Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 8

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  The creek meandered upstream through the trees to the castle in the distance, and Crush along with Simon, the small primate that had befriended Crush in the forest, followed the muddy banks to the edge of the open lot at the backside of the castle. There, they could see that the stream poured out from beneath the castle through an arched metal gate in the concrete foundation that was shaped like a port hole. Crush squinted as his eyes shot back and forth along the perimeter of the back wall, and then he placed his ear to the ground to listen to the vibrations in the soil. Sniffing the air and detecting nothing but the smell of urine, he finally concluded that it was safe to venture out into the open for a moment, as long as they moved quickly with their plan.

  Crush looked both ways one last time before tearing out of the bushes in a duck and run pattern across the yard. Then he took the lead by following along the creek side to the gated hole in the castle wall where he slipped between the bars to vanish into the mouth of the creek. Simon followed along behind, galloping at full speed with all four paws on the ground, and once Crush had entered the hole in the wall, he darted through the gap in the metal bars with one flying leap.

  The inside of the entrance was not as glamorous as Crush would have liked to imagine. Taking the strong odor in the air and putting it together with the appearance of the oily film that reflected on the surface of the slowly flowing water, Crush inferred that they were traveling upstream in a drainage pipe. There was no way to tell how far they would have to go with their legs knee deep in what he could only refer to as muck, but gauging from the size of the castle, the distance to a toilet should be no more than a hundred feet. Finding the right one would be the challenge. Neither he nor Simon knew where Boulder was being held, and unless the man of stone was chafing his legs together, there was no way that he would have a chance to catch the scent of smoking flint over the pervasive smell that was overloading his senses just now. The best that he could hope for would be that they picked the correct section of pipe to stick their head out. Just the thought of what they were actually doing was enough to make Crush gag, but he kept inhaling through his mouth and hoping that he would not contract some alien form of giant hepatitis.

  “The farticle count in here is up to my cheeks,” he thought to himself as he gagged on the robust smell that drifted throughout the chamber. Simon could not stand the odor either, and the monkey had climbed onto Crush’s back to keep his paws from getting dirty in the filthy water. The remnants of filth dripped from the monkey’s limbs and onto his clothes, yet he had compassion on his little friend. “I don’t blame you, little fellow,” he said over his shoulder. “I wish I could get my feet out of it, too.” They walked at least twenty-five paces into the shadows where they ran into a wall that changed direction and traveled upward. “This must be the turn in the piping, an elbow or a joint of some sort. Pretty crafty work for savages, don’t you think, Simon?” The monkey did not answer the question, however, and Crush would have been surprised if he did. Curiously, Simon did tap on Crush’s shoulder, and he pointed straight upward into the circular shaft. High up in the tube, there was a circular opening that appeared to be lit with white light, which was the positive sign that Crush had been hoping for. Putting his finger to his lips to indicate silence, Crush extended his claws from his fingertips, and he dug the points into a small indention in the pipe located over his head. He then pulled himself upward with one hand as he dug the other claw in higher than the first. Slowly he tugged himself higher, realizing that he needed the claws on his bare feet if he were going to make any progress past the first notch. Letting go, he jumped back down into the water, and with much regret, he held up his feet one at a time and took off each of the filthy shoes. He then tied them together loosely and left them soaking in the refuse at the corner junction in the pipe. With the raw sewage covering his bare toes, he started the climb up the drain pipe once again. This time, he climbed with greater prowess.

  “I’m taking a long bath when we get to that river that Boulder talked about on the other side of Ecklebee Forest,” Crush told Simon, and he scaled the interior of the pipe to a tee-shaped junction that led off horizontally into the dark. Crush looked down in the tunnel, but there was nothing there for him to see. “Think we ought to go that way?” he leaned back and asked Simon. Simon did not answer with his voice, but with his hands. He simply pointed upward, and Crush understood the signal. “Yeah, if you can’t see anything, it’s probably not safe,” he agreed and scrambled up past the first junction in the piping just in time for a flood of water to come barreling out and down the drainage pipe. Crush looked down and shook his head. “My boots have put up with a lot of crap before, but this is ridiculous,” he said as he climbed up the pipe to the next junction where light was coming through from only a few feet away. This time Crush decided to slither through the horizontal pipe to find his way out of the fecal catacombs, and Simon ducked his head as Crush speedily crawled to the edge of the water trap that separated air from solid waste. Crush crawled to the top of the curved pipe and looked down at the steady water level as it shimmered on the surface. Taking a deep breath, he dove in head first with the monkey around his neck, and he swam ten feet to the opening in the porcelain.

  At the end of the narrow tunnel, Crush popped his head out of the giant toilet bowl and examined the room around them. The space was relatively small for a giant, and Crush figured that this room must only be used as a restroom, which was more civilized than he would have expected. There was a torch on one of the four walls which lit the room as well as four dark walls will allow, and there was a large pile of leaves stacked unusually high next to the toilet bowl. Crush gently flung Simon over the lip of the bowl and into the chamber, and then he pulled himself over the side where the leaves were piled. Taking a few minutes to clean himself up, Crush wiped himself down from head to toe with leaves from the pile and threw the waste into the toilet. Ready for action, he sprinted to the chamber door which was cracked open just enough to see outside into a long torch lit hallway. The passage appeared to be empty for the time being, and with his keen sense of hearing, he could perceive that no one was coming or going. Taking the opportunity that was available, Crush stepped out into the hallway and ran toward the nearest doorway where he then pressed himself flat up against the wooden door and listened for any movements on the other side. Simon quickly joined him, and when they heard no signs of activity coming from inside, Crush scaled the door molding where the giant knob was situated. Reaching out to touch the bone-carved handle, Crush twisted the knob around to rotate the spindle and released the latch from the frame. The hinges creaked as the enormous door swung inward a foot under its own weight, and Crush held onto the handle with both hands to keep himself from falling. When the door had stopped moving, he dropped back down to the floor, and he and Simon darted inside to lean against the other side of the door to close it once again. After the door was shut, they each breathed a sigh of relief.

  The room was an interior room and was dark inside as there were no windows in the walls, and Crush waited for a few moments for his eyes to readjust to the lack of light. As they leaned against the wooden door and waited for their eyesight to acclimate, loud footsteps trudged past the door and down the hallway in the opposite direction they had come, and they listened as the rest room door closed. Crush held his breath in hopes that no one would notice the mess they had made in the giant toilet. There was an awkward silence for what felt like an eternity but was only a few minutes, and then with relief, he heard the sound of a gigantic toilet flushing coming from the room across the hallway. Crush placed his hand on his forehead with relief that the mess that they had made while venturing through the toilet had gone undetected. By the sounds of the footsteps, the giant then started walking back up the hallway, and everything seemed fine until the shadows of the giant’s legs crossed the threshold and stopped in front of the room where Crush and Simon were now hidden.
The knob to the door turned, and the hinges squeaked open, letting the light of the torches and the shadow of the giant stream through.