CHAPTER ONE - THE ARMY ON TRIAL

The mob assembled before dawn outside the Veterinarians of Domestic Wars Courthouse in HOTO, at first in twos and threes, and then in ones and twos. Eager for a good seat near the exit or the bathroom, the crowd was heard murmuring condemnation for the accused Little Ben, the only enlisted person in the entire Sonogno Army and now accused of the crime of KIA. As dawn broke, dark clouds swirled and a heavy rain began to fall, at first in drips, then drabs, and finally torrents. “Like the tears of heaven” said a small child clutching her teddy while she coiled her hempen rope in her tiny hands. Scalpers hawked discount tickets printed on flimsy recycled red paper slips as they waddled in and amongst the lumpen crowds. Strawbucks Coffee Carts, casting clouds of steam into the cold and frigid air, rolled amongst the morning throng, gathering a brisk business in hot rum cappuccinos and poppy seed muffins. The ever attentive Baristas providing an extra shot of rum to every customer as a demonstration of civic pride and the willful attention to the cause of justice.

As the sky began to clear, two long black limousines hauled into view from the distance, followed by a gun metal color soft top Chubby roadster conveying the judge and the prosecutors to the arena of justice. Tall handsome men in dark suits with bulges in places nature provided no man or woman a bulge, quickly exited the cars, and began to clear a passage through the assembled throng. Little white ear plugs and curly white wires descended from the ear canals down the necks and past the starched white button down collars of the security necks and following the rock hard deltoids the sinuous wires terminated in tiny black boxes discretely hidden inside black shorts. The skies grew dark again, as lightening flashed in the far distance toward the benighted province of Clissa. “This is going to be a day of weather and blood,” thought the very tall chief of security.

Judge Netherbottom, attired in a smart military uniform of cameo and chintz, with golden epaulets and a bosom encrusted with rhinestone medals, was first to alight from the car. Clutching a small clutch of patented leather in her left hand, she quickly swept her field of vision seeking the glint of the assassin’s eye, or the viper’s fang. Upon seeing that the security team had done its work, Judge Netherbottom, clutch in one hand, and jewel encrusted gavel in another, sighed, as she thought of the long day of justice and retribution before her. “This will be the day,” thought Netherbottom, “the day when all Hades breaks loose.” Noticing the camera crews from HOTO Channel 3, she smiled her vapid smile of effervescent banality and made sure that her photogenic left side faced the gleaming never blinking eye of the media. “Over here Judge, tell the people what to expect,” shouted Kattie Urgic, famed hard hitting reporter and amateur mud wrestler for Channel 3. “Over here,” Urgic shouted again, this time capturing the attention of both the Judge and her security detachment. As one trim, lean, dark suited figure pressed a bulge toward the eager reporter, Netherbottom ran her talloned hand across his flanks and whispered to him, “Take it easy, it’s the press, there on our side.” In what appeared to be a random drift, the judge angled closer and closer to the reporter as she approached the burnished bronze doors of the courthouse resplendent in the repose’ figures of HOTO war hero Moffo the Brave and Very Dead.

‘Ill take a quick question,” shouted the Judge, anxious to be heard above the cacophony of street traffic, generators, and the great unwashed. Thrusting her phallic microphone through a narrow passage between the gathered throng, Urgic, famed for her perceptive insight and vindictive humor, shouted “Is she as guilty as she looks?” “Will it be the ultimate penalty, or simply death,” Urgic asked. Netherbottom, realizing that judicial elections were only a few months away rose to the occasion and responded, “justice, sweet justice, the justice of our fore mothers will be done this day.” “Yes, and an example to all Sonogno’s recumbent youth, with their hippy hoppy ways, and their bing bing, yes they will see what happens when they fail to respond to Sonogno’s sacred call for sacrifice, duty, and evisceration,” she shouted just loud enough to be clearly heard, but not so loud as to diminish the dramatic effect of the now chanting coffee clatch of citizens demanding justice and the ultimate sacrifice. “Jus Tice, Jus Tice, Jus Tice” was the incantation of the morning, undiminished by the recurrent rain drops and threat of early snow.

Then the angry crowd fell silent as Small Ben, shackled hand and foot, with a length of duck tape covering her mouth was dragged from the last limousine. Yanked to her feet by the security goons, a gentle tear fell across her soft peachy cheek. A small tiny strand of her purple hair blew across her worried brow making her look small and weak indeed. She stumbled into a cold and muddy puddle only to be cruelly pulled to her feet by a particularly tall black clad security man who paused briefly to brush the mud away from the sign hung around Little Ben’s neck that read – Guilty!

Seeing Little Ben, the crowd surged forward its silence broken by snarls and shouts of vitriol and fury. Security moved as one to prevent a lynching by forcing themselves between the accused and the angry horde, but not before allowing the aged and liver spotted hand of a gentle white haired senior to rip the bodice from Small Ben’s fragile form. Cold rain fell upon Small Ben’s soft pear like breast, and she shuddered from the chilling rain and the boiling rage of the crowd.

