Work Text:
Mr. Awful sits on his knobbly chair in preparation for his evening activities. He has been on the toilet all day with horrible poos, so the last thing he’d have wanted to do is sit down. But as the cuckoo began to ‘oo’ his knees began to bend involuntarily, and the knobbly chair was the closest thing to a toilet in the vicinity. Mr. Awful did not particularly like to poo, or bend, or cry about his knees, but it seemed as if his body betrayed him, and every day, he found himself repeating the same three actions with scarcely any time to eat or call his family before the minor chanting of ‘poo, poo, poo, poo’ rumbled from his cusps.
If time had been on his side, the ordeal would have perhaps felt a little kinder. If the cuckoo didn't ‘oo’ each half-hour and lock, unlock his knees to release him from the horrid bowl or shit-stained knobbly sofa, with Saturn's purple ring crossing over terrible bum cheeks.
He often thinks of the life he lived before, and the smells that surrounded the memories. The god-awful pickle juice Maggie patted over her neck and wrists before she visited, and the way in which she moved, head upturned to the ceiling and both arms up as if she were holding trays of sandwiches, ensuring maximum-pickle was experienced. Yes, the parties sit well and clear in Mr. Awful’s nog. He had once scalded Arthur for bumming the dog when the rest of the family were eating; right on the table; right on top of the boiled eggs. The horrible breakfasts were now sweet nostalgia in his mind, and the uncomfortable grunts shaking the dining room table became only the rhythmic ‘oo’s of the unbearable cuckoo.
“When will it end for me?” says Mr. Awful to no one, “Oh dear - I shall never not be sat!” Everything stank of poo and none of the light-bulbs worked. And then sometimes a pigeon would get in but they could never find a way out so it just died in the house and now there’s a stinking pile of pigeons on the coffee table as well as the rotting poo stench.
Initially, the pigeon pile was revered by Mr. Awful, but he had come to be thankful for its presence as he was no longer obtaining sustenance from the fridge juices. At times like this, Mr. Awful wished he had not been such a strict vegetarian in life as his only meat options were pigeon, fly and his own skin fragments that floated in the air, floated in the bath or were smeared into the carpet; stuck to the soles of his shoes.
Maggie smelt incredible, an unbelievable pickle, the richest pickle whiff e’er did sniff. Too bad she fell down that manhole. They never found a body so people still had hope that she had perhaps colonised the sewer with a half human half rat race, but the lack of rat-people soon dimmed that possibility. Mr. Awful was certain she had perished, or at least, he hoped. The steaming poo would have overwhelmed the brine and- well, who could possibly imagine a world where Margaret was not, in some way, sniffing pickle. Death would have been a kindness, and Mr. Awful’s hope was that the universe would spare him the same, but if did not half feel like an eternity in the house, and he would never feel the benefit of change when he died, instead, just the endless rumble of ‘poo, poo, poo, poo.’ echoing brilliantly from the cartilage of his cusps.