I stomped along the muddy bank of the Des Plaines River until I found the drainpipe. Long before, city workers had barred it shut with an iron grate to keep animals from nesting and retarded children from wandering in to paint the concrete wall with hand-wiped creamy feces. Now it was rusty, and I had no trouble bending it open with a hammer. I clicked on my flashlight and traveled forth, hunching over as the pipe narrowed. Soon I was on my knees.

The gurgling trickles of water amplified within the narrow confines, echoing and percolating. I felt like a lump of milkshake stuck in a straw until I passed underneath the street. There I felt like a battery in a vibrator. Then I reached the other side of street, nearer to my littered stash, away from traffic. Milkshake, vibrator, milkshake, cocaine.

There it was, dry and unmolested. I scooped up the baggie and gave it a little kiss. "Oh my darling! I've come around the mountain!" I untied the little knot and scooped out a grainy pile of powder with my overlong pinky nail. Inhale, up the chute. I licked my pinky and got it all slobbery with saliva before jamming it up my nostril. The spit would help break down the uncrushed boulders velcroed to my nosehairs, allowing them to liquefy and seep into my bloodstream.

People who don't use cocaine are unaware that the first couple lines accelerate the last stop on the digestive train. Moments after my ecstatic exhalation of post snort joy, I felt a familiar rumble and squeak from down below. I had leprechauns with billy clubs pounding away on the inside of my sphincter, desperate to squeeze out and splash into a porcelain basin. Unbeknownst to my insistent little fecal goblins, I was not sitting on a toilet. I was laying on my side in a puddle of mud and leaves underneath the street, doing drugs, listening to the thunder.

Thunder? Was that lightning I just saw flash through the grate? Yes indeed. Water was falling from the sky, and it was puddling on lawns and curbs and idle windshields, washing away the accumulated scum of pollution and erosion. Washing the world and flushing it all into the sewer, where I lay jacked up and desperate to poo.

I quickly began to crab crawl backwards. Time to go wash off, do more coke, slug cheap beer, and karaoke old Wilco songs with prominent banjos. I shimmied and snaked back towards the river, mindful to keep my quivering butthole tightly clenched. Sure, these ratty old duds were already ruined, but they were just dirty on the outside. Splattering my jockeys from the inside would add a whole new level of discomfort to this subterranean expedition.

I wasn't going to make it in time. I realized that sad truth and decided an evasive maneuver was needed. I had enough stretch room in the tunnel to unbuckle my belt, undo my zipper, and shuck my pants off down to the knees. So I did and relaxed my posterior clench. Relief exploded in the form of abstract brown sludge spraying noisily in several directions, a kaleidoscope of wet brown shrapnel speckling the concrete, or splashing into the shallow stream of water, sinking like depth charge duds.

I should've known better than to eat nothing but Spaghetti O's with Taco Bell sauce for two days straight. That's what happens when you budget more for illegal confections than actual sustenance. One day you're in a 7-11 looking for price tags that read 49 cents, and the next day you end up half-naked in the sewer, dripping with spicy shit.

I made a mistake. I should've held that blast inside. I had no way to wipe, and now the mess was in my path. I still had to crawl through my gleaming feces to escape the sewer. I should've done it with my pants still on and endured the rest of my journey with a couple cans worth of moist Purina in my shorts. Now it would be streaked all over me.

I pulled my pants back up to my waist, cringing as my garments smeared my excrement, causing the cloth to stick to me. Poo is glue, I discovered. I reached into my pocket and took the cocaine back out, and I served myself another helping.

The thunder began to crack with increasing frequency, and the rain increased to a torrential downpour. Bad news. Time to flee, and think no more of the bog turtles in my way, those angry sludge turtles I'd evicted from my hiney without proper legal notice.

I got moving. Water poured into the pipe from the storm drain up the line from me. The water level began to rise, and I became nervous. That's when I heard the chittering. Something else was in these sewers, desperate to escape the rising tide just like me. I shone my flashlight and saw them, at least a hundred, scampering towards me with red eyes, mangy brown fur, and chirpy panic. Rats.

Sorry, but this story is not over. Yes, there's more due. 2:36 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm