David Ohle - The Pisstown Chaos

Lovesick stinkers have set up a spooning area in the alleyway between the Radiola and the Gons Hotel. Flocks of them are a nightly disturbance to the hotel's guests. There are always two or three couples under every windows spooning away and their shrieks awaken the guests.

The Reverend told the City Moon, "I can't say that I am opposed to stinkers coupling publicly if they so desire, but they have no right doing it in the proximity of a hotel, " and promised to use his influence to keep the unwanted lovemakers at bay.

Reverend Hooker tells of the time his body became the dwelling place of an outsize parasite. Physicians were consulted and by various methods they tried without success to kill the large parasite. It was hoped the monster would come out of its own accord, via some natural passage such as the mouth or anus. Once when Hooker ate urpflanz hones it crawled into his mouth and parted his lips with its head. It was without eyes and its color was green.

One of the Reverend's assistants grasped the head and part of the body and attempted to pull it out altogether, but the slimy thing slipped through her hands and down the Reverend's throat as though it had been greased. Often thereafter, Hooker ate honey in hopes of the parasite again making its appearance, but it never came up farther than his gullet.

A year ago, while in bed, he was awakened in his sleep by something crawling across his chest. He screamed and the parasite quickly drew itself back down his throat. Late Saturday he was seized with a choke, which continued periodically during the night, and early Sunday morning the parasite slithered out of his mouth several inches. With great presence of minds he closed his teeth on the repulsive creature and ran to his assistant, who succeeded in entirely relieving him of the unwelcome tenant, which was fifteen inches long, and died a few minutes after being in the air. The Reverend's stomach has refused to hold food except in liquid firm since the parasite came out. For months he grew weaker and weaker, until physicians thought he would die as a result ofgetting rid of the parasite, which had made his internal anatomy its home for so many years.

It has been revealed in the Reverend's newsletter that he would like to speak to the ones who hid a large syringe filled with what he believes to have been imp-liver extract, pointed upward in his Q-ped seat. He sat on the needle and the pressure of his body operated the plunger. He did not get the full injection, but did become iU.

A.J. Beals, Pisstown mortician, will take likenesses of the sick or deceased. He employs beeswax and plaster techniques similar to those used by the Macedonians. He asks that patrons contact him immediately upon the death of their loved ones, before rigor sets in. In the case of illness, he will take action when all hope is lost.

I went down to Camp Legion today to the stinker fish pavilion on the banks of the National Canal. The place was swarming with blackflies of every size. Just above one of the metal tubs where Canal fish were being boiled, hung a sign emblazoned with the Hookerite credo, "We Die That We May Die No More."

Mose Howard, chief of the crew, pulled a small section from the stomach of each fish as it went by him on a hand-cranked conveyor belt. He whiffed it and passed judgment. If the odor was strong enough, the fish continued to the cooking room. If the fish was too fresh, it was yanked from the belt and thrown back into the Canal. Mose complained that he was plagued with aching neck muscles because of the constant intake of putrid air, averaging one smell every two and a half seconds. Mose says he smells thirty to thirty-five tons offish every shift, working from fourteen to sixteen hours a day. He can sniff more than twelve thousand tons offish every year without once inhaling a fly.

As a boy, Mildred's grandson, Roe, was housed in a rickety wooden structure on the grounds of the Balls estate, well away from the main compound and hidden by brambles and brush. The hastily built structure was an oven in summer and an icebox in winter. The yard man advised him to dig a small trench around the building and fill it with tooth powder to keep out rodents, adders and most walking insects. This he did, and nothing walking or slithering entered, but flying things had free access through a number of broken windows and things that hopped could occasionally take advantage of a door left open.

The National Canal ran cold and babbling through the property and Roe liked to fish it. One afternoon, in an effort to throw the line far into the stream, where the grandest fish lay, he slung it high into the air, with the result that the hook, sinkers and line lodged in a tree thirty-five feet tall. He climbed the tree to release the tackle. When he reached the limb on which the line had become entangled, a whippoorwill was fast to the hook, the barb having penetrated the eye socket. The bird had gone for his grub in error and had suffered the consequences.

When Roe brought the whippoorwill home in his creel and showed it to his grandfather, explaining how it happened that he'd caught a bird while fishing, Jacob's reply was, as it often was, off subject. "Too bad it wasn't an oyster," he said. "I did love the oysters I once harvested from that Canal. Even the famed oysters of Britain, devoured by the Romans, cannot be compared to the once-great oyster of the National Canal, which weighed two pounds and always contained a good pearl."

"The pearls're all gone now," Mildred said. "But I have a trunk full of chokers as mementos."

"Should I tell him now?" Jacob asked.

Mildred lowered her eyes. "Yes, this is the right time. We don't want to keep it secret."

"All right, young man, I'm in the middle of a scandal. It happened during a quarrel in the saloon of Bartholomew Donohue, at No. 9 Varick Street. I slapped a female stinker across the face. In falling, her head struck an iron radiator, and she was completely dead in a few minutes. By the time an officer arrived, Donohue had washed the woman's face and brushed her ragged clothing clean."

"The other patrons and your grandfather," Mildred said, "discussed things and agreed that what had happened was merely an accident. The woman slipped on a spot of spilled Jake and fell, they agreed to say. But the officer would have none of that and charges were brought."

"Fleecing the rich is what they're all about, this Administration. Just because I own a brewery or two, they'll be trying to send me to Permanganate Island or Indian Apple, or some other smelly hole on the slightest excuse."

"What will Grandfather do, Grandmother?"

"The charges won't be proven. But for the meantime, we'll be traveling."

Jacob sat in a soft chair and lit an urpflanz cigar. "You don't know much about your grandfather's past, do you, Roe?"

"Very little, to tell you the truth."

Jacob dusted ash from his lapels with a starched handkerchief. "There will be revelations about that and more at another time."

"We'll be back when this all blows over," Mildred said.

Jacob crossed his legs, his patent pump glinting for a moment in the candlelight. "As a matter of fact we'll sail tomorrow aboard the Titanic, past the Cape and around the Horn, as far from the warring factions as we can get. A nasty Chaos has broken out in Pisstown and it could spread here to the exurbs any day. I hope you'll devote more energy to maturation from now on. Your grandmother and I will not be holding your hand forever."

"What about me, Grandmother? What happens to me?"

"I've asked your sister to take care of you."

"Seems like joining the Reverend's Guard would be the decent thing for a lazy lad like you to do," Jacob said.

"I'll enlist tomorrow," Roe sighed.

"Toodle-oo," Mildred said. "We promise to send you cards with regularity."