The court house clock chimed nine bells in a deep and resonant call of justice to be done. Quickly the Judge, Security, the Prosecutors, with Little Ben in tow maneuvered toward the bronze doors of justice. “Wait,” whispered the Judge to the security head, “first the perp walk. Don’t forget the perp walk.” Stung by his procedural lapse, the security head, paused, and whispering into his sleeve, past his chromium plated cufflinks with little enameled bunnies embossed on their surface, said “Ten zero, that’s a big ten zero, its time for that scum to do the perp walk.” Taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly, his professional confidence restored, the security chief smiled as his bony labyrinth and ear wax clogged vestibule resonated to “That’s a big ten four.”

Clearing a narrow path between the host of hateful humanity, but still ensuring good sight lines for the paparazzi and television crews, security thrust Little Ben forward on the famed 'Walk of Perpetrators'. Beneath her tiny bare feet Little Ben read the roll call of famous names emblazoned in the concrete together with little hand and paw prints, of the felons and condemned who went before her. It was all a blur to Little Ben, until one name became visible through her tearful eyes – Beatrix Potter. Little Ben stumbled and fell as the horror of the Potter case rushed into her consciousness. Poor dear Potter. Innocent, but executed just the same for the crime of cuteness, and in the name of justice needing doing, recalled Little Ben. Dragged again to her feet, she was thrust forward by calloused hands and brawny appendages, as a Chanel 0 grip held up before her naked bosom a little plackard of squares of various colors of grey that flickered in the gloomy dawn, in order to ensure that her delicate and chaste nipples would not be seen on prime time.

After a short delay while camera crews and correspondents were given the chance to shoot the scene again and again, each time perfecting their focus and sharpening their vindictive wit, the perp walk was completed and Little Ben disappeared into the halls of justice, followed by the crowd, each holding in their sweaty little palms a ticket printed on red recycled cardboard indicating their assigned seat in the cavernous seat of juris imprudence. As they passed through the security check, each patron of due process, removed his shoe, or wooden leg, or his prosthetic organ, pausing occasionally to hand her coiled rope, Makarov, or tar and pitch encrusted torch, to a helping guard. An orange, but now very wet, furrie of the fluffy persuasion paused for a moment to shake the cold water from her pelt and hand her three section chain whip to the attendant, before advancing to the security inspection. A helpful baliff smiled at the furrie and said in a kindly voice, “Dear this three section chain whip will not do. Here please take my tiger fork, it more fully accessorizes your look. Three section chain whips are so yesterday.” The orange furrie smiled and received the gleaming tiger fork as if it had been an offering from the gods. “The gods work requires the gods' tools, and so the gods have provided,” thought the furry, a devotee of the Book of What, as she struggled to read her seat number on her now soggy and dissolving red ticket.

By 10 o’clock the assemblage was seated in the crowded and now damp amphitheater. There had been confusion, and sharp words were heard, as people sought their assigned seats, only to discover that their seat numbers were illegible, or that ticket scalpers had sold forged tickets, often placing twenty or more avatars in the same seat. Kindly bailiffs applying the gentle persuasion of cattle prods and stun grenades finally managed to restore order. Vendors strolled the isles offering programs, souvenir pictures of the Little Ben, lengths of rope, either made of hemp or Kevlar depending on their want, and providing those little bottles of spirits found on the first class section of the Capital to HOTO Express Blimp.

Suddenly a deep and loud voice, often referred to as basso fundis, sounded in the hall. “Oyez, Oyez, Oyez, All persons having business before the Honorable, the Supreme Military Tribunal of the Province of Sonogno, are admonished to shut up, stand up, sober up, and cast their attention, for the Court now be sitting. Gods save Sonogno, this Honorable Court, and the guilty accused," The audience arose and became silent, except for the shuffling of feet and the metallic click of little tin tops being removed from tiny bottles of distilled spirits. There were a few mummers of campai, nasdarovia, and proost as well.

Judge Netherbottom, having changed into her judicial robes of a saffron colored lycra body stocking covered by a modest full length sable cape, whizzed into the courtroom startling the crowds and eliciting gasps of admiration and fashion envy. Before seating herself she cast an eye across the court room, attentive as always to the presence of assassins, gorillas, and mechanics. Her mind drifted back to last month when she was the featured judge in Hit Man Magazine which gave her a dead certain chance of winning reelection in the fall. The cough of the bailiff returned her to her senses. Honoree Millicent Nether bottom, Chief Justice of Songono, Judge Advocate General of the Reserve Army, holder of the distinguished GED, daughter of migrant tin smiths and pearl fishers, sat down as did the assembled mob. The bailiff cried out “Let the games begin!” And so began the trial of Little Ben, for the crime of Dereliction of Duty While at the Front by KIA (Kissing in Action) began.

To be continued in the Sunday Edition of the HOTO Times