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The sun arose over the city of Fouldune and began burning off the morning fog that slowly lifted up from the river. A rooster crowed in the distance. A band of ducks scurried across the main road. An old man stood on a corner and sold dirty magazines in brown paper bags.
Fouldune was much larger than Timbrook, and was strategically located on the Mea Culpa River, which ran parallel to the city on its southeastern side. A weathered dock showed the location of the city to passing riverboats and the occasional floating corpse.
A small wooden structure was located next to the dock and therein lived an artful dodger by the name of Ballooka Sawtooth, an ex-sailor in the Royal Navy of Bubbyland ― a country that had only one ship and not a single large body of water.
A thin, rocky trail led up the shore to the town proper. Several shops lined this road, which passed through the center of town, and connected with the main thoroughfare in the region. It was called 'the old road' — for it was, well, very old. It ran from the western city of Valdorlok, through Fouldune, and continued on to the fortified city of Carbuckle, and then, even further northeast, to the cities of Rottweillor and Walder. A smaller side road jutted from this main artery just outside of Fouldune and led to Timbrook — the infamous 'road to nowhere.'
Fouldune was just a stop on the way to the other much larger, or strategically more important towns and cities in the region. But, over time, the river town had become famous for its 24-hour waffle houses, wagon repair shops, gambling dens, and bargain-priced brothels. There's an old saying about the town, which pretty much describes its reputation: 'All food, freight, and sexually-transmitted diseases eventually pass through Fouldune.'
Whenever a wagon driver, or tradesman, or insurance salesman comes down with strangely-placed blisters, or happens to find tiny arthropods crawling through his little curlies, his suspicious mate would, at some point, be bound to ask: "You stopped in Fouldune, didn't ya?"
Smugglers, outlaws, bandits, thieves, and shifty-eyed public accountants all hung out there, whispering to each other in dark alleys and dimly lit pubs, or discussing tax laws in the lobbies of various houses of ill repute. Unsavory characters of all shapes and shoe sizes converged there, and anything that can be bought and sold was fair game in its markets: stolen kisses, pinched pennies, snagged hosiery, fenced fences, pocketed picks, fleeced sheep, and even poached eggs —all were available any time day or night.
Unlike Timbrook, there was actually a police force of sorts — a few spindly guards under the direction of Sheriff John Brown. They kept a close watch on the activities practiced, and took a large cut of the action. They supposedly patrolled the roads, but could be easily persuaded by a small bag of gold or a nicely buttered goose, or sometimes by just making a scary face at them. After such actions, they would simply look in the other direction ― or perhaps scream and run in that direction ― while bandits pillaged a wagonload of National Geographic magazines or molested the animals in a circus caravan.
The streets were littered with horse traders and cattle rustlers, wrinkled alcoholics and laid-off court jesters. Eight out of every ten people seen would be wearing a hood of some sort, and many also wore dark sunglasses, or trench coats with crisp fedoras. Most had shifty eyes and broken noses or dimpled chins and pinky rings. Leisure suits were a big hit here back in '96, but had recently died out as a fashion gesture. Everyone seemed to have a nickname, like 'Two-Toes', 'Snake-Eyes', 'Bullet-Head', or just 'Nick-Name'.
Fouldune, though, was a melting pot of sorts ― that is, if you liked your stew heavy on the sinister side, with an ingredient list that contained: 'one knife between the shoulder blades'.
However, there were a few residents you could invite to a bar mitzvah, and not have to worry about them shaking down the hired band for loose change and bus tokens. One such citizen was Harv Matters, and his wife Delores, and their little demon of a son, Harv-2, who actually, you might not invite anywhere unless you liked your shins repeatedly kicked.
On this particular morning, while the rest of the city slowly awoke to the usual morning racket, Harv Matters awoke to a horrible 'plunking' sound. Along with the noise came an agonizing throbbing inside his head.
As tiny switches inside his brain slowly sputtered 'on', he suddenly realized that the loud plunking sounds and throbbing pain were somehow related.
This notion was made ever more clear as a third sound was added to the syncopated plunking and throbbing, specifically — his own voice — which vocalized each pulse of pain with a very audible squawk. The entire morning opus went something like this:
'Plunk!' Throbbing pain. "Oh!"
'Plunk!' Throbbing pain. "Oh!"
'Plunk!' Throbbing pain. "Oh!"
Finally, when most of the functional switches inside his cranium were turned on, and his eyelids fluttered open, he realized that his darling son, the light of his life, had somehow mistaken his head for an anvil. He saw his little pride and joy sitting upon his chest and smiling like only a two-year old can smile, as he repeatedly brought a tiny silver hammer down upon Harv's ringing skull. Now, a third sound was added to the morning musical, namely Harv-2's mischievous laugh.
'Plunk!' Throbbing pain. "Oh!" Hee-hee!
'Plunk!' Throbbing pain. "Oh!" Hee-hee!
'Plunk!' Throbbing pain. "Oh!" Hee-hee!
