The Canal

by Daniel Morris

  There would be no creeping, tense entrance. No hand wringing or hesitation. And maybe it would go like this: Joseph -- golden armored, crest flowing, trumpets blowing -- sweeps into the dragon's loathsome den. "Foul beast behold--" And poof...fireball. Joseph to sawdust. Damsel's devoured, castle's burnt, dragon resumes nap. But Joe didn't care. It would probably be more fitting that way -- less like legend and more like life, where everybody lives unhappily ever after.

  He began gaining speed, descending at a trot, down unsteady dunes to meet the shore. He came upon an opening, an alcove, and another sewer shaft that rose to the street above. He realized that he hadn't descended anywhere; he was still just below the asphalt, probably no more that a block distant from where he'd started. Wan, sausage sized beams of light filtered in from the manhole cover -- and in their glow rested Alan's son, his caustic diaper shining.

  Baby...but no dragon. Wait, could it be this easy? Could it be so simple? Joe moved rapidly, lurching into the alcove miraculously unscathed. Eugene, the treasure, seemed okay; still a baby, still operational. An ugly baby -- it was the forehead mostly, quite off-putting, the kid was 80, maybe 85 percent forehead, conservatively.

  "They won't let this happen again," he said. "They'll never leave you alone, you big headed, you... You sure had them scared, for a minute we thought you'd drowned, but I got you goddammit, I got you, you fat little..."

  He gathered the child into the grip of his good arm. Yes, things would finally go right this time. Joe would make it; he'd beat the canal. He'd get the kid safe. All he had to do was get to this ladder and go on up. And Joe felt a draft of crisp air from outside, it tasted deliciously sweet, menthol cool, like bleach to a drain.

  Which made it so disappointing to hear that sullen, tortured drum: Thub thub...thub thub. Along with the digestive gurgle of water, the gagging bubbles. Of course he should have known. Of course it was here. And where else but beneath the growling sewage?

  The Enterprise emerged from the water, rising to the ceiling, and Joe found himself eye to eye with the monster's heart, wobbling there in its tumoral scrotum. Past it, through semi-transparent skin, Joe could see the knotted tubes of lungs and the convoluted turnpikes of arteries. The belly button was a suppurating barnacle that squirted something in his eye.

  Get the kid safe, thought Joe. Yes, he'd do that. And then he'd come back later and finish this business...or maybe he wouldn't, maybe he'd just-- See, he was angry and all, really, quite furious, but, just look at that thing. Larval grape sacs, bulging with the embryos of mutated froglings, hung from its cheeks while viper tongues spat from the tips of cone shaped warts. The whole profanity belonged to an orphaned mythos, one that had wrongly celebrated birth defects and smallpox and was later deserted for something far more photogenic, like unicorns and fairies and Adonis'. Relegated to hell while more popular Gods flourished.

  Dear friends. Joe on his nighttime beach. It stretches for miles. He decided to climb, his ladder now a palm tree, crooked and ungroomed. He could reach the top, it wasn't far.

  The Enterprise made no apparent attempt to stop him, and soon escape was inches from Joe's face -- above he could hear wide spaces and a diesel bus. Except...there was one complication. With one deteriorating hand holding the ladder and the other hand holding the baby, he had no way to lift the manhole cover.

  He could...drop the baby? YES-- No. No, how could he? Or he could drop the baby with all intention of coming back and reclaiming it later. YES. He could go somewhere safe and wait until he got angry again-- Wait. No, wait. This was Henry we're talking about. Joe looked at the boy, the five-year old boy. Henry looked the same as always, with the same curls in his chestnut hair. Joe wouldn't leave him, not again.

  Joe jerked upward, ramming the lid with his skull. The rebound almost knocked him from his perch as blood quickly washed into his eyes. He'd do it a second time, for Henry.

  The dragon was waiting and watching. Growing bored of this display. Talons constricted around Joe's legs and tugged. Joe lost his grip on the ladder but caught the next rung down. Tug...drop...tug...drop -- Joe felt his arm come undone a little more each time. He kept descending until his lips grazed the beach, kissing the sand fleas. Was it bad to throw a baby? Joe threw the baby. Although it was only a short toss, to buy the boy a few more moments of safety. The child bounced diaper first into the alcove. Apologies, Henry. Apologies.

