Showing posts with label Joshua Dobson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joshua Dobson. Show all posts
The Dying Art of Sewer Scuba
By Joshua Dobson
It takes a special kind of maniac to strap on scuba gear and hunt albino sewer alligators with a four foot steel spear tipped with a bang stick powerhead. It’s dangerous, disgusting work, but the rush is incomparable.
As he slowly swam through the bloody red sewage beneath the meat packing district, tingles of excitement bloomed in his belly and it occurred to him that he had probably spent more time underwater than he had on land. He’d been swimming the sewers for eleven years and before that he’d spent fifteen years as a whale whacker for a major cosmetics company, smacking whales on the belly with a sledge hammer so they puked up the ambergris needed to make fancy perfume.
Visibility was atrocious. He could barely see his hand a foot in front of his face. His good hand, the one which still had most of its fingers attached, tightly clutched his bang stick. The powerhead was chambered for a 12 gauge deer slug, which had to be waterproofed with a coat of varnish and a condom stuck over the crimped end.
There it was again, something nipping at his fins. It wasn’t a gator, they don’t nip, and the holes in the grate that sealed off the tunnel behind him were too small to allow a gator through, unless it was a baby.
He drew his gator-skinning knife as he wheeled around to face the fin nipper. Instead of the sewer rat he was expecting, he found himself face to face with a baby doll. Actually it looked more like a fetus than a baby. It was incredibly realistic, even down to the six nipples plastered across its cyanotic chest.
Who would make such a morbid doll only to flush it down the toilet? Then again, one sees the damnedest things down here. Once, not far from here, he’d found the rotting carcass of a donkey.
As he marveled at the resemblance a larval human bears to an aquatic creature, the eyes of the morbid doll which had inspired this musing slowly rolled open.
Without thinking, he touched his bang stick to the fetus’ head, which exploded, staining the sludge around him even redder.
Then the others bobbed into view, at least a dozen rotting fetuses, some with rusted bits of coat hanger sticking out of their heads and eye sockets.
Even dazed with shock as he was, instinct kicked in and he began to flee, but the undead sewer fetuses were much better adapted to moving through the sludge than he. They set upon him, tiny rotten teeth ripping chunks of wetsuit and flesh from his body.
Thus the art of sewer scuba, like it’s last practitioner, was devoured by undead sewer fetuses.
- - -
Joshua Dobson likes to make his own fun.
By Joshua Dobson
It takes a special kind of maniac to strap on scuba gear and hunt albino sewer alligators with a four foot steel spear tipped with a bang stick powerhead. It’s dangerous, disgusting work, but the rush is incomparable.
As he slowly swam through the bloody red sewage beneath the meat packing district, tingles of excitement bloomed in his belly and it occurred to him that he had probably spent more time underwater than he had on land. He’d been swimming the sewers for eleven years and before that he’d spent fifteen years as a whale whacker for a major cosmetics company, smacking whales on the belly with a sledge hammer so they puked up the ambergris needed to make fancy perfume.
Visibility was atrocious. He could barely see his hand a foot in front of his face. His good hand, the one which still had most of its fingers attached, tightly clutched his bang stick. The powerhead was chambered for a 12 gauge deer slug, which had to be waterproofed with a coat of varnish and a condom stuck over the crimped end.
There it was again, something nipping at his fins. It wasn’t a gator, they don’t nip, and the holes in the grate that sealed off the tunnel behind him were too small to allow a gator through, unless it was a baby.
He drew his gator-skinning knife as he wheeled around to face the fin nipper. Instead of the sewer rat he was expecting, he found himself face to face with a baby doll. Actually it looked more like a fetus than a baby. It was incredibly realistic, even down to the six nipples plastered across its cyanotic chest.
Who would make such a morbid doll only to flush it down the toilet? Then again, one sees the damnedest things down here. Once, not far from here, he’d found the rotting carcass of a donkey.