It was at that point that Harv dramatically took hold of the situation by actually taking hold of the little hammer that his beautiful offspring was wielding, and giving the seed of his loins a nice, quality, pinch to the left earlobe. A high-pitched squeal ― like a piglet caught in a milking machine ― filled the room and into Harv's throbbing head as he tried to stand up next to his bed. The sound was so intense that it made Harv tightly shut his eyelids and take his hands and firmly clasp them over his ears.
This, unfortunately, led to him inadvertently dropping the small hammer, which fell directly on top of his big toe, and sent him hopping about the bedroom like a one-legged kangaroo. This action did, however stop Harv-2's wailing, and replaced it with a fit of loud giggling.
Delores, Harv's slightly better half, rushed into the bedroom and was not immediately impressed by her husband's child-rearing techniques.
"Wha...?" she gasped, putting her hands to her mouth in shock.
Meanwhile, Harv-2, his face filled with gleeful laughter, pointed at his father and said: "Da-dee cray-zee."
"Yes, he is," his mother agreed. A small smile broke upon Delores' face and it would stay there for exactly one minute and thirteen seconds, at which point it would be replaced by a look of surprise, and then, deep concern. This was due to the fact that exactly one minute and twelve seconds later, she saw her husband stub his toe on a table leg.
Harv's mind at that point might have contemplated the possibility that a man, hopping around in his bedroom, could — within fairly quick succession — injure both of his big toes. But, Harv's brain had no opportunity to calculate such figures, for after the pain of the second injury shot up his leg, he immediately lost what little balance he had, and fell out the opened bedroom window ― thumping his head upon the sash as he went.
It was at that precise moment that Delores's expression changed to one of deep concern. His son, however, fell flat on the floor — screaming in uncontrollable, high-pitched laughter.
Harv awoke a minute or so later for the second time in the same morning. He surprisingly felt quite warm and comfortable. It seemed as if he was still in some type of soothing dream-state, as he felt his body enveloped in a warm and calming moistness. He thought that this exact sensation must be what babies feel while still locked within their mother's womb, and somewhere deep within his relatively small skull he perceived the vestiges of a faded, dust-covered memory starting to spurt out. A memory that had slowly wriggled free of its gray, sinewy bonds of repression, and burst into the dank cathedral of his consciousness.
'Yes,' he suddenly thought, 'it is all coming back to me...'
Slowly, he began to remember what it felt like inside his own mother's womb. It was serene and calm and warm, with only soft and muffled sounds surrounding him.
He smiled and curled up into a little fetal ball ― basking deep in the old, recessed memory. He saw a pink, watery world through tiny, underdeveloped eyeballs. He heard his mother's ever-present heartbeat, and her voice, as she violently screamed at the neighbors. He felt the warmth of supreme comfort that comes only when encapsulated inside a liquid-filled sac of flesh and blood. He was once again in the first world he had ever known, the womb-world of his creation, and he was absolutely, perfectly, content.
Then, the smell hit him.
Gradually, hesitantly, he began to realize that just because one is engulfed in a warm, hushed moistness, one is not necessarily in a womb, and even though his present state of being had brought back some long-forgotten memories, one thing was positively, absolutely, out of place.
It was the horrendous stench!
It broke through his womb-ish state of bliss like a premature caesarian extraction.
"Good Lord!" Harv suddenly blurted out, "What's that horrible smell?"
A strange, ratchety, old voice replied, "Uh, might be that wagon full of horse crap you're lying in."
It was at that point that Harv's ears were filled with the most irritating and fluidic laugh he had ever heard. For a second or two, he thought that maybe one of his neighbors was trying to flush a hyena down a toilet.
Harv rose to his feet amidst the sloshing and slorking sounds, as the manure held on to him much the same way a psychotic lover holds on to 'the only person in the world that truly understands me!'
He started breathing through his mouth — his face contorting to reflect the ever-rising amount of stench that his movements had caused. "Good grief!" he exclaimed, "If my mother's placental fluid smelled anything like that, I'd have been out of there in two weeks!"
He wiped his eyes with the front of his shirt, and saw standing before him a pile of ratty clothes that to some extent resembled an old man. His grimy and shriveled little skull was slightly cocked to the left. A thin and gravelly voice asked: "What was that about your mother's placenta?" The old man wheezed, before spitting a brackish material from out of his mouth and onto the street.
"Nothing, nothing..." Harv replied. He looked at his arms and legs and saw them covered in a layer of greenish-brown dung. He looked back at the cart and saw the impression of his body in the mound of horse manure — a dark olive silhouette surrounded by a dried, brown heap. Steam and flies lifted from the massive mess.
He turned and asked the elderly bucket of bones, "How did I wind up in a cart of horse manure?"
The old man just spat, and then opened his mouth slightly as the area was again filled with the same horrible, phlegm-filled sound as before.
Harv suddenly looked about. "Good Lord!" he screamed, "did somebody just try to flush a hyena down a toilet again?'
He soon realized however, that the sound was actually the old man's screeching attempt at laughter. Harv rolled his eyes and smirked before hearing his wife's voice from above. Looking up, he was suddenly doused by a bucket-full of water — followed a few seconds later by the bucket itself — which cracked him right in the forehead.
It was the last thing Harv felt that beautiful morning, and he never even saw it coming.
ns 15.158.61.48da2