  "Joesssssifff..."

  At least Joe still had his good arm. He and it, they were going to do this. For once. Because you could get so mad sometimes. Because it was all very unfair. All this. Sickening and unfair. So the good arm went inside Joe's good coat and found Alan's good gun. Joe raised it and fired.

  He shot the dragon. ...Maybe. Or had he shot the ceiling? Fuck. Joe pulled the trigger again -- this time a pink, swirled knob on the Enterprise's shoulder disintegrated into mist. Black ichor rooster tailed from the wound.

  The baby whined and Joe shrieked. Disappointingly, the dragon laughed (bone saws keening). The beast drank its own blood and swaggered in the spray -- truly a sight, satyr-like, an epileptic shimmy.

  Before Joe could do anything else the creature's mouth jolted into action, chugging fast, the tongue beating Joe about the face. Readying to swallow him.

  >> CHAPTER EIGHTEEN <<

  You had to worry about the uncorked sewer shaft, gasping its open invitation, swallowing the rain. You had to worry about what that might mean. Because a person didn't want to have to go down there.

  Meanwhile Rose, she was already standing over it, looking in.

  "I don't know if you should be doing that..." Alan managed to pose it partly as a question, partly as a plea. Because you had to worry where this was headed, what direction this might take.

  There were plenty of quotable wise men, with statues that now go ignored in parks and town squares, who have conjectured that struggle and sacrifice give life breadth and worth. In other words, you can't always take the easy way out -- there is your character to consider and all. But Alan had to wonder, were any of these gentlemen philosophers ever confronted with the sight of a woman climbing into a dank sewer? Did they ever have to think about going down there themselves? Knowing that everything you hated, everything you feared could be down there? Or were they too busy sounding noble and idealistic, while the poor saps that actually worked for a living got stuck with the ugly details?

  By now, Rose was completely submerged beneath the street. Alan went to the opening and reluctantly stared. He encountered an overabundance of odor -- a buffet of excrement, night sweats, and sour treasure. He had to wonder, if just for a moment, whether Eugene was really worth it.

  He hoped so.

  Alan clamped his flashlight in his mouth and began to descend. The shaft was smaller once inside, and he had to fold his shoulders to fit. Progress was slow. Plodding. But the transition, from aboveground to underworld, when it was finally complete, was horrifically profound.

  How had he not always been sensing this place? Mere feet below his world, how was he not aware of this sweating, seeping nightmare? Whole spires of dangling rot, ever swelling, ever growing, ever listening to the rumble of life above, sizing it, gauging it. Just yards away. Barely a distance, more a notion. And it was as big as your cities, on the flip side of the coin, where the catacombs lay, a terrible mirror image, the very pulse of decay itself -- these chutes of raw, untreated sewage, an ungodly petrol, the 5th element, a pioneer combo of water, waste, and microbe -- alchemal underachievement, lead into manure, toilet prayers, scumbag omelette. Alan had never imagined. Never even considered it. This thriving place.

  Light was a foreigner here -- didn't understand the language, didn't want to learn. Tunnels gazed at Alan blindly and uncomprehendingly. In the dim glow of his flashlight he glimpsed Rose, outlined in brown spray, with her arm deep in the boisterous flow. He averted his eyes, it seemed too private and personal and disgusting.

  When her ablutions were complete, Rose quietly hurried away through a tox
ic grotto. Alan followed, while tripe-tasting mists bathed his skin and he touched saprophytic slimes.

  The farther along the more agile Rose became. She had no light, yet she led with absolute precision, pausing only to retch, which she did with a disturbing relish. Alan knew that if he lost her, he'd be lost himself -- like some cursed soul he'd be forced to wander these byways for eternity, teetering on the brink of cesspools and bathing in waterfalls of grease and sputum.

  It was all... It was all rather too much. He felt dizzy and reached out a steadying hand. It plunged deep through the crust of a fissure or nest. There were things moving inside, whispering and scraping. His arm became unrecognizable, brown and ticklish, dripping with a very rough breed of cockroach, exceptionally leggy and mucousy. Alan flapped and danced and his sleeve divulged a torrid jackpot. Tenacious insects sought the safety of his underwear and pockets, sought the warmth of his armpits.

