Cyril Langley made the front page of the Indianapolis News, the Carmel Bugle, and USA Today. He also has more than four million (as of this writing) views of the incident on YouTube. He can’t wait to actually watch it himself when he gets out of jail. The video was also picked up on CNN, Fox News, The Daily Show and both the Jimmy’s. MSNBC planned to show it, but the expert panel got into such a shouting match over the incident being the fault of Trump supporters, Bernie supporters, or the effects of climate change that they actually ran out of time and were forced to go to commercial.
What Cyril did to attract such attention will live in infamy in the hearts and minds of Carmel residents forever. He approached Mayor Teddy Wiggins at Octoberfest (or what passes for it in an Indiana suburb) and doused him with sewage water. Mayor Teddy’s supporters were naturally appalled while his detractors secretly wish they had the gumption to do something so bold.
The mayor was enjoying a pretzel and talking with friends. Before him were three empty cups, a fact he communicated with irritated glances to his assistant, Jonathan. The assistant was uncomfortable with retrieving the fourth beer as it might lead to a fifth. The fifth beer is where peculiar policy decisions get made and the mayor’s more influential donors had instructed Jonathan the assistant to not let the Mayor get to the fifth beer in public.
The mayor once agreed to consider a low-income housing project on the city’s northside after a fifth, sixth, seventh and eight beer one night at a local restaurant. He was dining with local nonprofit leaders and Jonathan wasn’t there to monitor the proceedings. His handlers weren’t there to monitor the proceedings either. So, after one too many proceedings, the mayor suddenly began to have a heart for the poor and downtrodden.
However, his handlers and city council stepped in to save the day. It seems there was a loophole in the Indiana law the addressed low-income housing for people with special needs. The loophole gave builders the right to choose any specific illness or disability and dedicate a percentage of a project towards that group. The project was completed by a local builder who bought the property for $10 from the city (who paid $2 million for it). In exchange, Old Timey Builders agreed to rent units to anyone with progeria at 75% below market rate. Any units that didn’t get claimed by sufferers of the disease after twenty-four months would revert back to full price. This was all legal because of the loophole.
Carmel voters never bothered to look into the disease, or they would have known it only affects one in four million births and sufferers don’t usually live past the age of thirteen. This gave the builders a good five-year cushion between the mortality rate and the actual age anyone could legally sign a lease. The developers got the land for next to nothing, had the state pay a large portion of the building costs in order to house people with special needs, and were in no danger of actually having to rent to anyone with that specific special need.
Old-Timey Builders made a pile of cash, some of which was earmarked for keeping the mayor and certain city councilpersons in office. Meanwhile, the Mayor’s handlers breathed a sigh of relief and vowed to keep a lid on their puppet’s drinking in public. And the general public carried on, secure in the knowledge that their community was generous and willing to step up to help the poor.
But the handlers couldn’t fire Jonathan, at least not directly, while the mayor most certainly could and would if the next beer didn’t arrive soon. So, while Teddy Wiggins was distracted with the compliments of the Rose family on how lovely the new abstract art was in the 136th street roundabout, Jonathan snagged the mayor’s keys, got up and headed for the beer vendor.
Unfortunately, this left no one to keep an eye out for Cyril. Seeing his opportunity, Langley sauntered up in full lederhosen and carrying a large stein in each hand. The mayor misread the man’s intentions, thinking one of the beers was for him. As he reached for the stein in Cyril’s left hand, the angry voter poured the one in his left on the mayor’s head. The right stein followed, and Cyril began his protest speech:
“The residents of Home Place didn’t want to be annexed. Yet you annexed us anyway. We didn’t want your water, but you forced us onto the city’s water system. And now this is the water we have to drink. Sewage in our drinking water, because your people hooked everything up incorrectly. So, you drink it, Mr. Mayor. You drink it.”
