Free The Laundress of Silver Lake by Julie Jansen

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