  But Rose, where was Rose? There. A glint, a hint, ducking left. Alan fought onward, queasily parrying the bugs as he went. He prayed it was actually Rose whom he was following and not something dreamed out of the darkness, some inhabitant of these caves, a sewer dwelling antelope maybe, massive eyed, luminous, with cloaca feet. He turned down a short slope, the heat and stink growing unbearable.

  His flashlight abruptly touched on a startling scene -- no need to dwell on the wad of shivering, dripping flesh that clogged the end of the tunnel, or its pelt of weeping offal, or the gasses seeping from flaps in its ribs and that filled the chamber with the incense of rotted organs. No need, although Alan thought he recognized someone familiar...

  Alan's first thought was that Joe was perhaps defeating the creature. Yes, Joe was killing it, like he'd said he was going to do. He'd enacted some unorthodox plan whereby he inflicted serious damage upon the fiend while simultaneously appearing to be devoured. It was a marvelous approach, would fool anyone. And those screams he was making were just reassurances. "I'm doing fine," he was trying to say. "It's not how it looks." Joe had it handled.

  It was a drama that Alan suddenly recognized. He had seen this before. In the squatter building, when Joe was being attacked. The two person pose was practically identical -- nearly religious, with the tender saint consoling his reborn disciple, although that was being merciful considering the nauseating amount of tearing and gnawing that currently taking place, and the blood squirting from this particular saint's mouth.

  Thub thub...thub thub.

  Alan, at last, finally understood. Vital connection: made. There was no psychotic cannibal. There were no feral dogs. No vagrant cult. There was only this. This monstrosity. This medieval horror. This bubonic mistake. It was the source of all problems and the crux of the entire case. It was the answer.

  Alan's skin prickled. Here then was his destiny, his one true mission -- to confront this commandant of dirt and destruction. To fight for all that was lawful and sanitary. To free mankind forever from error's scourge, from chaos.

  Alan felt full of current. He glowed with righteousness. This was his moment. This was the battle that would forever turn the tide. Alan drew his revolver. He took careful aim. There was no room for failure...

  But in the swelling roar, in the building rush, he'd forgotten something. He'd forgotten about Rose. And Rose had bloomed, suddenly potent and fierce, here in the murk, suddenly filling the entire room. She pried the gun from Alan's hands, lacerating him deeply with her nails, throwing the gun into the sewage. She slashed Alan's cheeks, tried jabbing his throat. He ducked, stumbling out of reach.

  They had the monster's attention now. It unfastened its mouth from Joe's face and flung him against a wall. Alan didn't want to see this, the ways in which Joe's body had come untied. No need, no need.

  Rose started toward the creature. "Henry," she called, holding out a hand as she approached. "Henry." Alan felt tangible relief as the fiend placed all of its focus upon her. Then the creature took a halting step backward. Was it confused by this brazen woman? Surprised? Alan wasn't sure; the foreign orifices and the slithering antennae made the creature impossible to read.

  Why was he here again? He'd come here for something. Eugene. Focus. Because Eugene was right there. Focus. Alan could see him now, Alan was finally getting his bearings. And right above Eugene was a sewer shaft leading to the street. He could get Eugene and he could climb. He could forget about Joe and Rose. He could forget about the monster. He could forget about his supposed mission, his supposed destiny, and all his righteousness. The best Alan could hope for now was survival. If not for him, then for his son.

  Because, this? There was no stopping this.

  It was time to move. Alan scurried towards Eugene, pausing as he stepped over Joe. The man lay in a semi-upright position, a pulpy, bloody log. Dead. Had to be. Face peeled back like a cellar door.

  Enough.

  Alan rushed into the alcove. It was a kind of home, a nest, littered with a zoological variety of remains. You had your skulls and your fur and you had your Eugene, seemingly content, suckling on some sort of garbage, some kind of rubber pouch, aged and cracked, its skin caramelized to a hard shell. A long ago balloon. Eugene himself was miraculously unhurt, and he filled the space with baby scents, powder and diaper. The boy smiled when he saw Alan. Then he clapped and uttered something unexpected.

  "Momma," said Eugene, and not discreetly. "Momma."

  How momentous. How poorly timed.

  "Quiet, Eugene. Not now."

