Miranda Tuesday Doesn’t Deserve This

Necessary context for this story is provided in “Callista Hayes Hates You”   .

Miranda, Janitor First Class, does not have a proper last name. The orphanage which eventually raised her put “Tuesday” on her paperwork, that being the day she was left on the local hospital’s foundling wheel, and her fine, bird-like features and fearful posture, enhanced by near starvation and the malign neglect, led to her being nicknamed “Dove” by the handful of orphans she considered her friends. Sometimes she claims one last name; sometimes the other. It doesn’t particularly matter what a prole’s name is.

Her immediate supervisor, a greasy ensign who doesn’t even try to hide his resentment at being the liaison with the base’s civilian c staff, had quite an expression when he told her about her new assignment. Miranda is still trying to understand it as she quietly winds her way through the base’s dark corridors, pushing her cart ahead of her. Gleeful, perhaps? Cruel? Or maybe he just thought it was a good assignment, and his expression was meant to convey that? Miranda can’t say for sure. She has always been bad at understanding faces.

The officer’s wing of the base is noticeably cushier than the sections Miranda is used to. The reinforced concrete is hidden under thin carpets and behind sheets of lacquered wood, and where it is visible it has been carefully polished. Drop ceilings cover the duct-work that is left exposed elsewhere, and even the fluorescent lights are gentler than usual—armored in milky-white plastic. It would not do to harm a commissioned officer’s eyes.

It still smells the same, though. Bleach and cigarettes, old sweat and fresh fear. Body odor layered with institutional soap, the sharp synthetic floral fragrance that The Democratic Republic of Grand Fenwick forces on everyone even tangentially connected to its armed forces. Miranda has heard that one of the great families owns the factory it’s made in; that half their fortune came from the contract. She has never had cause to doubt this. The world runs on graft and bribery.

As she approaches the door to her new assignment another smell tickles her nose, something she can’t quite place. Stale chlorine and … something vaguely fishy, like how her privates smell when she’s been too busy to wash up properly. An odd, unpleasant smell, inappropriate for a military base and distinctly noticeable even outside the thick, hardened door with its anti-eavesdropping gasket and security cameras. The plated steel nameplate mounted on it looks tarnished, which should be impossible, and for a moment Miranda inanely wonders if the material is ashamed of the name etched into it: “Colonel J. Aldridge”.

Cleans off easily even, though. Just a spray of bleach and a bit of elbow grease.

It’s something to do between tapping her badge on the scanner and waiting for the base’s security to check that she’s allowed to access the Colonel’s office, if her boss even bothered to file the paperwork correctly. He forgets often enough—but not today, apparently, because instead of a few tired MPs clomping down the hall to bitch about her boss fucking up again while they escort her to a holding chamber and send a runner to wake him up the lock’s light clicks over to green and its bolt grinds open. It sounds like there’s something in its mechanism, and Miranda makes a note to let the base’s locksmith know that it needs a good cleaning.

The door opens with a pop of breaking suction and Miranda almost vomits.

She thought the smell was bad enough before, but now it’s cut through with thick, sour musk. A body unwashed for far too long—has someone been locked inside the office for weeks?! Did someone die here?! The stink presses into her mouth and nose, swollen and throbbing, and Miranda vomits.

There isn’t much in her belly, and she gets most of it into one of the buckets on her cart, the most accessible one. She’ll have to clean it out later, but the yellow, chunky bile won’t be too much of a problem. Not like the smell, or the heavy, humid air rolling out into the corridor.

Grand Fenwick’s army does not permit its janitors to obscure their faces with masks or handkerchiefs, even when a thin layer of fabric would massively improve their lot. Their dignity is worthless next to the faint threat of spies. Miranda does have a tube of mentholated ointment, though, which she liberally smears under her lips and across her nostrils. It helps a bit.

There’s not much light inside the office; the overhead lights are dim and a solitary desk-lamp does little to illuminate anything beyond the crowded surface of the Colonel’s big desk. It takes Miranda two tries to find the dial to turn the overheads all the way up, and when she can see properly she understands why the Colonel keeps them dim: the room is a disaster. The desk is piled with a mixture of the army’s standard manila folders and garishly colored civilian magazines; as she watches a pile teeters and collapses onto the floor next to the desk. It is obvious that this is not the first pile to fall, and Miranda can see footprints on some of the papers lying on the floor.

And … it’s hard to tell from where she’s paused in the doorway, all the way across the room, but it looks like almost everything around the desk is stained with yellow-white goo. Some of it looks moldy.

Miranda leaves her cart just inside the door. This is no longer about cleaning the room: this is a fact-finding mission. She’s going to have to go back to her boss and beg for the assistance of another janitor—maybe see if the MPs will let her bring in a squad of Janitors Third Class, who usually aren’t permitted in any of the base’s secure areas? This is a disaster. It’s obviously the work of enemy spies, hellbent on sabotaging the base’s leadership—have they gotten to any of the other officers’ offices?!

