Dyscountopia

by Niccolo Grovinci

  “I’m not saying that Omega-Mart is perfect,” Albert protested. “I used to think so, but I don’t anymore. But you make them sound like monsters. I suppose if it was up to you, there wouldn’t be any rules. Everything would just be chaos. People would be free to do whatever they wanted, take whatever they wanted, go around stealing bananas to bribe chimpanzees whenever they felt like it.”

  “Yeah, that’s right! And we’d all be screwing gophers and chipmunks and squirrels, too. You’d fit right in, Zim. Hell, you’d be President!

  “Yeah?” Albert shouted. “Really? How clever! I have an idea -- why don’t you go take a flying f- .”

  Albert’s foot slipped from the ladder, cutting short his artful rebuttal. He plummeted down through the empty void, screaming into the darkness -- a shrill, panicked scream that rose from deep in the pit of his stomach, elevating to a crescendo of glass-shattering terror, then dying gradually on bewildered lips.

  “OoooOoooEeeeeEeeee.” Bobo squealed in amusement, hopping down to the ground beside him.

  Stunned and disoriented, Albert glanced around in the dim light. He wasn’t falling, he realized. He was sitting on a concrete floor with his legs splayed uncomfortably around him, trembling. He’d fallen from the bottom rung of the ladder.

  “Shut up,” he grumbled, scowling up at the chimp. He rose unsteadily to his feet, rubbing his bruised backside. He was standing in a low-ceilinged tunnel, deep within the sewer of the world, beside a slow-moving stream of putrid, black sludge. The air was cold and smelled like shit.

  Albert shivered. “It’s cold in here.”

  “And it smells like shit,” said the Doctor.

  Bobo peered into the river and breathed in deeply, smiling. He wrapped his long, clammy fingers around Albert’s wrist and tugged with unnerving strength, leading him on a long, circuitous route through the damp innards of the planet, pursuing his own enormous shadow as it bobbed up and down in the artificial light like some demented prehistoric hunchback desperate to evade them. They zig-zagged left and right through the subterranean maze, following countless tributaries of human excrement until they arrived, ultimately, at the gut-wrenching source.

  “That’s a lot of poo,” the Doctor noted, observing the foul smelling river that flowed at his feet.

  It was an understatement. The river was at least a hundred feet wide; a slow moving channel of thick, stinking, nightmarish filth. The two men followed it as it oozed its way toward the center of the earth -- one mile, then two, then three, trailing behind their hairy australopithecine guide. Finally, Bobo came to a stop at a small metal door with a string of faded blue letters on its filth encrusted surface, spelling out the word UTILITY. Some unknown person had returned to that lonely spot to add another letter, scratching a severe ‘F’ in front of the ‘U’.

  FUTILITY

  Albert shuddered at the ominous message, forced to wonder when was the last time anyone had entered that alien landscape, and what had been their purpose, and what had become of them. Bobo pushed open the door.

  Stepping slowly through the entrance, Albert had the peculiar sensation of stepping into outer space. Even in the darkness, he could feel that the room was cavernous. He moved forward and clicked twice on the flashlight button, widening the beam to fill the void around him.

  Doctor Zayus sucked in his breath. “Wow, look at all this great stuff!”

  The floor was littered with relics of the past. A defaced Volkswagen, tattooed with the vulgar calligraphy of a less modern age, peered at Albert through shattered headlights. The severed head of a plastic drive-thru clown laughed silently in his direction, vomiting colored wires onto the floor. A battered toy wagon, its delicate frame half-eaten by rust, cowered at his feet. The artifacts huddled in the light around Albert like hobos at a trash-can fire, longing for human warmth. Within their midst dwelled all the things that lives were made of; chairs and tables and bicycles and bathtubs, lawnmowers and refrigerators and washing machines and vending machines. And doors, old doors, a hundred different doors, all a different shape and a different size, all a different color and not one of them Omega-Mart purple.

  Bobo picked up a deflated rubber basketball and attempted to dribble it without success. Doctor Zayus bent down and lifted a tattered panama hat with a hole in its crown, placing it on top of his head with a satisfied grin.

  “What do you think?”