  "Momma." Louder. Alan tried stuffing the balloon back in Eugene's mouth.

  "Hush, Eugene, please..."

  He only seemed to be encouraging the child. Eugene began jabbering some kind of ambitious doo-wop, a "Momma-momma-ooo-mow-mow" type noise, gearing up for something really top of the charts, big and baritone.

  "Not now Eugene, I'm begging."

  Alan risked a glance behind him. What he saw was Rose, now standing waist deep in the running sewage, hugging the monster. She was patting its knobbed tumors and caressing its seaweed hair. She was sobbing. She was saying: "I'll never let you go." She was saying: "Never again." That insane woman.

  "Momm--"

  Alan picked up the boy and smothered him. For a short time. Until the child stopped fussing. Alan hastily cradled the child under one arm. He already had his foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, was already anticipating escape. But, Eugene. Eugene, who would not be censored nor silenced. The boy squirmed his head free, and defiantly bellowed, yodeling deep into the caverns, "MOMMMAAA..."

  Fuck.

  Assorted stalks and receptors belonging to the monster immediately zeroed in on Alan and the child. Alan had been mistaken earlier -- the creature did in fact possess an emotion that he could read. The mouth was what translated. That was universal. It angrily opened to reveal an impossible amount of splintered real estate.

  Rose, she shouldn't be doing what she was doing. Exasperating it. The creature was trying to push her aside, yanking on her, but the woman was persistent. "Never again," she kept saying, hunkering down, digging in. She really shouldn't be doing that, because whatever spell the beast had been under was quickly fading. See the mouth, see your proof. It had opened to Megalodon proportion, new teeth sprouting all the time. And then the monster sprang, its gullet billowing open like a net, covering Rose entirely and springing shut.

  Enough.

  Alan was already scrambling up the ladder. The alcove was awash with the fanfare of clapping lips and crunching bones and Rose's screams.

  A claw snapped around Alan's ankle, pulling him back to the floor. He kicked free and automatically started climbing again, tightening his grip on Eugene. The claw came back, grabbing both ankles this time. Alan fell, yet again. The creature was too strong. The situation, it was becoming too hopeless.

  Thub thub...thub thub.

  It finally occurred to Alan that he was about to die. That here was the end, that the war was over, and he had lost. He was done. Mincemeat. For all he had believed, for all his principles, he was soon to
be nothing better than a casualty. Him, of all people.

  And what of Eugene? A strange notion seemed to suggest itself, leaping from the creature's searing touch, that here in the sewer Eugene would be spared. That he'd be allowed to deform and undergo disease, developing macabre appetites, so as to better sate a hunger whose demands could no longer be met by one grotesque mouth alone.

  But there was nothing more that Alan could do. If only he had listened to his wife. Susan had known, hadn't she, that something like this would happen? Although truth be told, Alan was almost relieved. He felt rather giddy. There was no reason to struggle anymore. He didn't have to feel responsible. He could just let go. For once, float free. Relax...

  Thub...thu--

  And then a pop -- clean and sharp. Steaming liquid sprayed onto Alan's jacket as the claw convulsed and drew away. Alan reluctantly turned: the creature was clutching its chest -- where there had been an obscene, throbbing heart, there was now a scorched pit. The monster dropped to its knees, mewling pitifully.

  There was another pop. A gunshot, Alan realized. Then a necklace of them until there was only the clicking of an emptied chamber.

  The...the Henry tumbled face first into the sewage, sinking except for its hump, a wrinkled coral reef that now discharged a foul stain, the once thriving herpe lumps becoming still and flat.

  Joe. He was somehow alive, rocking slightly, his gun still aimed at the slumping monster. He breathed like a dying suction pump. A problematic arm held his problematic face.

  "I was too late for...for her," he slurred.

  "That thing was, your...It was your--"

  "Don't say it," said Joe, sharply. When he talked, the jaw didn't carry the lips, which stayed hanging loose and open. He was also leaking in ways he shouldn't. An alarming stream from the neck. Widening pools about his person.

  "He drowned long ago. Don't ever say it."

  "You need help," said Alan. He eased Joe to his feet; Joe put an arm around Alan's neck; it dripped down his shirt. And now Joe's face was free to roam where it pleased.