By Jaclyn Hark

Janitor. Maid. Hygienic maintenance specialist. All these job descriptions were technically accurate. But none of them alluded to the truly unique skillset required to be a member of the staff cleaning crew at C.A.P.E Quarters—that is, the headquarters of the Crimefighting Association of Powered Entities.

She was Dee Dalsey … The Cleaning Lady. The scourge of soap scum. Destroyer of dust bunnies. Virtuoso of vacuums.

And she had a date with a foosball table.

Dee twisted her head to the right. Crack. She twisted it to the left. Crack.  “All right, boys. Let’s get down to it.”

She leaned over the table to assess the damage. Neon green slime covered the facsimile arena, including the uniforms and weapons of each of the twenty-two miniature soccer players.

The weapons—those were going to be a pain to polish back up.

Even in their recreational time, superheroes liked to “keep things interesting.” So, in a game that was half foosball and half Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, each tiny mechanical player was equipped with a militant personality chip and a battle weapon ranging from sledgehammers to katanas to cleats with six-inch spikes.

At her looming presence, the players’ little faces contorted with rage. They began shaking fists and blades in her direction. A few made offensive hand gestures.

“Rude.” She sneered back. “Do you want to be covered in slime?”

They weren’t programmed with verbal replies. If they were, she would have asked them how the slime got there in the first place. Probably for the best they stayed mute.

Dee sighed. She was going to need some inspiration for this. She reached into the pocket of her leggings and pulled out her phone and earbuds. There was only one song for this occasion.

“You want a piece of me?” She hit play and then repeat. “Hit me with your best shot.”

As Pat Benatar started preaching about cool cookies and putting up her dukes, Dee put on her battle armor. Crafted by the C.A.P.E Quarter’s focus group on impermeable textiles, she donned the rubbery, skintight hazmat suit by rolling it up her body like a giant sausage casing. It wasn’t comfortable, but it would protect her from the corrosive chemicals lining the daggers of players twenty-two and fourteen on the midfield rods as well as the goalies’ flame throwers. And despite the fact that she felt like a human hotdog, the material was good as armor against anything sharp, pointy, or otherwise able to slice through her.

Waddling past the person-shaped dart board and the laser grid pool table to the back corner of the rec room—her suit squeaking embarrassing rubbing rubber noises with every step—Dee opened a panel in the wall where she kept several personally fitted respirators. She shoved on the full facepiece and flipped her ponytail over the top head strap with bravado. Then she squeaked, rubbed, and waddled her way back to the foosball table, grabbing a rag on the way.

The players were ready for battle, squirming and kicking to be released from their metal rods. Not for the first time, Dee wondered why the tiny robots didn’t have an off button. Commonsense solutions were seriously underrated around here.

Choosing her angle, Dee reached in with the rag. The defense rod immediately accounted for her position and snapped to the right. A battle axe slammed down on her pinky finger.

“Ow! You little son of a—” She looked up just in time to see her boss watching her from the doorway. The grey spandex-clad Adonis had about six superpowers that could blow her up before she could blink.

No pressure, though.

Dee shut her mouth, smiled through the plexiglass facepiece, and tried to simultaneously wave and shake the pain from her pinky. He nodded back with an amused, stupidly handsome smirk, then continued on his way.

She turned back to the boys. “You don’t fight fair. But that’s okay,” she half said, half sang into the negative space of the respirator facepiece, sounding like an astronaut. She reached in and encompassed the entire head of number sixteen in her fist—the jerk with the battle axe. With her free hand she wiped at the slime.

The rag promptly disintegrated. The slime was acidic.

No bother. From her cart of cleaning supplies, Dee grabbed a can of BaseGel-47 and a new rag. Awkwardly, she hoisted herself onto the table and hovered over the little men by bracing herself along the perimeter with one hand and her feet. The rods clapped back and forth frantically. Daggers bounced off her suit, and the katana-wielding players appeared, like her music choice, stuck on repeat—frantically swiping but unable to reach the looming goliath above them. She laughed wickedly.

The goalies aimed their flame throwers at her face.

Heat washed over her cheeks despite the protective face covering, and all she could see was a wall of orange.

Then the flames cleared.

Dee grinned. “Fire away.”

She pressed the nozzle of the BaseGel-47 spray can, and foam covered the players and the field. Their little faces contorted dramatically as if in agony.

The slime hardened almost immediately, becoming a brittle crust that she could crack then swipe into a pile with her new rag. She cleaned every speck without resistance from her demoralized enemies. They even let her polish their weapons.

Triumphant, Dee dismounted and pulled the respirator from her head, enjoying the wash of cool air against her cheeks.

Woof. She sighed, glad that was done.

“Impressive,” said a voice from the doorway. Her boss, in all his spandex glory, had returned to watch the show. “Put them in their place, did you?”

Dee shrugged. “Just another notch in my lipstick case.”

She realized at his confused expression that without the background music, her response didn’t make much sense.

Of course, not much did around here.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jaclyn Hark is a Pittsburgh-based wife and mom of two — plus a tortoise, a hare, and a dog-niece who’s welcome in her home at all times. You’ll usually find her awake and “fun” writing around 5 a.m. When not glued to a computer screen—where both her day job and creative work keep her —she’s moving as much as possible, hiking, running, spin biking, and trampolining (which is definitely a verb) with her kids.

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