THE GUTTER

A mysterious little journey along a filthy old gutter...

Slimebags was having a day out. Not of this or any other world, he lived on the edges of dirty thoughts and filthier dreams and touched, every so often, on the unclean effluence of the dark side of humanity’s works. Today he was on his way to Nowhere, his very favourite place. Even Slimebags had a favourite place! It ran by the edge of an old, old, road and it was always wretched.

Slimebags might have had real seeing eyes the way he anticipated his first move. He slithered there, poised to love, his greedy eyes taking in the length and breadth and even the height of the gutter. It was all he’d ever dreamed of, that slippery, slimy, nauseatingly stinking path that led, by the edge of a road that was rumoured to have its origin in Roman times, towards a distant grilled drain.

Slimebags wanted to get into that highway, that edge of existence where not even slugs can survive for long, where the only substances are toxic and where, every so often, the racing rubber of passing pantechnicons hisses by and decapitates everything in their path. He wanted to dice with that kind of death in the same way as a pirate of old wanted to dice with the wild oceans of the Pacific or a Roman swordsman with his sword.

It was in his blood, and he knew it, and knowing it, he loved it.

So he made that next move. He squelched … his only kind of movement … onto the first inch of the gutter. He almost shouted his joy at the Universe, he even tried to holla and cheer, but lacking any organs capable of creating sound of any sort he remained silent, merely able to rejoice in his own cleverness.

And he started moving along.

There was a cascade into the gutter, a liquid waterfall of monumental proportions, and its stream of toxic fluids washed over him as he paused under it, and waited, his joy almost unrivalled by any pleasure anywhere under any sky.

This was Heaven! This was what Slimebags had been created for, but all too soon the vibrant, acrid stream of bitterness faltered and came to an end as a diseased old tramp somewhere off the gutter tucked his grey old penis away and buttoned his flies.

But the nectar was still washing around Slimebags, and he was still contemplating the absolute joys of this Heaven.

A pantechnicon rumbled past, its wheels missing him, one, two, three, four, by the merest hair’s breadth as they stirred up the liquid around him, mixing it with the detritus of the gutter, left its rubbery imprint in the filth and was gone.

He didn’t see the pooch that wagged its tail and strained on its lead to crouch over Slimebags’ gutter, but the pooch was there and it strained to open its bowel while the dizzy beauty who whispered sweet nothings at it tugged lightly on the lead and tried to get it to move along.

“Come along, darling, that gutter’s too filthy for you,” she cooed, and the pooch, seeing the sense behind her words, blasted the gutter with a noxious cloud of digestion gases and trotted obediently off.

Slimebags was mortified. But his life had always been like that, having delights paraded before him only to have them snatched away at the last minute. So he moved on, shaking what passed for his head and grumbling to himself.

The cigarette end was till glowing when it landed as close to him as anything could be without actually smashing into him, and it had curls of smoke mixed with the steam it created the instant it landed in stale urine all around it and melting into the clearness of the air before many seconds passed.

It was that gap of seconds that intoxicated Slimebags, that and, maybe, the concentrated nicotine that was the main constituent of the smoke. And to make his joy complete and unbounded, the youth who had flicked the smouldering cigarette end followed it with a spit of toxic saliva which landed right next to it in Slimebags’ gutter. He soaked it all up, the filthy smoke and filthier saliva, he bathed in it, he revelled in it, he allowed its toxic chemicals to be absorbed by his … it wasn’t a brain exactly but it was the assortment of cells that sort of guided him along … and he might have greeted his god or whatever he believed in there and then had it not been for the kitten.

Because the kitten was all for play, all for leaping and pawing and filling its happy little heart with joy, and the kitten saw Slimebags. Arching its back and hissing with delight the kitten pounced, and had not the still flowing river of tramp’s urine saved him by sweeping him along Slimebags might at this very moment be residing in one small kitten’s belly, but it did save him and the kitten ended up being grabbed by the sweetest little girl you ever did see and told in no uncertain terms not to be a filthy kitty, naughty, naughty, naughty kitty, you’ll get sick and die in that filthy mess, you really will…

The grill of the drain was getting nearer, and the rush of fluids grew stronger, sweeping Slimebags along more swiftly when a teenage lout slung half a can of a popular sugary fizzy drink away, and it landed in the gutter, slightly upstream from Slimebags, and went some way to almost purifying the gunge that was glugging so morbidly along.

And it took Slimebags to the very lip of the drain.

To the very portal of its depths that yawned like a Stygian invitation right before him.

The accumulated fluids and greases and globules and filth of the ages lay beneath him, and Slimebags sighed his delight as he slowly detached himself from the gutter, the turgid running gutter with its accumulation of absolute filth, and slowly, majestically, started his final descent into the unknown, catching the tiniest glimpse, as he went, of a brilliant electronic sign which suddenly flickered and flashed the message POLITICIANS BOTTOM FLOOR … ALL OTHERS ABANDON HOPE…

And the gutter and its contents slopped along.

© Peter Rogerson 28.05.17