Crisscrossed and tumbling over itself, the mostly sentient bulk lumbered its way through a wall and into the sewer canal.
A mass of ambulatory garbage, bulging with the assorted detritus of much that was unmentionable, tracked a smear of someting gastly behind its form as it slid across the brickwork.
One single thought drifted through the garbage’s debatable sence of intelligence as it propelled forward, an all encompassing, almost desperate, need to escape whatever that horrible stench was behind it. A viscous must of near tangeable radiance that gave the air a dense feeling very similar to that of a bucket of spoilt milk and wet socks.
Not smart enough to realise that this stench was coming from an integral part of its own bulk, the shabbles rolled onward, blindly charging away from itself into the night.
…
The garbage beneath the City of Carrick Joyce had been on the move as of late. Some disturbance deeper within the labyrinthian sewer network had caused the usually sedate trash piles, known as Shabbles, to lurch towards the surface, and this was a problem.
This was a problem for the heroic Carrick Joyce plumbers who, over the course of over a dozen or so generations, had created a sewer system arguably more beautiful than any of the world’s greatest cathedrals.
The plumbers, proud of their heritage, had resolved to rid the sewer of these sentient detritic by-products and fought axe and shovel to reclaim sections of the network that had been overrun.
Well, most of them fought…
…
Fredric Cloth thrashed against the flowing tide of sluiceway #32.
Pulled by the current into an overflow pipe, the young plumber threw his arms erratically outward, hoping to achive some kind of swimming-like motion. Finally breaking the surface, he gasped at a lungful of air and thrashed his legs manicaly, attempting to kick himself out of the water.
Tearing along the canal Fredric was overjoyed to feel the concussion of success as he managed to find a low hanging pipe with his head, seizing this chance he managing to hold fast onto his terracotta saviour with a grim determination that he had experienced far too many times now in his four years plumbing the sewer.
With a kick and a quick thanks to the solid construction of this well placed pipe, Fredric scrambled up to the walkway and lay panting on the stone floor.
Noticing the soft flicker of gas lantern, Fredric realised that he was now in an older section of the sewer network and as the wicking flame played merrily upon the surface of the water, that flowed beside him, the young plumber allowed himself to drift in and out of consciousness.
Born and raised a coward Fredric had as yet managed to survive many of life’s trials by running in the opposite direction of all things that moved or at least vaguely threatened to. It had gotten him this far anyway.
Finally recovered enough to vomit, the young Plumber unleashed a guttural technicolour yawn directly into the canal–quite upsetting a fish who was out for an afternoon swim, in the process.
‘Oh Fred, what a mess you’ve got yourself into.’ He whispered to himself as he made an attempt to dry his cap, socks and underpants under the warmth of the lantern. ‘Why are you always falling into the canal?’ It was at this moment that Fredic heard a sharp scraping noise from somewhere beyond the radiance of the torch’s glow. ‘Hello?’ he called, hoping that someone had just flushed a house brick into the sewer.
The next few moments in Fredric Cloth’s life were a flurry of movements that mostly involved an attempt to get dressed while running at dead sprint.
Thrusting his feet into still waterlogged shoes, Fredric noticed that he had failed to grab his socks in the chaos of the last ten seconds. Running onwards he remembered his grandmother’s smiling face as she darned those socks for him, and felt deep a pang of guilt that was nearly strong enough for him to turn around, even though the shabbles had surely consumed them into its bulk by now.
As he ran onward Fredric closed his eyes hoping to say a quick apology to his gran but in doing this profoundly curious act of intentionally blinding himself, the young coward made an error of judgment that could be widely accepted as a rather cunning mistake.
Air, all too much air, was found underneath his next footstep.
Tumbling in a thrashing arc downward, Fredric came to the realisation that he had just managed to sprint off the edge of a sluice gate with his eyes closed and in doing so allowed himself a fleeting moment of clarity.
As he stared into the rapidly approaching water, churning below him in shifting malady, Fredric Cloth looked within himself and knew in this very moment he had also left his pants behind.
J.McCray
2020
Sunday Short Stories 