She can almost ignore the smell, now. She’s going to be useful. She’s uncovering a Nefarious Foreign Plot! Maybe she’ll get a medal for this! She’s heard that they have special ones to give to civilians who meaningfully advance the Democratic Republic’s goals or go above and beyond to protect its values, though she’s never met anyone who’s earned one. Imagine what she could do with that sort of recognition! Get out of the army’s janitorial service, maybe set up a little business cleaning prole’s houses or get hired on at a noble family’s estate—not as a janitor, but as a housekeeper, with more responsibilities and genuine recognition …

Fantasies, of course. Bright, colorful fantasies dancing through her mind as she approaches the desk. She doesn’t pay much attention to the office’s walls; her eyes skip over the contents of the standard-issue shelves, an eclectic mixture of books, erotic statuary, and squishy-looking objects that Miranda simply does not have the context to understand. Some of them have holes, and some of them have textured shafts, and some of them look like their ancestors might have been some sort of restraint, and they’re all bright and colorful and a bit greasy looking. She’s better off not knowing what they are.

There are also two doors, both along the same side of the office. Miranda does not realize what they are—she has never encountered the idea of private bathrooms or walk-in closets before now—so she doesn’t think anything of the faint light shining out from the crack at the bottom of one of them.

Whatever happened here obviously mostly happened under the desk. The big chair sitting behind it stinks too, its cracked leather long since permeated with musky sweat and unhealthy flatulence, but the worst of it is under the desk. The ointment is almost overwhelmed, a minty off-note struggling to fill her nostrils against the intruding smell; her mind flickers like a candle in the wind. She’s not getting enough air. She can hardly breathe, and, her, under the desk, there’s …

She knows she’s not supposed to look at any documents that may have been left around. Officers aren’t supposed to leave stuff lying around, of course, but they all struggle with the idea that their underlings are people, much less mere janitors. All the anti-spy posters in the world can’t convince a noble to recognize that the furniture might have its own agenda. Miranda is usually quite good at not seeing things that she’s not supposed to, but she can’t help the way her eyes skip up to the desk’s surface, drawn by—what? Is it merely that what she sees under the desk, the thick, layered stains, the fresh splatters and drying streaks and flaking splotches and the creeping mold crawling its way up from the floor, as thick and furry as if the carpet itself were rising up to consume the desk and everything on it, is too repulsive for her mind to contain?

Obviously that.

Obviously not the lurid, too-bright photographs of bodies contorted together, the shoddily reproduced drawings of acts that Miranda isn’t sure are physically possible, the cum-stained books printed on paper so thin and porous that the liquid has melted them into solid slabs of inky wood pulp, destroying all the words that they might have once contained. Obviously not the dossiers spread open, the photographs obscured by thick gooey globs, the depravity it must have taken to produce such a display …

A toilet flushes in the other room. Miranda isn’t sure how long she’s been standing there, staring, and when she hears the door open she startles, slips, finds herself sprawled out on the messy carpet. The smell down here is even worse, it’s impossible to think, impossible to react as the Colonel trudges back from the bathroom to her desk, her scent pounding into Miranda’s mind with every step. As she stops, looming over Miranda.

The colonel does not cut an imposing figure, aside from one thing. Her uniform is in disarray; her shirt is untucked, her coat is unbuttoned, and her unzipped trousers hang around her wide hips. Her belt’s buckle clicks against a stray button with every step. She is not wearing underwear, so there is nothing to stop Miranda from watching her idly work her shaft, half-erect and horrifyingly large. Drops of piss glimmer on its bulbous head, and the colonel’s thick, unwashed pubic hair is matted with cum and lube; the same lube, slowly drying, squishes along the skin of the colonel’s member. A glob of something yellow-green drips out from under her foreskin and Miranda’s mouth fills with bile.

Another of the army’s officers might, upon finding an innocent janitor sprawled out in the mess left by said officer’s onanistic fixation, yell for guards to take away the interloper or decide that god had smiled upon them by bringing them a fresh victim and proceed accordingly. They might even decide to help Miranda up and tell her to come back to clean later, when they’re done, or shoot her in the face for witnessing their private shame.

Colonel Jennifer Aldridge is built different.

Instead of doing anything even halfway reasonable, she stares down at Miranda for a full minute (her cock thickening as she continues to stroke herself), mutters something obviously directed at Miranda but too quiet for her to understand it (“another slut eager for my dick, huh?”), shuffles around Miranda, farts loudly, and sits down in her chair. The sound of masturbation increases in speed and volume, and Colonel Aldridge starts to moan to herself.

It would be impossible for the smell to get any worse, so it does not, even as the colonel paints the underside of her desk with layers of fresh slime.

Miranda lies there, not forgotten, the subject of fantasies more compelling than her warm flesh could ever hope to be. Vomit dribbles from her lips.

After a while someone comes in and takes her away.

Colonel Aldridge barely notices.