These sewer monsters are some bullshit. I never knew they were down there. I mean, I didn't believe in them and they were pretty easy to ignore. After the flood, though? Oh man.
It rained this winter. And I mean it rained. It rained and rained. The sewers were getting full of rain run-off and people were talking about pets going missing. I was out on my porch one night, arguing with my girlfriend on the phone and I heard my garbage can being kicked over. I thought it was the neighbor's kids, out in raincoats, making a mess. I jogged out to the street and saw a bunch of strewn garbage and some dark, hunched shape straightened up. It's gnarly face was lit for a second by the street lamp. It looked flat with creases and bumps all over it, like a moldy waffle with tusks. I stopped and wanted to yell, but I couldn't think of what and honestly, I was petrified. The thing was big. Black bear-sized, in rags. It was soaking and this low growl, deep like a diesel engine idling was coming out of it. Then it just turned and blew down the street. It jumped the fence to the burger place, I mean it vaulted and was gone.
People always talk about the monsters in the sewer, but then people talk a lot about a lot of things. People around here are religious loonies and there are a lot of bad drugs around here. I don't know how many times a band of people has run down my street, sprinting from some sort of Armageddon they're just hallucinating together or the times I've had to get preached to by some strung-out wacko wearing a religious sandwich-board and talking about soap. I have a fucking job, thank you and I keep my vices down to a 12-pack of Old Steel Beam on a Friday night and one doobie when Steve Miller plays the fair bandstand every summer. I guess the monsters live in the sewer because the people who settled this area chased them out of the woods when the valley cleared to build the city. Is that a nice thing to do? No, but that's progress.
After I saw the monster, I went back inside. I was soaking and my girlfriend was calling me and calling me. I answered and told her I saw a sewer monster and she just got quiet and said she'd pray for me. Did I mention that? She's tied up in all this stuff, too. I don't think it's gonna work. She took me to a service at her church once and we stood in the dark with flashlights someone had passed out, waving the beams all around yelling NOMONSTERNOMONSTERNOMONSTER and shit. I started feeling a little funny and then I remembered eating the little pills they passed out. Everyone was eating them and my girlfriend looked over like "come on...," and I took a couple. A priest of some kind started walking through the crowd, jabbering away about the monsters and signs and signals, being watchful, something about holy combat. I didn't catch any of it. After the service all these wide-eyed people with bad haircuts and worse teeth converged in a courtyard behind the church and we all chased each other around and when we caught one another, you had to pretend like you were wrestling for a couple minutes. This was a re-enactment of I have no idea what. I woke up in a big pile of people, naked in the church basement. Men, women, hairy legs and bodies tied up together everywhere. I'm pretty sure some sex stuff went on, which I wasn't happy about. I know I wouldn't have done anything. I'm not like that. I told her I wouldn't go back there.
So, admittedly, I thought monsters were fake, but as it turns out they're not. This is not making me question anything.
I'm doing two things. First, I'm breaking up with my girlfriend. Second, I'm buying a gun. The world is prettymuch going to shit and if these monsters don't get back into the sewer, they're gonna be working government jobs and TV shows will have to be about them and they'll be allowed to play football and everything. And then these religious loonies will have something to really set them off and I bet, when people get fed up with the monsters, they'll join the religion. I might even side with the monsters on that occasion.
The night I saw the monster, I came inside and changed my clothes, dried off and wrote a letter to my kids, apologizing for not being there for them. I packed a duffel bag and put it in the back of my closet. I'll send the letter out if I can't take it anymore and have to leave. My guess is that this will all blow over, but I'm getting pretty sick of it all. There's got to be a place for, regular, decent people to just be left alone.
