, tossed it behind him, and hobbled into the lake.
Arvid dove under the water, praying the lake’s seemingly docile plesiosaur was not related to the lizards with a taste for human flesh.
As Arvid swam, he turned his head to look at the shore. Several hundred lizards congregated at the water’s edge. They eyed him hungrily. Arvid swam faster. In a final salute he shouted, “Josephine Fritzkiev! I was wrong about you!”
While a brilliant story marinated in his brain about the mystery of Silver Lake’s Laundress, Arvid thought it best to forget Josephine, and to write about another presumed dead and mysterious person who lived far from Silver Lake.
Arvid felt leathery dinosaur skin brush past his feet and gazed into the water. Spenser swam toward a bed of aquatic grass.
Then Arvid felt something else: a scratchy sensation first on his knee, then on his chest. He glanced down again.
Under the water Josephine Fritzkiev held a stiff bristled brush and scrubbed at Arvid’s clothing. She was old and wrinkled, but her arms were still strong.
She surfaced. Arvid was face-to-face with Josephine. She held onto one of Arvid’s arms.
“Josephine Fritzkiev! You’re alive! I knew it!”
Josephine smiled. Her lips twisted into a sinister grin.
“I discovered your secret for getting clothes whiter than white!” Arvid said and her grip on his arm became tighter.
“Shh,” she said and touched a pruned finger to her lips before pulling him under the water. She swirled and spun Arvid until he went limp.
Josephine surfaced. She tugged Arvid by the collar and swam toward the shore.
She reached the shallows and stood. The lizards watched, their bodies quivering with excitement. She worked quickly to remove Arvid’s stained shirt and pants. They were good quality and just the right size. She tucked the clothing into a bag draped over her shoulder. Then she dragged his body from the water and onto the rocks.
The lizards let her pass. She laid Arvid on his back atop a granite boulder and stepped back.
Arvid would appease the beasts’ hunger for a while. When they finished there would be ample droppings to collect. She had a basketful of laundry to do back at the cave, and she was running low on whitening agent.