A delayed shriek came from the mouth of Mira Rose. She rose and distanced herself from Teddy as the smell explained the brown matter in the water that had just covered her friend. She glared at Cyril, and said, “Well I never!”
This was no exaggeration as it was indeed the first time, she had witnessed a poo water baptism and the whole thing made her sick. Then she turned her disgust on Teddy. “I told you not to bring those Home Place degenerates to Carmel. Now, look at what you’ve got. Poo all around you.”
Jonathan arrived in time to hear Mrs. Rose calling out for the police. Mr. Rose was too terrified to speak. He nervously watched everyone dressed in lederhosen waiting for someone to approach with beer steins. There might be more of these poo terrorists and he wasn’t taking any chances. Assessing the situation, Jonathan used his walkie talkie to call for security.
The police arrested Cyril without incident, although he did continue to shout poo related expletives at the mayor and repeat the phrase, “death to tyrants.”
Not surprisingly, several people caught the incident on video, but most were after the fact. The two best versions went viral, one shot by Cyril’s Libertarian nephew Nathan Bean and the other by the Roses’ granddaughter. Mrs. Rose demanded her granddaughter delete the video, but Zoe Rose posted it on Snapchat immediately and lied to her grandmother that it was gone. Zoe Rose also drank her grandparents’ beer in all the commotion and posted about that on Snapchat too. Zoe was held in high regard for the rest of the semester at Carmel Middle School.
Nathan’s version went on Reddit, YouTube, and Twitter and was viewed by a million people in less than twenty-four hours. He also set up a GoFundMe to help with his uncle’s legal bills, raising over $100,000. But it was all for naught as the Mayor convinced the judge to deny bail for the “death to tyrants” comment.
The following Monday, the deputy director of Carmel Utilities was fired, but not before he got a twenty-minute earful from the mayor about how poorly his team has messed up installing the new sewer system in Home Place. Mayor Teddy insisted the work to correct the mistakes that had caused toilet water to come through kitchen faucets of half a dozen Home Place residents be given top priority.
“I’ll fire all of you if one more person pours poo on me, city council or any member of government,” shouted Teddy on his way out the door. He was angry. He was humiliated. But he understood that the voting public would probably sympathize with the people whose plumbing was askew.
Mayor Teddy Wiggins regretted annexing Home Place some days, although he would never admit it. Home Place is a small sliver of land between Carmel, IN, and Indianapolis. The previously unincorporated neighborhood became a target of annexation in 2004 but fought back against the city for twelve years. They lost their final appeal in 2016 and within two years, the takeover was complete. However, lingering hostility remains and the recent move to force all the residents to pay $8500 for the privilege of city water hadn’t helped. And of course, the comedy of errors execution of the project made things worse. You can’t keep poking people who just want to be left alone. Eventually, they are going to act out.
The second and most important result of the Octoberfest Incident (as the Carmel Bugle named it) was the formation of the Lederhosen Mafia. This fringe group of pranksters and ne’er-do-wells arose out of the frustration that they shared with Cyril. They too had been wronged by Carmel City government. They too had fought to be heard to no avail. And they too wanted to have a video go viral and be seen on late-night talk shows. So, an initial group of six men, two women, and a person who refuses to be gendered, pronouned or addressed directly found each other on some backwater internet message board. Soon they were meeting regularly and planning and plotting all sorts of mischief. The most serious offense being the kidnapping of a socialite/social media influencer.
The person who refused to be gendered, pronouned or addressed directly goes by the singular name of Bulb. Bulb is bald and androgynous in appearance, usually dressed in all-black attire. Despite Bulb’s eccentricities, Bulb had the apartment best suited for meetings and so the Lederhosen Mafia began plotting there.
Their first order of business was to come up with an equally viral stunt to do at the upcoming Christkindlmarkt that takes place from mid-November until Christmas Eve. It didn’t give them much time to plan, but it was the only German-themed event on the calendar until the next October and given the name of their newly formed criminal enterprise, they thought they should take advantage of it.
