I Am a Sludge Monster Who Lives in a Storm Drain

by Jess Taylor // online exclusive (Vol 7, Issue 2)

BONUS
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I am a sludge monster who lives in a storm drain on Bloor Street. Above me, during the day, I hear the click of hard-heeled shoes and stiff leather. My storm drain is dark.

At night, if I lie very still and let my ooze sink back into the bulk of me, I can see stars through the grate. The iron is cool at night. I press my body into the bars, hug them. Some nights I want to feel the cold.

I live below granite sidewalks on Bloor Street. Below Gucci, below Dolce and Gabbana. Below Coach and Holt Renfrew. I slither around in a black, sticky mass below Burberry. Some nights there are no stars, only the hiss of orange glow from the streetlights and storefronts that line the street above my home.

When I look at the sky, I feel connected to other things. Sometimes, on a night with no moon, I pull my mass out of the storm drain and spy. Human beings also look at the sky, longingly. Maybe when you’re made of discarded, slowly breaking-down trash, it doesn’t mean you don’t have a soul, even though no one looks at you. Just because I’m garbage doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the stars.

///

One September night, I was born. Or I came into consciousness, I don’t know. I have no one to tell me how I came to be, no one to tell me stories of sludge monsters past coming into existence. Maybe I’m the only one. When you’re the only one, time moves differently. There’s no separation between night and day. September feels the same as April, just backwards. Backwards feels backwards too. I don’t think I’m able to explain it.

///

The best thing about my home is the decoration. People throw the best things away. Things that break down into liquid and dirt become part of me, so I’m always growing stronger and faster. Things that endure furnish my home: A gold watch, slipped off a wrist and into my drain. I liked the way the metal gleamed in the light when the moon was out and full. I look at it once a day. The clock’s face reflects me back — different shades of brown, black, green, and grey, swirling together, dripping slightly. Little scraps of plastic, squashed together to make a sofa. I add to it as I grow. There are always scraps to draw from.

A towel is my carpet, stained brown from blue. I watched a little boy lose his beach towel, carrying it from a hotel in Yorkville. Once on a night with no moon, I came out to roam and found it still lying there. There was a pink blob in the centre of it, two eyes and a smile, eight legs. The rest of the towel was blue, soft. I picked it up by its edges so I wouldn’t stain it much. The fabric stuck to me so well. I draped it over a bench and left it for two more days, but the mother never came for it, and I’m sure the boy forgot it, although I thought I saw him look back and see me in the storm drain, watching.

It’s hard to see the blob with eight legs anymore. The fabric is soaked with water and mold, but I like it better that way. One of these days, it will be sludge too, and that day it will become me.

///

I only have two fears: 1. That being garbage means I have no soul 2. The night sanitation. Recently there’s been a change. It used to be a truck that brushed little bits of debris into the storm drain, where the pieces became me. Sometimes a little car with a gigantic hose was driven by a human, and it would suck up bits of paper, wrappers and dirt. And while this meant I would miss out on a snack, it didn’t cause me fear.

But the changes came all at once. A blue liquid squirted from the sweeping truck and trickled down into the storm drain. I assumed it was water, rushed toward it, hoping it would wash down things I needed to grow. But instead it fell on one side of me and at first I didn’t know what happened — it was like a part of me was gone. There was a horrible sound, steam, burning, and then I realized I was the one who was burning, one side of my body fizzling away. Then I heard another horrible sound – an animal in pain, like the time a rat was washed into the centre of my chest and I couldn’t help but absorb it. But this wasn’t a rat, it was me, writhing.

I always assumed I couldn’t die. I grow; I get smarter, faster, can go further distances through the sewer drains. But the blue liquid will kill me. It’s only a matter of time.

///

It’s a night with no moon. I can see the stars through the grate in my storm drain. And I hear it approaching. The whir of a sanitation machine. There’s the squirt of the blue liquid. I slowly ooze out onto the street. The truck is only a few grates away, coming from the east. I flow down the asphalt, west. Maybe if I move fast enough, the truck will turn away, down another road. I look back, and the truck is at my home now. I hear the squirt. My towel, my sofa, my watch, all of my snacks, gone.

I keep moving, the air is fresh on me, and I begin to dry, little bits crumbling off and getting left behind in the street as dirt, bits of food, small stones. I am getting weaker, smaller. I’m past Spadina now, and the truck is still coming, will always come.

At the storm drain below Future’s Bistro at Brunswick, I can taste a familiar dampness in the air.  Something is at the grate, watching. Dark and oozing. At the edge of a storm drain. Sludge!

The truck passes Spadina. I stop and slide over to the grate.

///

Jess Taylor is a Toronto writer and poet. Her second collection, Just Pervs, will be released by Book*hug in Canada in Fall 2019. Recently, a short story from that collection, "Two Sex Addicts Fall in Love", was long-listed for The Journey Prize and included in The Journey Prize Anthology 30. The title story from her first collection, Pauls (BookThug, 2015), "Paul," received the 2013 Gold Fiction National Magazine Award. Jess believes that collaboration and helping other writers is an important part of her writing practice and continues to organize events in the community. She is currently working on a novel, Play, and a continuation of her life poem, Never Stop.

Jenny Berkel’s sophomore album is Pale Moon Kid. Learn more about Jenny at jennyberkel.com.