Come On Down
~A Short Story From the Changes Universe~
Kelly trudged back into the cave, heading for the communal showers with the attached mud-room...which he was in intense need of and tried to ignore the groans of disgust aimed in his direction. He was covered from the top of his well-matted hair, including his prized mustache, to his shoes in a slurry made of gray river clay, river gravel, extremely filthy river sand, bits of dried grass or straw, wet leaves from the forest, compost and stale, rotted general livestock manure. It took him almost two hours to clean up and by that time the smell had run everyone else out of that part of the cavern system. He dreaded going back out in the main cavern, frankly.
"But how the hell did he get covered in the wet stuff? That's for covering fields to increase fertility for crops!" Captain Walters wanted to know.
"He let the kids lay out the course for a hundred yard dash...the ten-year-old boys, that is, without mentioning it was supposed to be used for foot races in the children's events on the Fourth. His job is to figure out where to put them this year...and I might have suggested to the boys that the Fun Factor of the track for their group would be better if it ended on the river-slide." Roy was referring to the clay-slick most of the youngsters used as a water-slide for the deeper part of the shallowish small river that ran near Cavetown, as they were calling it now.
"That would have gotten him wet and muddy, certainly, but that's all...so, where'd the rest of it come from?" Hank asked.
"They put the track in the wrong place, it ended up over the poop-pit, by the compost pile. They saw the top of the riverbank and thought the slick was too far to walk when they had one right where they were." The Marine's wife told him, giggling like mad. Her husband was bellowing his merriment.
"And?" One of the smirking gunnies was nearly salivating for the rest of that tale.
"Kelly failed to check to make sure he was where he thought he was, before he took a flying leap, he went head first into the manure." Mike Morton laughed.
"And the bits of leaf and straw?" Marco choked the words out past his own glee.
"Had to walk past last year's fields and apparently, there was a good bit of wind blowing." Joe informed him, grinning. "Little pieces and bits of very light, dried out, fine pieces of general debris stuck all over him."
"Poor little shit." John chuckled.
"Foul-smelling lil' guy, ain't he?" Walter's gaiety rang out.
"Yeah, oh man, I wish I could claim that one, cuz it's epic, but that one was entirely self-inflicted." Jane was roaring by then...but that was fine:
So was everyone else...except Chester Brian Kelly.
~ Finis~