As he marveled at the resemblance a larval human bears to an aquatic creature, the eyes of the morbid doll which had inspired this musing slowly rolled open.
Without thinking, he touched his bang stick to the fetus’ head, which exploded, staining the sludge around him even redder.
Then the others bobbed into view, at least a dozen rotting fetuses, some with rusted bits of coat hanger sticking out of their heads and eye sockets.
Even dazed with shock as he was, instinct kicked in and he began to flee, but the undead sewer fetuses were much better adapted to moving through the sludge than he. They set upon him, tiny rotten teeth ripping chunks of wetsuit and flesh from his body.
Thus the art of sewer scuba, like it’s last practitioner, was devoured by undead sewer fetuses.
- - -
Joshua Dobson likes to make his own fun.
Panty Inspector #7
By Joshua Dobson
I could tell by the taste of the booger I licked from the tip of my finger there was a storm a’ comin’. Right before a thunderstorm, my boogers take on a salty, metallic flavor. The first rumble of approaching thunder came drifting across the desert as I stepped outside with the laundry basket clutched in my mitts.
As the screen door banged shut behind me, I noticed the stranger, a tall, skinny albino in a black suit, fedora, and dark sunglasses with gold frames that looked like something a TV preacher or third world dictator might wear. He was sniffing a pair of my panties he’d plucked from the clothesline with unwholesomely long fingers that terminated in long glossy nails filed to sharp points.
"Panty inspector," the albino in black droned monotonously when he saw me staring at my twin reflections in the lenses of his highfalutin sunglasses. One of his Nosferatu-fingered hands snaked into his dark nondescript suit jacket and extracted a wallet, which he whipped open, displaying a gleaming silver badge emblazoned with raised letters that read PI.
One second he was standing a few feet away from me, the next (without ever having been seen to move) he was so close that I could feel the febrile heat emanating from his pallid flesh. The smell of burning plastic exuded by the stranger momentarily overwhelmed the ozone-stink of the oncoming storm as he dropped the (suddenly inexplicably folded) panties into the laundry basket. He gently placed atop the panties a tiny slip of paper with “INSPECTED BY #7” printed on it in red ink.
"I'm gonna need to confiscate the panties you're wearing right now," Panty Inspector #7 droned.
"Do you have a warrant?" television had taught me to ask.
"Don't need one thanks to the Patriot Act," he said.
I slid my underwear down my goose-bumped legs, stepped out of them, and placed them in the outstretched hand of Panty Inspector #7.
He raised my white cotton panties to his cadaverous face and sniffed vociferously; a long slimy, pink tongue, forked at the tip like that of a serpent, slithered out of his mouth to brush against a splotch of pink menstrual blood staining the crotch. He produced a plastic sandwich bag from one of the pockets of his undertaker’s suit, fed my panties to it, and then stuffed it inside his jacket.
"Thank you for your cooperation," he said, tipping his hat.
The mirror images of me reflected in his fancy sunglasses suddenly opened their mouths wide in silent screams as Panty Inspector #7 said, "If you ever tell anyone about this . . . “ A wave of ice cold dread washed over me, goosebumps bloomed up and down my arms, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, the contents of my bladder streamed down my bare legs, and an extremely vivid image coalesced before my mind’s eye – the flame of a candle slowly burning through a rope stretched taut; as the strands of the rope frayed apar) one by one, I knew with absolute certainty that the rope was the only thing that held back something too horrible for words. “. . . you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
I thought I saw something, some dark, nebulous shape slinking furtively along the edge of my field of vision. I turned my head in an effort to discern what the hell it was, but there was nothing there. When I turned my gaze back, Panty Inspector #7 had vanished.
- - -
Joshua Dobson likes to make his own fun.
By Joshua Dobson
I could tell by the taste of the booger I licked from the tip of my finger there was a storm a’ comin’. Right before a thunderstorm, my boogers take on a salty, metallic flavor. The first rumble of approaching thunder came drifting across the desert as I stepped outside with the laundry basket clutched in my mitts.
