by Brian A. Bernhard
There is something about the fragrance of a thing that makes some folks want to kill for it. There is also something about the taste of that same thing that makes some folks commit suicide, but not me, boy-oh-boy.
I am one of them there independent thinkers. No matter how good a thing looks, or how much everyone else desires it, I’ve got better things to do than to step into one of them death traps. I have seen way too many of my friends and family get seduced by the odoriferous emanations of Emmenthaler and eventually end-up as the protein supply at your local soup kitchen. I am really not interested in that sort of lifestyle or death-style, whichever the case may be. The thrill of the hunt is for the birds.
It is with great trepidation that I tell you folks what happened to me just a few nights ago, in this very cesspool that we all refer to as “The Nest.” I was waltzing my way around the corner of the fifth green pipe on the left, in the red sector of zone “B”, when I happened to notice two giant glowing eyes piercing the darkness directly into my little thumping heart. I felt the pressure of the gaze stabbing into my tiny aortic valve. I knew deep within my bowels that it must be “Whiskers”, the demonic feline that hangs out with the “Ripper Gang” under Thirty-forth and MacDougall Street.
Whiskers, I might add, is not your typical sewer cat: He has the eyes of a hawk, the claws of a lion, and the heart of the most evil serpent you could ever imagine, multiplied by two. He also has a fetish for rodents and cheese.
That very instant, I turned tail and ran as fast as I could in the other direction. I was pounding the pipe harder than ever before, but for some strange reason I did not feel like I was gaining any ground. Suddenly, I felt a maddening pain shoot up my spine and I realized that Whiskers had caught my tail with his dewclaw. I thought in that instant that I was done-for. This was the end of me. I was dinner. Then the oddest thing happened. I was so freaked out and terrified that an eruption of projectile fecal matter launched from my lower abdominal area with the force of a nitrogen powered air rifle and knocked the savage beast square in the left eye. The bastard was not ready for the power of my fear; he lost his grip on my tail and the green pipe we were traveling on. Whiskers plummeted to his demise in the raging river of sewage below.
I could not believe that I just had an encounter with Whiskers and was still alive. I started to head back home, when my nasal passage was inflicted with that Swiss magic. Uncontrollably, my body was lifted up and I floated down the pipes to the source of that mystical aroma. I arrived at what must have been the largest slice of creamy perforated congealed milk I have ever seen! Unfortunately, it was perched high aloft one of those disastrous chopping blocks. I could not control my addiction. I needed just a little taste on my tongue. So I climbed to the peak and reached out for my drug of choice…and suddenly…crack!
I thought I was a goner, my short life had flashed before my eyes. I only saw darkness, until I realized I still had my eyelids closed. When I opened them, I noticed I was not squished, or trapped. I’d heard the crack of the guillotine and I was still alive. When I looked around, I could see the trap had been sprung, but no one was dead. I then saw the stumpy severed remnant of what Whiskers left me for a tail; it was touching the tightly clamped guillotine but was not long enough to be pinned underneath. I proceeded to finish off that magical aged milk product until I passed out into a food coma, got eaten by a family of cockroaches on their way home from a little league game and was reincarnated to tell you my story as a thinking, stinking block of Limburger.
Brian A. Bernhard©2010
