TWT
Issue #1
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Issue #7
Pete's Page
by Pete Nelson
June 1, 1990
The warm weather causes an algae bloom in the lake...surface of green sudsy material, water as it washes up onto the sides of the jetty actually thick with green, like pea soup.
Near the water, the stench is incredible, stupefying, nauseating. (A day later, I can still smell it.) But there are people sitting, picnicking even, right next to the water!
They are smiling, sunning, and the wind off the water is blowing that stench constantly upon them. Five minutes is all I can take. I retreat, overcome by fumes: an hallucination:
Navigating a Prairie-Schooner-type wagon westward, my wagon train buddies and I encounter a strangely humid and overgrown region in the area of northern Utah. A similar smell.
The temperature rises; we decide to press on through it. Navigation is difficult, road choked with ferns. Lemurs overhead. Gradually, wilderness gives way to a sort of abandoned plantation area: choked fountains filled with moldering, fallen leaves, green lichen on stone walls, some rusty croquet things...
I recover my proper senses—the stench remains, no one seems to have noticed my lapse. In fact, most of their attention is given to the bikini girl chasing—ducks? Is she running after ducks? The smell seems to have affected both her and her intended...prey?
The ducks seem unable to take off; they waddle drunkenly, as does she. As I watch, she catches one, sinks teeth in, horrible duck-agony, small children and parents scattering, the scene wavers and resolves itself into a woman holding a parrot, wavers again, I flee.
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