David Ohle - The Pisstown Chaos

Moldenke's knees began to buckle, his head to sag. "That's all, folks. I'm out of breath and hurting all over. Good night."

Ophelia applauded generously and finished her third Jake. Nodding with sleep, she decided it was time to return to the hostel. Her vacated pedal set was quickly claimed by a waiting customer. The Doolittle girl was to perform at twelve and the crowd was swelling.

On her way back to the hostel, Ophelia stopped by Hobson's to see if her imp might need more water. There were three other imps tied to the stable's posts and three rough riders talking, drinking Jake, and smoking urpflanz.

"Evening Miss," one of them said. "You in town for Coward's Day?"

"No, just passing through. On my way home, just on the other side of Pisstown. I'll get there tomorrow."

"Where you stayin' the night?"

"At Hostel 210."

"We just saw a bunch of cowards checking in there. We'll give them yellowbacks heck in the morning. Don't be surprised if some eggs break on your window."

"I just stopped here to check on my imp. Is Mr. Hobson around?"

"Last time we saw him, he was walking an imp down to the abattoir. Reckon it might be yours. Said he'd made a deal, the imp for that Q-ped out back."

"There was no deal."

"Too late to do nothin' I 'spect. There's a meat shortage, you know. Imps ain't worth much on the hoof no more. You gotta guard them close."

Ophelia walked to the back of the stable. By moonlight, the Q-ped looked promising. There were no corroded welds, the chains were recently oiled, the tires solid and well-aired, the pedals barely worn. Perhaps the deal with Hobson was fair after all. She was getting tired of trying to satisfy the imp's needs as well as her own. A working Q-ped would be a lot less needy and would get her places much faster.

She rode the machine back to the hostel and rang the bell three times. The clerk opened a small portal in the door. "Oh, say, that's a nice Q-ped."

"Yes, I just took it in trade."

"What can I do for you?"

"My room. I have a room. I've been down at the Flamingo. The name is Ophelia."

"You a coward?"

"No."

"Sorry, we're full up. There's even some yellow-bellies sleeping on the roof."

"I've already registered. I was here earlier. I have a room reserved."

"Take a look at me, lady." He framed as much of his face as he could in the portal. "Do I look like the guy you talked to?"

"No, it was someone else."

"That's right. I just came on duty ten minutes ago. Whatever transpired between you and him is none of my business. He's gone home and gone to bed."

"Didn't he make a note of it? I paid him a buck."

"Tomorrow's C-Day, lady. Every room in town is taken. I'm so busy I could scream. Please, just move on. Get out of town. It won't be a pretty day tomorrow. It might get chaotic."

Resigned now to a night without sleep, Ophelia strapped herself into one of the Q-ped's pedal sets and rolled past the stable, past the darkened abattoir, the derelict ice house, and through a large encampment of cowards near a Hookerite shrine, before she broke into the open space and pedaled toward home.

Scientists say the stinker body is a mechanism made up of unnumbered parasites, in the brain, the nerves, the lowly bum gut, the blood, and all major organs. It may be likened to a human city, where everyone is engaged in legitimate work-the journalists, the mule drivers, the starch vendors, the candlemakers, the pedal cab drivers and the physicians. Each one is a party to this end on his own behalf. The parasites that make up the stinker body work the same way. Their characteristics are discernable to a certain extent with the aid of a microscope. Of course it is possible there are parasites of life and life functions that we may not examine this way because of their extremely minute size, but they undoubtedly have the same work to perform. As a body, and in classes, they strive for the preservation of law and order within the stinker's bodily metropolis.

In parasites, the germ ofgeneration never dies. Stinkers have parasites in them that are perhaps thousands of years old That is why they are able to do things we never dreamed we could do, undergo changes and hardships we thought impossible.

With unemployment among third-stage stinkers at record levels, the Reverend has offered a plan: A galvanic spark applied to the tissue of the hypothalamus, along with proper use of my Electric Belt and Suspensory Unit, will make them once again into productive workers. This I promise to all "

Parasites are sometimes slow of defense, but they are always on the defensive. Put someone who has become accustomed to hot weather in a cold zone and, until the parasites acclimate, that person will suffer all manner of quivering, chills and discomfort. But the parasites will finally accept the change. Put one who has lazed unproductively along in life in a position which requires hard work, such as mule driving, and that person's parasites will likewise rebel, then accept the altered condition.

The skin of an imp peels off the skull like birch bark. Should you cut open the head, you'd find its interior spaces filled with a spongelike material, a pale shade of yellow, as thin and dry as pre-edible paper. In the very center of this spongy mass sits the brain, which scientists say is not really a brain but a bio-botanic neural nexus capable only of rudimentary cognition.

Cooked any way at alh or raw, the taste of an imp brain has been compared to that of the legendary truf ffle. For some just the smell of one slackens their jaws. They flock to restaurants in defiance of the curfew, then come careening out, faces puffy and distended, giggling like children, filled to the gills on imp brain.

Stinker children on the dark side of Bum Bay have tented old City Moons into dunce caps and are running the streets like pixies, firing their little spiked teetotums at the ankles of bystanders, often leaving lacerations, then poking them in the ribs with sticks, and in general annoying everyone. Many would like to see them taken away and sent to Permanganate. Adults, they say have gone therefor lesser offenses.

There has been another scare in Pisstown's Hooker Park area. The residents were stirred and excited over incidents that have occurred in that portion of Pisstown. For the past weeks, knife-wielding stinkers in frightening costumes have made themselves conspicuous there, inspiring terror among women and children and in some instances putting male adults to precipitous flight. These visitations have become so numerous that Hookerite Guards have been sent to the site of the disturbances, but without unearthing the secret of the stinkers' hiding places.

It was reported today in the City Moon that Carleton Manson, the notorious `father of thousands, " was laid to rest in a Fertile Crescent pauper's field. It is estimated that during his thirteen-year insemination spree, Manson impregnated more than ten thousand females with his semen in suppository form. Approximately half of those pregnancies resulted in live births. It is not known how many have survived until today Manson's death, it has been reported was caused by a bursting of the abdomen brought on by a severe infestation of parasites. Manson once confessed that a genital deformity lay behind his criminal urges, the exact nature of which has never been disclosed.

After a mile or two of walking, Roe came to a field of ripening urpflanz. His eyes blinked in the brilliant sun. He saw in the near distance a wooden machine as large as the largest house in Bum Bay. It rolled along on tall, steel wheels, ten of them, and moved at a fair clip across the field, harvesting grain and grasshoppers as it went. Underwear and rags hung along its wrought iron balconies. Stinkers stood by the third-story railing and waved at him. "Welcome, stranger," one of them shouted through a bullhorn. "Jump on as we pass. There's no way in hell to slow this thing down."