  Albert didn’t answer. He was staring at the floor, transfixed by something he saw there. It was small and dusty and flesh-colored, the naked plastic corpse of an orphaned child. Her jet black pupils were fixed on Albert’s face, her expression a mask of perpetual humiliation. Albert recognized her. He had loved her once.

  Her name was Oopsie Wetserself, and there were two things she could do. First, she could talk to you like you were her mommy when you pulled the string on her chest, warn you that she was going to release her bladder. Second, she could relieve herself in a tiny wet puddle at your feet, letting go the rubber bladder inside her otherwise empty plastic shell. She did so without apprehension or shame, for wetting herself was Oopsie’s entire purpose. It was her reason for being.

  And Albert had loved her for it. His eyes would follow Oopsie back and forth across the room as he pretended to play with his rubber football, watching her float through the air in his sister’s arms, regarding him with cool indifference. Albert would have given anything to just once pull that cord on Oopsie’s back and have her talk back to him. But Albert wasn’t her mommy, and Oopsie knew it. He couldn’t be her mommy. It was forbidden. Boys played with footballs.

  He leaned down now, as if in a trance, and lifted the dolly to eye level. Pieces of Oopsie fell away as he pried her from the ground; the years had reduced her fragile frame to the consistency of an egg shell. Gently, Albert’s finger sought the cord on Oopsie’s back and pulled; a moment of hesitation, and then he let go. The cord retracted slowly into the shattered body.

  “I have to go pee-pee in the potty chair.”

  Brown, mildewy water issued forth from Oopsie’s underparts, soaking Albert’s pant-leg. And then, in response to that final exultant release, Oopsie’s body crumbled, shattering to dust at his feet.

  Albert considered the objects around him. How many more memories dwelled like ghosts inside these dead things? he wondered. How many more had been tossed away like garbage in favor of a newer, more cost efficient product? What was left to remind us of who we were, when we threw away the past?

  “Where did the world’s soul go?” he whispered.

  The Doctor’s answer echoed through the chamber. “The world never had a soul, Albert. We were supposed to be the world’s soul.”

  Albert sniffed and wiped his sleeve across his face, suddenly aware that he was crying. He cleared his throat and took control of his voice. “Where’s Bobo?”

  The Doctor shrugged. “I thought he was right beside me. He must have gone on ahead.”

  Albert shone the flashlight back and forth around him, looking for any sign of the missing chimp. He moved cautiously forward. “Bobo! Bobo!” His cries reverberated from unseen walls.

  “Bobo?” This time it was just a whisper. The beam of light fell on a tiny figure ahead; squat and compact, an immobile feathered goblin staring back at Albert through shining dead eyes. Albert froze.

  The Doctor stepped ahead of him into the light, casually stooping and scooping the little gremlin up, holding it at arms length. “An owl,” he said with a grin. “Stuffed.”

  A strong smell invaded Albert’s nostrils. Chemicals and old mothballs. He lifted the Zipco Hand-torch higher, shedding light on the undead menagerie gathered around him – a wolf, a deer, an alligator, a fox, a mountain goat – animals that Albert knew only from pictures, assembled together in lifeless harmony, adorned with plastic name tags. They were ragged and misused, missing eyes and ears and tufts of hair, toppled willy-nilly in eternal rigor mortis.

  “It’s a whole museum exhibit,” said the Doctor. “Look – a zebra. Oooh
– and a cheetah.”

  But Albert had turned his attention to a hairy, stocky figure standing hunchbacked beside an aardvark, leaning forward on its knuckles. It wasn’t wearing a name-tag.

  “Bobo?”

  The chimp stirred slightly in the shadows, slowly raising an elongated index finger to his puckered lips. His eyes were trained on something in the darkness. Albert followed the chimp’s gaze with his flashlight.

  Another animal stood frozen ahead, upright and facing them, apart from the rest of the collection. Even to Albert, who had seen very few animals close-up, it didn’t seem natural. It was immense, at least eight feet tall from hoof to shoulder, with gray naked hide, wide sprawling antlers, and a double horned nose; a taxidermist’s wet dream. Albert cocked his head to the side, hypnotized by the impossible beast’s cold stare.

  “What is it?”

  Bobo made a series of slow deliberate signs above his head.

  “Oh,” said the Doctor.

  “What?”

