---

MIASMA MAN contd.

The gittish old fag wagon creaked under his weight. He'd grown heavy from looking at too many

crop photos. "He really should go on a diet," the wagon thought, "Go and look at some Weight

Watchers photos of a single nut or something." "Shut up," thought Miasma Man loudly at the wagon.

That was the trouble with being in alpha state most of the time. Virtually every object had an opinion,

and didn't mind sharing it.

Miasma Man hardly ever bumped into another human who floated on the same plane. It was annoying

to have to endure dullard, dead-end mind-talk with the wagon. It was hard to imagine what the wagon

looked like when it was new, as it now appeared to have grown into the field where it stood.

It was so firmly rooted into the vegetation that it resembled the result of some bizarre experiment

to grow an organic van. But it wasn't. It had been designed to boost around housing estates selling

fags, much like an ice-cream van. But then someone invented cancer, and people didn't approve

of vans going round spreading diseases amongst their houses and trees and dogs, thank you very

much.

And thus the seeds of their relationship were sown. It was a friendship of mutual need, the wagon's

desire to spread disease, and Miasma Man's urge for a Higher Purpose. His Higher Purpose

was stored on a rustic shelf in the wagon, a whole life's work all contained in a single piece of wood

in a disillusioned van in the middle of any old average field.

The time had come. Miasma Man had to fulfill his half of the symbiotic pact twixt him and the van. He

reached up to the shelf where his Higher Purpose was stored. On it were hundreds of aerosol cans,

each bearing a different label. He grabbed the can marked 'Nose Balls' and sprayed himself all over

like a deodorant. The Fag Wagon smiled. Miasma Man slaughtered back into town, utilising an

encyclopeadic knowledge of bus routes which took him through as many people as possible,

unleashing olfactory hell upon everyone, without them suspecting a single thing.

'Nose Balls' is a particularly satirical ailment. Anyone who passed within smelling distance of

Miasma man awoke the next day with a tiny pair of testicles under their nostrils. Miasma Man

lurched back to the Fag Wagon as choas descended upon the city. I mean, would you go to work

with a baby groin under your nose?

FIN