It was dark inside, almost too dark to see, until his werewolf sight adjusted to the dim lighting and then William wished that he couldn’t. He also let out a disgusted noise from his throat as he understood why Katherine had reacted the way she had.
The room was a bathroom, much like the ones in the heart of the city close to his home. The bathroom felt newer, though the toilets were much, much older than anything he had ever seen before. The white porcelain was hard to see because of the hardened globs of brown that were gooped all over the place. The brown stuff had frozen mid tide as it oozed its way down the toilets onto the floor. The walls were even worse. The walls were spackled brown, so heavily in some places that William couldn’t see the black obsidian stone underneath. The bathroom had been the victim of an atomic bomb of shit. William jerked his head out of the building and took a few steps back out into the street, coughing.
Ryan looked up from his book as Aceso came over to check on William. “Now you see why this needs to be done?” Ryan looked at Aceso. “And the sooner you pups get this place clean the sooner I can dig in that pipe and see what caused that backlash of sewage.” He craned his neck around to look at Katherine who was standing behind him still covering her snout with her claws. “It doesn’t even smell anymore. Now stop being a bunch of babies and get in there and get that place clean.” Ryan never raised his voice, that must be where Aceso got her calm demeanor, but he wasn’t soft and his voice carried with it the weight of command and experience. William doubted if even Nicolas would have had the balls to try to refuse him.
Katherine came back with scrub pads and buckets and soap and lots and lots of cleaning rags. William helped her get the buckets and the other two ransacked the building for whatever other cleaning supplies could be had.
The group of shape shifters started in random places and started cleaning the crap off the walls. Even Nicolas seemed to understand that you need to clean from top to bottom.
It didn’t take them too long before they realized that just going in and doing their own thing was not the best idea. Aceso took charge of the operation and a thick push broom. She had William and Charles scrub and crape the crap off the walls, while she and Katherine sweep the floor, behind them. Then Nicolas came in behind the boys, detailing and spot wiping the walls with bleach water.
William and Charles finished scrubbing the walls of the majority of the crap, as the girls swept up and disposed of the piles of crap from the floor. Charles and William grabbed clean buckets, rags, and mops and began diligently scrubbing and mopping the smooth black floors.
It was an intricate, well-orchestrated team effort. Nobody complained, everybody worked and all too soon it seemed that William was polishing the floor up against the far wall of the bathroom, with Charles right behind him.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
William dumped out his bucket of poop and filthy water for the twentieth time that day and refilled it with good hot water from the deep sink. Charles joined him and refilled his bucket as well. Before he could start patting himself on the back he realized that they had all forgttena major part of the bathroom, maybe the most important part.
William looked down at the deep brown covered line of toilets that still needed to be cleaned. He shared a look with Charles as they propped there unused mops against the wall. Grabbing their rags and clean water buckets they went to work on the toilets.
They cleaned up fairly well and pretty easily. Hop skipping down the line the two boys cleaned the toilets. They were joined by the females and soon even the toilets were clean. Then it was Katherine and Aceso who grabbed the mops and finished touching up the floor. Thankfully the shower section of this bathroom had remained untouched and only took some spot cleaning to sanitize. After the hours of cleaning that it took to remove the scars of the travesty that had happened in that place, they all walked out of the bathroom. They didn’t exactly feel good about themselves, but they had done a good job getting the place clean.
Ryan heaved himself off of the street, “It’s about time.”
“Hey, there were only four us in there.” Katherine rebuked.
Ryan arched an eyebrow at her as he leaned over to drop his book back in the large satchel. Without a word he stood back up heaving the large leather bag in one hand. He walked into the bathroom and unceremoniously dropped the bag on the still wet floor. He dug around inside it for a little bit and withdrew a long pole looking thing with what looked like a drill bit attached to the end. Ryan moved deeper inside the bathroom. The four of them had had enough of that place already and moved back out into street.
The four of them sat down heavily, resting up against the adjacent building. William held up his claws to see that he had wrinkles from them being wet for so long. He felt damp and really gross. He had protected himself from the shit as best he could, but he still felt it and he could still smell it. He was sweaty, tired, dirty and all he wanted was a shower, a meal, and his bed, in that order.
“That was really fun, Aceso.” Katherine said in a very tired, flat voice, “The next time the Elders tell you to clean a bathroom count me out. I’ll be sick that day.” Charles and William nodded tiredly in agreement.
Aceso shook her head, “You all know that I couldn’t allow that.”
Katherine rocked her head forward off the wall, “Even for me, after this? You owe all of us for this one.”
Aceso made a small smile. There was nothing else to say. William had a vague idea about what must be going through her head. The Elders said what needed to happen and the pack Alphas implemented the Elders will. There was no disagreement with what the Elders choose to do or what they had each pack do. They were the law givers. And every single one of them knew why it had to be that way.
A sound started coming from the bathroom. It sounded like a tool of some kind, maybe a drill? William had no idea and he had no intention of getting up from his spot on the street to find out. None of his pack mates seemed to be in too much of a rush to get up either. The sound died a few minutes later.