  The Doctor sighed. “It’s the Rhinocermoose….”

  The eyes suddenly blinked at Albert, shining green and luminous in the artificial light. A spray of steam and snot burst forth from the animal’s nostrils as it raised its front hoof to paw at the tile. Albert felt an intense urge to urinate.

  “Fuck me,” whispered the Doctor.

  They all stood very still, watching the beast as it watched them back, knowing full well that whatever they did in the next ten seconds would determine the course of the rest of their lives. The animal leaned forward and arched its naked back, coiled like a spring.

  “What do we do?” Albert hissed between his teeth.

  “Shit our pants?” ventured the Doctor.

  Then Bobo broke the stalemate.

  “EEEEEEEEEEP!” The chimp flung a well-aimed banana at the monster’s nose and skated into the darkness.

  A mighty roar filled the room. Albert raced after his fleeing guide, pursued by the sound of heavy breathing and the ringing of hooves against concrete. The beam of his flashlight zig-zagged erratically across the chimp’s hairy back as Bobo leaped over piles of books and dodged through mounds of rusted car parts, scuttling like a spider on all fours. Behind them, the Rhinocermoose crashed headlong through the debris, leaving a path of destruction in its wake. Albert could feel the beast gaining on him, huffing and puffing and spitting and braying. Then, suddenly, Bobo dodged sideways through an open door and vanished. Albert sprang after him, flinging the metal door shut behind them.

  There came a dull clang, followed by a loud protest from the Doctor. “Asshole.”

  Albert forced his aching muscles to drive him onward, dogging the chimp through a narrow concrete passageway, aware for the first time that Dr. Zayus was right behind him. And right behind him, the Rhinocermoose. Relentless. Merciless. A horrific abomination designed for only one purpose. Mayhem.

  The beam of Albert’s light suddenly expanded as the passage opened up ahead. In an amazing feat of acrobatic agility, Bobo sprang forward into the void, deftly clinging to a suspended metal ladder as the floor disappeared below Albert’s feet. Albert toppled forward and then down. Down, down, down; forever down through the darkness until he wondered if he was even falling at all, or simply hanging suspended in mid-air, floating in space.

  SPLASH!

  An indescribable liquid filth filled Albert’s nose and mouth. He forced his legs underneath him and pushed upward, retching and gasping for air as he broke the foul surface.

  “WAAAAAAAH!” SPLASH!

  Something heavy landed next to Albert, spraying his face with sludge. Albert lifted his extinguished flashlight and shook it, willing the light to turn on. The bulb flickered and ignited, illuminating the shit-covered features of Dr. Zayus.

  “Where the hell are we?”

  “We fell down another shaft.”

  “Where’s Bobo?”

  “I don’t --.”

  SPLASH! Another body impacted somewhere in the darkness, like a passenger jet nose-diving into the sea. It was much too heavy to be Bobo.

  “RUN!”

  Albert was already on the move, splashing like mad and lifting his legs high in the air as he fled in slow motion through the thick slimy ooze. His malfunctioning flashlight flickered on the surface of the river ahead, transforming the sewer passage into a sort of perverse subterranean discotheque as, beside him, the Doctor imitated Albert’s own stop-motion dance of panic. Albert’s eyes fixed on a blinking metal grate ahead of him, slightly ajar. He ducked through the grate and kicked it shut behind him. Then he remembered the Doctor.

  “Mutherfucker!”

  Albert forced the grate back open and grabbed the angry Doctor by the beard, jerking him into the pipe. He shut the grate with a clang and flipped the flashlight off.

  Splashsplashsplashsplashsplash! “BOWOOOOOOOO!” The Rhinocermoose careened past them with a bloody roar, hell-bent on destruction and thoroughly confused.

  “Son-of-a- …!”

  “Sssshhhhhhh.” Albert slapped his hand over the Doctor’s mouth and pulled him slowly forward along the narrow pipe, careful not to splash. They came up against a metal barrier. Albert flicked the flashlight on again, cupping his hand over the top so that only a few thin strands of light shone through his fingers.

  “Another grate.” The Doctor grabbed it and shook. “Corroded shut. We can’t get out this way.”

  “Well, we can’t go back the way we came.”

  “We’ll have to.”

