Underneath the city was a huge monstrous maze of malformed and malevolent sewers, drains, and those small cold, grimy, dirty spaces we are sometimes forced to clean in our cellars. Only, these small dirty, grimy and cold spaces were sometimes as big as a house, and just as full of disgusting smelly angry lightless creatures as basements are full of dusty furniture, pots, pans, appliances, broken toys and those beer bottles you haven’t returned yet but have been sitting around since last Yule party.
In one of these large holes was a dingy, grimy, rust colored, smelly, rank, furry creature covered in coarse matted hair. Usually you could add damp to that list of adjectives, but recently it had grown a layer of mold over its body that acted as a weatherproofing, preventing the filthy water of the sewer from touching its body. At the moment, it was sleeping rather soundly in its cubby hole beneath Wanderlust. That is, at one of the many moments the furry creature was usually found asleep, a smaller furry angry creature with whiskers and what looked like a rat-tail, because the creature was a rat, bit him. The very next moment, the dirty thing woke up and the rat almost threw up from the taste in its mouth.
The creature sat there for a moment scratching itself awake. He accidentally disrupted the layer of weatherproofing that covered his body, letting in a rush of cold nasty water. The previously bold creature with the rat tail, because it was a rat, suddenly realized that he was supposed to meet with a friend to divvy up a large portion of manure that the two had discovered the other day, literally high-tailed it out of there. The disgusting creature noticed the scampering critter and in turn scratched its belly, letting in another rush of cold clammy water, waking him up fully. It stretched its long spindly limbs and then It lumbered off in search of food. Usually, It went to the dock.*
*Actually it would be improper to continue referring to it as ‘It’ even if it didn’t care. There would erupt serious problems from the use of It, trying to differentiate between It and it, especially if It ran into its cousin Iit or Itt, its nephew.
In certain circles It is also known as Ititiititoonal, or Tonal for short. Therefore it is imperative that I spend the remainder of my time referring to it as Tonal for the sake of clarity and consistency. Tonal is actually its formal name used at weddings and bar mitzvahs, but I will heretofore refer to it as such. And it should be noted that the previous descriptions, i.e. disgusting, rank, smelly, are only used to provide a cultural identity to Tonal and are not to be taken as any indication of his character as a sentient being. In fact if he didn’t smell so horrible, or if one wasn’t concerned about fleas or bugs of any kind, I’m sure that he would make a positively lovely guest for tea.
Tonal usually went to the dock in search of edible delectables like fish heads, barnacles, and sea scum. Today he waded through the scummy water on his way there, trusting that the sea would provide his meal, as freshly dead fish pieces are a fine way to start of any day. He waded along until he came to a major junction in the pipes, a large street sized orifice that spewed all types of garbage from one side of the city to the other in an endless loop of flowing filthy refuse. The large pipe was met by another perpendicular pipe that spewed forth all manner of muck, creating a counter flow that swirled the slimy stuff into a small whirlpool at the center.
As it turns out, there was a large crate floating aimlessly in the center of this whirlpool spinning lethargically, because as we all know, crates are quite prideful about their direction sense. Did you ever wonder about how some crates usually end up at their proper destination even when their destination is halfway around the world, and that some packages and crates don't? It's because the ones that don’t are the crates that refuse to ask directions. So, here it floated, eternally spinning, due in large part to its stubbornness. It floated there, spinning eternally, minding its own business when Tonal ran right into it, well waded right into it, or splashed or… Anyway, the two bumped into one another.
There was a fierce explosion of apologies from the offending parties, as both were trying to be considerate of each other’s feelings. But since neither understood one another, they both quieted down eventually, the crate last because crates tend to be more apologetic when it comes to accidents than goblins.
Tonal could be considered a goblin because his Father, Ittô the first Earl of Lower Sub-sewer section 34, had found a goblin woman especially attractive after quaffing a large amount of grimy black liquid at the yearly harvest festival. The festival was located in a different place every year because there tended to be a lot of quaffing, and quaffing was murder on the carpets, causing most places to ban the event after only one harvest festival.*
*Actually the festival planners are interested in finding new places to hold their event, so, if you are interested in hosting this fine example of partying and have little trouble with out of control creatures eating your food and quaffing all over your carpet, please call the number located at the rear end of this fine tome.
That year, Ittô the first, made the moves on a drunk goblin female and before he knew it, she’d moved into his dingy bachelor pad at Third pipe on the right, Lower Sub-sewer section 34, Wanderlust. She immediately changed the curtains, threw out his porno collection and generally made the place even more dinghy with redecorating and such. So it was that Ittô the first Earl of Lower Sub-sewer section 34 and his quiet existence alone under Wanderlust, as well as his much loved bachelor Earl status suffered irrevocably. Eighteen kids later and the two put-out parents were so exhausted by their biracial baby rearing that they took a trip to the islands of floating garbage near Bar Harbor and never returned. Tonal never really considered the fate of his parents, since he’d been very young and edible when they left. He’d spent his whole childhood avoiding his brothers and sisters for fear they’d eat him, that he generally never thought about family at all except around meal-time.
Presently, Tonal was more worried about the collision with the packing crate. He was so turned around in fact, that he ventured up the wrong shaft and never made it to the docks that day. If he had, history would have been changed, and Tonal would have had sushi for breakfast. He also might have never made it into this fine volume of lore, so I’ll let you be the judge of whether or not he should thank the crate if they ever meet again.
Already, wanderlust was setting out on a strange day. In Wanderlust, everyday was strange, but this one was shaping up to be a doozy.