As the screen door banged shut behind me, I noticed the stranger, a tall, skinny albino in a black suit, fedora, and dark sunglasses with gold frames that looked like something a TV preacher or third world dictator might wear. He was sniffing a pair of my panties he’d plucked from the clothesline with unwholesomely long fingers that terminated in long glossy nails filed to sharp points.
"Panty inspector," the albino in black droned monotonously when he saw me staring at my twin reflections in the lenses of his highfalutin sunglasses. One of his Nosferatu-fingered hands snaked into his dark nondescript suit jacket and extracted a wallet, which he whipped open, displaying a gleaming silver badge emblazoned with raised letters that read PI.
One second he was standing a few feet away from me, the next (without ever having been seen to move) he was so close that I could feel the febrile heat emanating from his pallid flesh. The smell of burning plastic exuded by the stranger momentarily overwhelmed the ozone-stink of the oncoming storm as he dropped the (suddenly inexplicably folded) panties into the laundry basket. He gently placed atop the panties a tiny slip of paper with “INSPECTED BY #7” printed on it in red ink.
"I'm gonna need to confiscate the panties you're wearing right now," Panty Inspector #7 droned.
"Do you have a warrant?" television had taught me to ask.
"Don't need one thanks to the Patriot Act," he said.
I slid my underwear down my goose-bumped legs, stepped out of them, and placed them in the outstretched hand of Panty Inspector #7.
He raised my white cotton panties to his cadaverous face and sniffed vociferously; a long slimy, pink tongue, forked at the tip like that of a serpent, slithered out of his mouth to brush against a splotch of pink menstrual blood staining the crotch. He produced a plastic sandwich bag from one of the pockets of his undertaker’s suit, fed my panties to it, and then stuffed it inside his jacket.
"Thank you for your cooperation," he said, tipping his hat.
The mirror images of me reflected in his fancy sunglasses suddenly opened their mouths wide in silent screams as Panty Inspector #7 said, "If you ever tell anyone about this . . . “ A wave of ice cold dread washed over me, goosebumps bloomed up and down my arms, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, the contents of my bladder streamed down my bare legs, and an extremely vivid image coalesced before my mind’s eye – the flame of a candle slowly burning through a rope stretched taut; as the strands of the rope frayed apar) one by one, I knew with absolute certainty that the rope was the only thing that held back something too horrible for words. “. . . you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
I thought I saw something, some dark, nebulous shape slinking furtively along the edge of my field of vision. I turned my head in an effort to discern what the hell it was, but there was nothing there. When I turned my gaze back, Panty Inspector #7 had vanished.
- - -
Joshua Dobson likes to make his own fun.
Frog Fog
By Joshua Dobson
I finger the wormholes in the frog-swarmed plastic while I scan the sky for sign of the black jellyfish.
- - -
Joshua Dobson likes to make his own fun.
By Joshua Dobson
A
torrential downpour of small yellow frogs and fat black pollywogs pisses all
over my plan to walk to church. The
amphibians are coming down so hard that most of them explode into puddles of
steaming slimy splatter when they collide with the concrete and/or the heads of
pedestrians. With a nearly dead
bumbershoot, half (and counting) of whose bones are broken and whose skin has
several rotten holes through which streams of pollywogs wiggle, I shield the
hair I just paid ten credits to have styled.
The
mist of bufotoxin lacing the air has me the slightest itsy bitsy bit buzzed, so
the semi-translucent tentacles crawling down from the amoeba-clouds and the
enormous horned toad mounting/humping a rusty Volkswagen could just be a frog
fog hallucination, but I quicken my pace towards the bus shelter nonetheless.
The
plastic bunker isn't empty. Spidered in
the corner is a skinny bruja wrapped in flowing black robes elaborately
embroidered with squiggling red silk symbols.
