MAINTENANCE REQUEST

ATTN: groundskeeper tom
SUBJECT: gnarly barf stench
LOCATION: lagoon

DESCRIPTION OF MAINTENANCE ISSUE:

i really don't like to remember what i saw at the lagoon, but i feel it's my duty to complete this maintenance request. you maintenance guys really ought to read it if you decide to go down there yourselves. but knowing what i know, i wouldn't go there without some serious backup.

it was a beautiful autumn day in the canals and retaining pools on campus, so i figured i'd swim on down to the lagoon. the sun was golden, the leaves are starting to turn, and the amount of floating litter is way down. keep it up, fellow students!

i knew the lagoon had been reeking, but figured it might have cleared up by now, with the rains and all. so i'm swishing around through the reeds and cool water and it didn't smell too bad, so i swim out to the middle and take a deep dive.

the sun through the water made everything green, and there's lake weeds and a bike and an old tire down there, like always. but there was something new - an opening in the lagoon floor, with stone pillars around it and steps going down. who needs steps at the bottom of the lagoon? was it some new maintenance passage?

i swam down, down, through the dark, feeling the sides of the tunnel with my fingertips as i pumped my tail as fast as i dared. eventually, i saw a glow ahead, and could feel a throbbing vibration through the water. i swam on.

i'll never forget what i saw next. a giant cave, like an amphitheater, lit with glowing crystals and filled with rows and rows of the ugliest fish people you ever saw. grumpy fish faces, with big glassy eyes and fangy drooly mouths, their fins wrapped around vicious-looking hooks and spears. they were banging their tools on the cave floor and bubbling out the most deranged, backwards song i'd ever heard in my life. the vibrations alone almost made me puke!

but that wasn't the worst of it. just as i was gaining control of my mind, IT appeared. i can't even tell you exactly what it looked like, because what it was just didn't make sense. giant, spindly, spiny legs, which chittered and unfolded too fast, then layers and layers of mandibles and fangs, opening and opening like some endless blooming fractal. and its eyes - enormous, dead, sinister, and too many of them, bobbing and dangling and darting with minds of their own...

i must have let out a sonar screech - still evolutionarily hard-wired into us, i guess - because suddenly the room turned on me - every glassy fish eye of the savage bass people or whatever suddenly looking my way. and then IT let loose with a brain piercing sound attack, and promptly crapped its pants.

well, it wasn't wearing pants, but it squirted out this thick black cloud that got everywhere at once and i smelled it and i totally lost my lunch. barfed out my entire tuna sandwich and chips.

but then somehow i was shooting up that tunnel (my turbo tail is way faster than those bumbling bass), through the lagoon, through the ditches and canals and back to the aquadorm faster than you can cast a line.

but i've still got that stink on me. i can taste it in my gills. so i did an hour or so in the endless pool to try to wash it out. i can still feel it on me, but i guess i've smelled worse.


REQUEST MADE BY: jenny haniver
DATE: september 21, 2015

i think it could be the lagoon that @Lidia is smelling. do you smell that? it smells like a giant pig-rat died in there. i've been avoiding it for days but it's getting worse. it could even be like a sewer main broke or something - it's almost like raw sewage. what about the maintenance people? doesn't psyhigh have any? i mean, i'm fine with doing our part collecting garbage, but for something like this it seems like there should be some professional grounds keepers or something? but i never see them. where are they?

hey, whoa, everybody chill! i'm supposed to be the hard one, @Nautical Nell! :) i think everybody needs to step back and take a deep breath. @Blach and @Nobody i'm sure you have the best intentions and ol' nellie was just losing it for a mo. imma have a talk with that sea nymph and make sure everything's frosty. and about me and the knives, well, really, that's all in the deep dark past. i'm here at psyhigh as part of my parole AAMOF, due to a little eco-piracy trouble me and some friends got in once upon a time. no biggie! maybe you read about me in Orca Teen magazine. but i swear that's all behind me and everybody's gonna be real cool from now on, i'll make sure of it.

you know i was flipping through an old Orca Teen magazine at the orthodontist's the other day and i read that article about the Momokawa Fish Stick Company. did you read that? they use ultra-destructive fishing techniques and are wiping out whole colonies of deep ones and elder things and putting them all into their grody fish sticks and other processed fish products. i'll bet they also put whatever gross garbage they suck up too - some of which is coming right out of this school! and also boy am i angry at that @Emily Marie let me tell you.

yeah. some of us still like to go down to the lagoon and hunt. or even out to the river and beyond. you takes whats you gets out there in the big waterways, but i've seen more psyhigh trash than ever floating out into the lagoon. 4-D glasses wrappers and tin-foil party hats and disposable ouija boards. we can't put up grates or anything because then we couldn't swim thru, but this junk is totally gross.