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Chapter Three

To their amazement, life did spring from the packet of serpent dust.

It just wasn’t anywhere near what they thought it would be.

Within five days, there were half a dozen wriggling, gray spermy things swimming about. They were a far cry from the smiling Amazing Sea Serpents in the comics.

“Maybe they’ll get a lot bigger once we start feeding them,” Patrick said, amazed but disappointed.

“Let’s just feed them now.”

“It said we have to wait seven days.”

David unfolded the corner of the food packet and sprinkled half in the tank. The rank odor made them both back away.

“There, now let’s see how fast they grow,” he said.

“I hope they smell better when they’re bigger,” Patrick said.

The fledgling sea serpents didn’t rise to the top to get at the food. They just kept pulsating in the water, ignorant to the bounty above them.

“I guess those are all dead ones,” Patrick said, pointing to all of the black balls of sludge at the bottom. Oddly enough, the dead ones were bigger than the living specks.

“Or maybe they’re sea serpent shit. Get one on your finger and smell it.”

“You sniff sea serpent shit.”

“No freaking way. If it smells as bad as the food, I’ll throw up,” David said.

“If it smells as bad as your farts, I’ll throw up, too.”

Baseball camp started for the boys and it was five days before they checked on the sea serpents again.

The second they entered the kitchen, they stopped dead in their Keds.

Patrick waved at the air. “Whoa, it smells like your mother’s cabbage.”

“Or a dead mouse. Jeez.”

The closer they got to the sea serpent tank, the more they realized exactly where the stench was coming from.

“Well, that’s interesting,” David said. He picked the tank up, bringing it close to his face while pinching his nose shut. Some of the water had evaporated. It was getting so murky, they could barely see the living sea serpents.

“Only three left,” Patrick said. “And they’re the same size as they were last week. I can’t believe our parents were right.”

“Yeah, but look at this.” David pointed to the bottom of the serpent tank. It was filled with the black sludge balls. They had tripled in size. “Their shit keeps growing!”

“They’re just absorbing the water. …I think.” Patrick tucked the collar of his shirt over his nose to filter out the heady sea serpent aroma.

“We gotta get these things out of here. If my mother or father come down here and smell this, they’re going to kill me.”

“Should we flush them?” Patrick felt bad about killing the three sea serpents that had survived, but not bad enough to stop David.

“What if the toilet backs up? Then they’ll be all over the floor. I have a better idea.”

Patrick followed David out of the house. They marched down the block, stopping above the sewer grate on the corner. This was the same sewer they fished tennis and Wiffle balls out of with coat hangers, the balls covered in muck but good enough to play with after a thorough soaking in a bucket of hot water and laundry detergent.

All of the fathers also used the sewer to dump used motor oil, old chemical stuff for their lawns and gardens and basically anything gross and liquid they wanted to get rid of.

It was a fitting resting place for the boys’ first bitter disappointment in US commerce.

“You want to say a few words?” David asked with a smirk.

“So long, Amazing Sea Serpents. It was smelly and nasty while it lasted.”

David tipped the tank over, the grimy water, sea serpents and sludge balls splashing across the iron grate, pouring through the holes and disappearing into the dark sewer with a soft echo.

“Let’s put the tank in Ernie’s garbage,” David said. “I’m sure that old crank will appreciate the stink.”

“Good one.”

Ernie was the neighborhood asshole—a man bent on making the lives of every child miserable by chasing them off his sidewalk and even attempting to prevent them from walking in the street by his house.

They snuck to the side of his house and quietly stuck the tank in one of his pristine metal garbage pails. There were several paper bags of trash inside. David hid the tank between two of the bags.

Sprinting away from their dirty deed, they ducked into Patrick’s yard, chests heaving.

“No more buying stuff from comics,” Patrick said.

“And no more Wonder Woman,” David added.

Five houses down, in the cloying humidity of the sewer, the remains of the Amazing Sea Serpents seeped into a coagulated mass of muck. There was a faint hiss, then a blue tendril of smoke that twisted down the tunnel.

A wet and ragged rat out for an afternoon of foraging skittered headlong into the smoke. Its body went rigid. It turned and ran as far away from the source of the smoke as it could.

Food could wait.