Her long black hair seems to be moving of its own accord, undulating
like undersea grass, but that could just be the fog of frog hallucinogens
pickling my brain. Her frankincense
pheromones mingle with the olfactory aura of amphibian on the air. She regards me with eyes like black smoking mirrors
as I stumble into the enclosure, brushing frogs from my (supposedly frog-proof)
rubber coat. I nod slightly and she
returns her black eyes to the Esperanto tabloid clutched in her heavily
tattooed hands.
The
translucent plastic walls of the shelter, swarming with croaking, clinging,
climbing frogs, are riddled with holes left by either bullets or worms. I can't
help but snake my fingers into them even though the sharp plastic lips of the
wounds slice into my delicate finger flesh.
I'm
sucking blood from my fingertip when a naked fat woman runs screaming from the
frog fog. Her enormous double G tits
jiggle wildly while she runs towards the shelter. Only when she's a few feet from the
frog-encrusted plastic walls of the bunker do I espy the cause of her shrieking
distress, a legless lazar on a skateboard hangs from her ample ass, his mouth
clamped leech-like to one of her immense cellulite-caked buttocks.
The
naked fatty slams full speed into the translucent plastic wall of the bus
shelter. The whole bunker shudders when
the fat woman's flesh slams against it.
The climbing frogs caught between her flesh and the plastic smash into
pulpy goo. The naked fat woman collapses
to the sidewalk. The sound of her fat
flesh slapping against the concrete seems to linger in the air for far longer
than it should.
I
don't see the skateboard bum. For a
moment or two, I think he's been crushed beneath the unconscious chubbette,
then I see him rolling into the translucent plastic bunker on wheels that creak
as he pulls himself along the frog-splattered pavement with his fingerless
hands.
He
smells like a mass grave. His perfectly
white eyes have neither irises nor pupils.
The tattered scraps of a tuxedo jacket and a filthy pair of yellow
tighty whitey underwear have fused to his greenish flesh though rot. He's been sitting on his skateboard so long
the rotten wood has fused to the flesh of his leg-stumps and ass.
I
stare at the fornicating frogs crawling through the jungle of his ashy grey
afro. He lifts his monkey-like nose up
in the air and sniffs deeply.
He
opens his bloodstain-haloed mouth like a tiger will do while scenting its prey,
the inside of his maw is a forest of irregular fangs, scavenged from road kill
I suspect, affixed to his diseased gums with gobs of glue.
"I
smell two a y'all in here. You each
gotta put either a cigarette or a dollar in my hand or I gonna bite yo
butts," the skateboard centaur says in the high pitched voice of a helium
huffer.
I
instinctively go for the can of mace in my right pocket, but then I freeze when
I suddenly wonder if mace even works on blind people. As my fingers close around the cattle prod in
my left pocket, the bruja is raising a bamboo tube to her lips and blowing a
cloud of red powder into the blind butt biting bum's face.
He
screams in rage and pain. The bruja
raises an ornate lachrymatory of red glass and sterling silver to his milky
eyes to harvest the tears gushing forth.
"Tears
from the eyes of the blind lucky for medicine," she says in a heavily
accented voice as she shoves the screaming skateboard centaur out of the bus
shelter and secretes the bottle of tears inside the folds of her billowing
black robes. The blind butt biting bum’s
form and screams are swallowed by the frog fog as he rolls down the hill. The bruja returns to her corner and her
tabloid.
The
crystal of my supposedly frog-proof ("up to 80 ft deep" it says on
the back) watch has been shattered by a bulbous bullfrog.
"Do
you know what time the bus comes?" I ask the bruja.
"When
the moon is eaten by a black jellyfish," she says without raising her eyes
from her tabloid.
I finger the wormholes in the frog-swarmed plastic while I scan the sky for sign of the black jellyfish.
- - -
Joshua Dobson likes to make his own fun.
