{"id":3264,"date":"2015-10-12T08:07:47","date_gmt":"2015-10-12T12:07:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.skelleyverse.com\/?p=3264"},"modified":"2016-11-09T14:31:11","modified_gmt":"2016-11-09T19:31:11","slug":"my-time-in-the-sewer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/my-time-in-the-sewer\/","title":{"rendered":"My Time in the Sewer"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-13\" src=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/j-avatar-e1443983489508.png\" alt=\"by jen\" width=\"81\" height=\"81\" \/>you are a murderess or something<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Rouse yourself, my dear girl.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m afraid that our hunt&#8217;s over<\/li>\n<li>cudgeling his brain for some pretext<\/li>\n<li>captured by a group of angry citizens<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Tune In Next Time Part 18<\/strong><b>\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/b><a href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/tune-in-next-time\/\">Click Here for Earlier Installments<\/a><\/p>\n<p>My time in the sewer does not bear speaking of. Suffice it to say that I made my way through the filthy pipe all the way to its outlet into the sea. I then spent a few minutes scrubbing myself clean with saltwater. Or as clean as one can get that close to raw sewage.<\/p>\n<p>As luck would have it, my flume ride of effluent deposited me only a mile down the beach from the pier I&#8217;d been trying to reach anyway. I swam along parallel to the shore, dragging the submersible digging machine along. I arrived at the pier as the sun peeked over the horizon. I&#8217;d have to work fast if I wanted to claim my prize without being <em>captured by a group of angry citizens<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The roar of an outboard motor cut through the crashing of the waves and there they were, John and Tessa, in a new zodiac, closing in on the pier. The engine cut out and I heard John say, <em>&#8220;Rouse yourself, my dear girl.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Tessa stretched and yawned as she sat up. With their attention on the pilings and the waves, neither had noticed me yet. I had one chance.<\/p>\n<p>I took a huge breath and dove down to the bottom, the weight of the digging machine making my descent dangerously fast. I embedded its nose into the sandy bottom in the spot where I thought the treasure was most likely to be buried, and turned it on.<\/p>\n<p>Sand and seashells and little bits of pulverized fish flew up in a gory tornado behind the machine, chumming the water and cutting visibility to zero. My lungs ached for air like a man <em>cudgeling his brain for some pretext<\/em> to explain away his Ashley Madison account.<\/p>\n<p>The light on my underwater digging machine turned from green to red, the signal that it had found something. I shoved it aside and stuck my hands down into the hole it had made. They closed around a metal box. I yanked it free from the seabed and kicked for the surface.<\/p>\n<p>When my head broke through to the air, I took a very noisy breath. Tessa, mere yards away, spotted me immediately and said to John, &#8220;<em>I&#8217;m afraid that our hunt&#8217;s over<\/em>.&#8221; Looking back at me she said, &#8220;Is this close enough to the East River for you, you bastard? You should know by now that I&#8217;m nobody&#8217;s poodle.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No Tessa, you&#8217;re no poodle. <em>You are\u00a0a murderess, or something<\/em> even worse.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I stared her down as I treaded water, holding the metal box just below the surface of the rolling waves. And then I spotted the dorsal fins. Sharks, attracted, no doubt, by the fresh fish smoothie my digging machine had blended up.<\/p>\n<p>Damn.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Stichomancy Writing Prompts\" href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/stichomancy-writing-prompts\/\">about stichomancy writing prompts<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/stichomancy-writing-prompt-generator\/\">try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>you are a murderess or something &#8220;Rouse yourself, my dear girl.&#8221; I&#8217;m afraid that our hunt&#8217;s over cudgeling his brain for some pretext captured by a group of angry citizens Tune In Next Time Part 18\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Click Here for Earlier Installments My [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[319,4],"tags":[357,373,403],"class_list":["post-3264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stichomancy-prompts","category-writing-prompts","tag-boat","tag-shark","tag-tune-in-next-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3264"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4263,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3264\/revisions\/4263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}