The Alkali Lake Monster

Richard Stevenson

Many cryptids stink.  What with

no mod cons or hot running water –

man’s greatest invention, my wife says –

they sweat, get decaying plant matter

all up in their fur or between scales…

And where the heck is a three-

hundred foot serpent cryptid gonna

find a back brush long enough

to scrub his neck, never mind get

the hard-to-reach spots?  Nowhere!

The other side of some antediluvian

time portal – maybe.  Our guy’s

got them all beat: his reek is lethal!

Don’t be hobnobbin’ in his ‘hood

without a gas mask, dude, or yer worm food!

That’s right!  He doesn’t have to fart:

yer gone if you get so much as a whiff,

a tiny puff…  .  A quiff would probably

settle as a mist and corrode yer hide.

You wouldn’t even get a chance to drown

before he hauled you off to his piscine

or reptilian parlour for dinner.  Let that thought

simmer in yer noggin before you start hangin’

fifty-gallon drum bobbers and cable in some

lame-brained scheme to catch the beast.

You ain’t even a feast for this

fearsome critter!  Just a little fritter,

a pot-sticker, a hand of fries.

He’d gas you and have you half

way down his long gullet lickety split!

Even so, he hasn’t shown himself

much in recent decades.  Maybe succumbed

to his own foul aroma or got a fish bone

stuck in his throat, choked, finally bit it.

Do we even have a decent guess what

he was before our bipedal kind started

floating big boats or snagged his kids

with six-pack plastic chokers or tiaras?

I hope he skedaddled back to the sea.

No point chasing herring up-steam

if he’s gonna run into our toxic kind.

Better to boot it back to the deep sea;

surface when there aren’t so many boats about –

and no one with a gas mask and cell phone!

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