Jessie edged his feet into the thick sludge and sighed, he had not expected his life to take such a turn when he was a younger man. The bub­bling, fes­ter­ing pool of one, Hubert Arm­strong was a par­tic­u­larly loud nail in the resound­ing cof­fin monot­ony of his exis­tence as an indus­trial cleaner.

When he was a child, Jessie had envi­sioned his life being some­what more excit­ing and inter­est­ing. He wanted to be an Archae­ol­o­gist — a reg­u­lar man of dis­cov­ery and sci­ence; some­one who ven­tured all over the world to find new and ancient trea­sures… sec­ond to that he would have liked to be a super­hero: Cap­tain Fan­tas­tic or the like.

“How’s that shit com­ing?” Burt mum­bled from behind. This man had been work­ing for Ubër-Cleaners for nine-years and con­sid­er­ing the unso­cial nature of the job, Jessie under­stood why: both Burt and soci­ety were bet­ter off apart.

“Bring up the sump-pump, I’m going in now… some­one give me a fuck­ing cookie,” Jessie mut­tered quietly.

“What?” The over­sized bal­loon of a man echoed from the van.

“I’m going to find a rub­ber ducky.” Jessie looked down at the brown sludge that rose to his water­proof knees. It was hard to move and God only knew what was in it. Hubert Arm­strong was obvi­ously not a man of stan­dards as he’d let his Olympic-size pool turn into a cesspool of rot­ting ani­mals, leaves and prob­a­bly more than one dis­ease — thank the Good Lord Jessie had generic rub­ber gloves and a paper breath­ing mask to pro­tect him from such things.

A slump­ing sound and a suck­ing motion caused the intre­pid explorer to slip for­ward a lit­tle and sud­denly he was up to his chest. Jessie con­sid­ered the notion that he was being pun­ished as he tried to wipe a speck of brown some­thing from his cheek with a clean part of his glove. Had he wronged some­one? Was he like Earl on that TV show about right­ing your wrongs to earn good Karma? If he were, he’d like to know. He wished some­one would tap on his shoul­der and explain the situation.

Some­thing akin to a tap rapped on his shoul­der, but when Jessie looked back all he saw was the bright-orange boiler-suited Burt in all his glory. “Got your pump.” Burt chewed gum as his breath­ing mask sat like a lazy crown atop his head – his gog­gles around his neck.

“Gee, thanks old buddy, old pal. What would I do with­out you?” Jessie sighed again, but tried not to actu­ally breath in. “It plugged in, ready to go?”

“Uh… no. No it isn’t. You want it plugged in then?” A scratch at his exposed wife-beater shirt beneath his boiler suit accom­pa­nied Burt’s curi­ous expres­sion. What a fine exam­ple of a human being he was.

Oh how Jessie would like to drown Burt in the sludge of Hubert Armstrong’s pool, but he couldn’t. A life more ago­niz­ing that this would likely wait, one where Jessie became the girl­friend of some cell­mate with a teddy bear fixation.

“That would be more help­ful, wouldn’t it, Burt? I mean, unless we’re going to just wave around the sump-pump whilst going ‘brrrrrrrrrr’, I don’t think it’s going to be of much use.” Jessie nar­rowed his eyes behind his stained gog­gles. “But what do you think, Burt?”

The rotund epit­ome of too many microwaved din­ners looked sky­ward, — there, Jessie could sud­denly see up the man’s nos­trils which was, nice – and chewed his gum some more. Look­ing down, he coughed into the face of Jessie not four-feet away and nod­ded. “Yeah, should prob­a­bly plug it in.”

“Bril­liant.” Jessie waved a gloved-hand in the direc­tion of the van. “Go find the gen­er­a­tor, then ask Mr. Arm­strong for an outlet.”

Burt slowly nod­ded and turned away, limp­ing off towards the house.

“GENERATOR!” Jessie yelped.

Adjust­ing in stride, Burt changed his angle and walked towards the van instead as he waved back lazily.

A wave of sui­ci­dal ten­den­cies washed over Jessie. Not able to move much, and there being no point in get­ting out just to get back in, all he could do was wait for the Leg­endary Burt of Ubër-Cleaners. What kind of hell was this?

Then some­thing gave rise to curios­ity: a brush against his leg in the sludge pool made Jessie perk up a lit­tle. There was no way any­thing could sur­vive in the pri­mor­dial soup he found him­self in. Human­ity had evolved already; what­ever had just said hello was no ances­tor of his.

Jessie looked down even though noth­ing could be seen through the goop. He didn’t want to do what he was about to do, but the sheer bore­dom of his rou­tine life egged him on. The deci­sion had been made the moment he’d woken up that morning.

Reach­ing into the slime, he did a wav­ing motion with his hand. How­ever the gunk was so heavy, so thick in nature that he could inves­ti­gate no quicker than a tor­toise. Straight­en­ing again, Jesse quirked an eye­brow then shrugged. He would just wait until the sump-pump drained the pool to find what it was that brushed up against his leg.

It was mid-day by now and the sun was heavy over­head. Wish­ing he was any­where but here, Jessie looked back for Burt then felt his leg tight­en­ing before he van­ished into the liq­uid around him. A moment passed then sud­denly a large ten­ta­cle arched out of the pool with an Ubër-Cleaner hang­ing from the end.

Jessie saw the world around him spin madly on as he tried to grasp what was hap­pen­ing. With his face­mask lost, his mouth and nose were clog­ging with the milky-green residue of the cesspool. He couldn’t call for help – or see par­tic­u­larly well – but he knew some­thing bad was happening.

Grab­bing his gog­gles and yank­ing them off, he felt the wind of fresh air smack him in the eyes. Cough­ing out what swelled in the back of his throat, Jessie called for the only man that might help him, “MISTER ARMSTRONG!”

A man casu­ally appeared on the second-floor bal­cony with a cup in his hand.

“MISTER ARMSTRONG, GRAB SOMETHING! HELP!” Jessie jerked as the ten­ta­cle was joined by a sec­ond and he swung back and forth over the slushy pool below.

Hubert Arm­strong took a sip from his cup and slid his free hand into a pocket. Glanc­ing at the sun above, he turned and entered the house. Jessie, lost in the grav­ity of his sit­u­a­tion didn’t notice the man leave. All he saw was a flat of con­crete speed­ily approach­ing his head before a crack rever­ber­ated and every­thing went black.

- — -

Burt, pre­vi­ously some­where beyond the van and likely tak­ing a cig­a­rette break, wan­dered idly back to the pool with the sump-pump in hand. “Jessie?” He searched with a lack of com­mit­ment and chewed his gum.

“Ah, Burt. How goes every­thing?” Hubert Arm­strong asked as he entered the back patio area. Fin­ish­ing off his drink, he motioned to the pool. “Where did your friend go?”

“Don’t rightly know, Mr. Hubert.” Burt nar­rowed an eye as his menial mind looked for an answer. “Prob­a­bly took a bath­room break,” he paused. “I have to plug in this pump. You got an out­let I can use?”

Hubert Arm­strong nod­ded with a smile as he stealth­ily kicked a pair of gog­gles into the pool. “Of course. This way, Burt.”