  “Do you think it’s safe?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think Bobo made it out okay?”

  “Fuck Bobo,” said the Doctor. “He got his bananas. Let’s worry about you and me.”

  Albert flipped the light back off and listened.

  Not a sound.

  “Do you think it’s still out there?”

  “Where else would it be?”

  “Where the hell did it come from?”

  “I dunno,” said the Doctor. “Some scientist trying to win a bet, maybe. Or impress a chick. Maybe some kind of laboratory test animal – did you notice if it was wearing mascara?”

  Albert listened again, holding his breath. “Maybe it’s gone away.”

  “Maybe it’s standing behind you.”

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Why don’t you go look for it?” the Doctor suggested. His voice made a soft, tinny echo against the slimy concave surface of the pipe. “I’ll wait here. If I hear a scream and a gurgling noise, I’ll wait a little longer.”

  From the corridor outside came the sound of splashing footfalls. The two men fell instantly silent.

  Splosh. Splosh. Splosh. Splosh.

  The footfalls grew louder, nearer, then stopped. Albert strained his ears. The Rhinocermoose was out there. Waiting. Hunting them.

  Albert went numb. He felt himself falling out of time and space, floating outside his body, an innocent bystander to the bloody tragedy that was about to befall the lumpy, fleshy creature that was him. In a hopeless effort to make sense of it all, he reached backward through time, grasping at random memories, struggling to arrange them in any meaningful order. He saw a wife who loved him more each day, whose eyes pierced his soul and found the beauty there. He saw children playing on the floor, scampering into his outstretched arms as he entered a room. He saw a father who respected him, and co-workers who admired him, and friends who missed him when he wasn’t around. He saw it all as if through a lens smeared with Vaseline; wispy, hazy, unconvincing. They were the false memories of a life that might have been; even as he struggled to bring them into focus, they withered and vanished.

  The splashing grew closer. Albert could hear the shallow, angry breathing of the Rhinocermoose just outside the grate. A desperate rush of adrenaline surged to his core and a silent prayer sprang into his head, hastily addressed to a vague and formless God. He pleaded for more time, more precious seconds, like a thirsty man in the desert pleading for drops of rain. He screamed
silently out through every pore, willing the beast away – take someone else, anyone else, not me.

  And then, as if in answer to his frantic appeal, the footfalls faded away. The monster’s breathing dwindled to silence, and Albert was seized by a bold and reckless resolve. This new gift of time would not be squandered. He would press on. He would claim the life that should have been his.

  “Screw this,” said the Doctor. “Let’s go back to the roof.”

  Albert was jarred from his reverie. “What?”

  “Give me the flashlight.”

  Albert felt the Doctor pawing at him in the dark and recoiled. “What? No.”

  “Come on, Albert. It’s time to go. The roof ain’t much, but it beats a Rhinocermoose horn up the ass.”

  Albert knocked the groping hand away. “No!”

  “Give it to me.”

  Doctor Zayus tried to wrench the light from his hand, twisting it and turning it violently as Albert struggled against him in the dark, pulling back. Albert felt a set of teeth dig into his wrist and he let go with a cry. “Yow!”

  The flashlight came on, lighting up the Doctor’s haggard face. “Come on, Zim. Let’s go. We’re done here.”

  “No”, Albert cried. “We can’t go back. Not now. Not to the roof.”

  The Doctor grasped his sleeve. “Come on.”

  “No, no, NO!” Albert jerked away. “We can’t! We can’t! You promised.”

  “I don’t care what I promised,” said the Doctor. “I’m leaving. Are you coming or not?”

  “No!” Albert shouted again. “I’m not coming. And you can’t make me! I’m not a Roofer! I’m not a Lifter! I’m not like you. I can make a difference -- I can make them listen.”

  “Listen? To what? Nobody’s going to listen to you, Albert; you’re insane. Trust me, I’m a doctor.”

  “I’ve seen God’s plan. I can make them understand. I know the truth.”

  “Albert.” The Doctor tried to place a hand on Albert’s shoulder, but it was angrily deflected. “Albert, the truth is that I’m standing in the dark in a sewer with a lunatic, being hunted by an animal that shouldn’t even exist, and I want to go home. Don’t make me leave you here.”