Page 62 of Sirens
Myrtle whirled on her. “I will jump-kick the ass fat out of your lip fillers, Janet, see if I don’t!”
The corpulent Christian gestured to Trent, who was trying extra hard not to enjoy himself. “Did you hear that? She just threatened me with violence. I demand you press charges!”
Trent physically put himself between the two women over fifty, making sure no one threw what objectively promised to be the funniest punch in the world.
“I wasn’t joking about clearing out of here, all of you.” He pushed more authority into his tone. “For everyone’s health and safety, you’ll need to leave until this is clean. Everyone. No exceptions.”
Janet and her clan balked. “But our First Amendment rights?—”
“May be exercised on any other part of any other street but this one.” He opened his arms to herd the crowd further away so another deputy could tape off the area.
Myrtle cheerfully took up her shovel and began to transfer her precious poop from the ground back to her truck. “Like I’d waste this grade-A…waste,” she mumbled to herself.
“You’re a waste of space,” Bradley told her, tapping his pen on his clipboard. “This isn’t over, Myrtle.”
“Eat shit, Brad.”
Trent realized too late that Myrtle wasn’t giving the smug secretary a suggestion, but a warning. And before he could stop her, she’d used the wood handle of her shovel to poke the man in the back of his knee, buckling it.
Before anyone could react, he was sprawled face-first in Myrtle’s manure.
Brad flailed hilariously and finally made his way to his feet when he realized no one was going to help him up.
To be fair, most people were laughing too hard.
“Gather your henchman, mayor,” Myrtle said, raising a gnarled middle finger.
“Arrest this…woman!” Mayor Stewart demanded. “She just assaulted my—employee!”
Gabe scoffed, wiping tears of mirth from his baby blues before folding his tattooed arms over a chest built in a prison weight room. “Oh, c’mon, Spewart, it can’t taste any worse than your fumunda-laden dick, and he seems to gobble that just fine on the daily.”
He and Lyra touched knuckles as Myrtle laughed so hard she dropped her shovel with a clang.
Janet, apparently having had her fill of profanity for the day, lashed out at Myrtle in the way only a Karen of the highest order could do. “Where’s your abomination of a wife, Myrtle? Trouble in paradise? Living in sin not working out for you?”
“You keep my woman’s name out of your whore mouth!” Myrtle pushed her sleeves up her little arms like post-spinach Popeye ready to open a can of whoop-ass.
Trent turned on Janet, the last of his good humor a martyr to her bigotry. “Ma’am, you’ll take that hate speech somewhere else right now.”
“Or what?” Janet’s eyes turned ugly(er), lip lifting in a vampiric snarl. “Better to smell like onions than shit andtuna…”
“Oh, I’m about to lay down some dolphin-safe whoop-ass on this bi?—”
Trent caught Myrtle as she advanced on the woman twice her size and half again her height, before she could go all Will Smith on Janet’s obviously fraudulent cheekbones.
Somewhere from behind the ringing in his ears caused by his elevating blood pressure, Trent heard the mayor demand Myrtle’s arrest, along with that of a few others.
“You saw what she did! All of you!” The mayor pointed as if Myrtle wasn’t dangling like a recalcitrant toddler from Trent’s careful grip. “She’s finally going to answer for her shenanigans!”
“Shenanigans? That was barely even hijinks!” Her eyes were bright and owlish with innocence. “How is it my fault his knee ran into my shovel?”
“I saw nothin’.” Gabe shrugged, winking at Myrtle before casting Trent a stony look.
“I might have seen Bradley lunge first,” Lyra added before turning to Trent with her unsettlingly frank assessment.
He wondered what she saw.
“You ask my client nothing until I meet you at the jail, you understand? And if this shit-covered motherfucker presses charges, I’ll make sure every press outlet in town knows he was beaten up by a seventy-year-old woman who weighs all of seventy pounds.”
