The waiting room of the floating fantasy welfare office looked grimy, and filled with miscreants from all twenty circles of hen.

Werthers shuffled his feet anxiously, darting his eyes around the room. Flickering belligerently overhead were long, cylindrical, magically flourescent lights with lots of dead bugs trapped inside. One looked like it was twitching. Another looked like it was giving Werthers the finger posthumously. And a couple more looked like they’d been participating in some horrible insectoid orgy right as they were passing on.

But Werthers quite preferred to look at the bugs caught in the light above him as it slowly scarred his irises than accidentally make eye contact with anyone in the waiting room.

A very rotund, pungent warlock swaddled over and sat right in front of him. The odor nearly singed off Werther’s eyebrows and trimmed his loose ends. Was it warlock, or a wizard? Or was it a witch?

Who knows, Werthers thought. They all look the same, magic types. Always have that specifically magic odor. Especially this one in front of me.

What Werthers had not realized was that as the foul odor dug deeper into his olfactory system his bowels were beginning to clammer, that is until it was all he could do to spring up like a cricket and subsequently flounder around like a soupy mutant towards the outhouse exit.

“Number twenty three?” nasaled a wrinkly woman at the magical reception desk.

The exit door swung shut.

“Number twenty three?”

Angry denziens in the waiting room grumbled to themselves about politeness and patience and respect.

“Number twenty four?”

Everyone perked up.

Werthers walked through the shaded passageway under a canopy of specially bred high altitude pine trees to the public outhouses.

The public outhouses were like normal outhouses, except twenty times as large. Still wooden, and still with a small moon at the top, but long as a freight skytrain.

Inside there were the enchanted self cleaning troughs for individuals who urinated standing up, magically or otherwise. There were the stalls, which all hovered half a fantasy foot aboveground due to an enchantment. The stalls, with enchanted gaps between each closed door so that one could easily attempt eye contact with anyone sitting in a stall. The stalls, inside which it was so fantastically dim that anyone sitting in a stall could scarcely see where to sit, much less anyone looking inside. The stalls, did not smell hood.

Werthers pushed himself away from the trough riders and found himself a stall. Grasping the handle with disgrosst, he swung open the stall door with the force of a hurricane to find someone doing fantasy drugs.

“The cluck?”

“Oh shit, I’m sorry, so sorry.”

Werthers shut the door and searched on, peeking through each stall gap with the precision of a pervert.

Finally, a truly empty stall.

CREEEEE

Werthers pried it open like a geriatric turtle.

EEEEEEE

It was almost open enough for him to enter.

EEEEEEE

He didn’t see anybody.

EEEEEAK

Emptiness, in more ways than one, in this stall. Werthers meditated on his hood fortune.

“‘scuse me, chupper. You gonna take this one, or…?” murmured a grumpy land grub twice Werthers’ height.

“What? Oh! Yes. Sorry.”

Werthers slid into the stall and slammed it shut.

Werthers had barely placed his enchanted, too thin to exist seat cover atop his splintery, eerily cold wooden throne when the someone in the stall next to him shifted their weight around.

“Wormy! How’ve youses been, chuppy?”

“Whaaaat?” Werthers gasped like an unpended codfish.

“Youse gotta know who I am come on now partner!”

Partner? Werthers pondered. Then, he realized he recognized the voice.

“Blithers Pripkin?”

“Feathery cluck, chup! We gotta use our code names, capisce? It’s Fido Caninus Woofington IV, remember you that, Barky McWolfish.”

Werthers had a distinct feeling that Pripkin was winking obsessively at him, almost to the point of spasming. Werthers worried the winking would go on until Pripkin sprained his eyelid. He decided to play along.

“Oh. Yes. Of course. My bad.”

“Oh it’s fine it’s fine it’s fine just don’t do it again or…or…well, youse know what. Anyways, how’ve youse been? Is the mission going well?” Pripkin sparked a cigarette.

The mission? “Oh yes yes just according to plan. Everything exactly how’d you’d want it how you’d expect it. With the mission and, um, with the mission plan.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” there was a loud bonk as something hit the side of Pripkin’s stall, “Just what I like to hear. Now for phase two we’ll be twerking more side by side. Riding tandem, if youse will.”

Slowly, the bright red light of Pripkin’s lit cigarette, held by its needlessly long cigarette holder, inched its way through the eye level glory hole between their two stalls. Werthers was not sure whether to laugh or to cry while the cigarette waggled around in front of his face and Pripkin pontificated.

“To start off, we’ll

FFSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHH

The loud magical flushing of an adjacent stall completely dominated Werther’s eardrums.

“and then when we get

FFFFSSSSHHHH FFFFSSSSSHHHHH

“we’ll have to go to

PFPFPFPFFPTTTT PPFFFFFFF

Someone was having a tough time in another adjacent stall.

“but it’ll be okay because by then we’ll have

PPPFFFFFFTTT PFFPFPPFPPFFFFT PFFFT

“and that will allow us to easily

FFFFSSSSHHHHHHH

“so really it won’t be a big deal when

PPPPFF PFFFFT PFFFT PPPFFF

“and we have to take up arms and

FFFFFSSHHH FSSSH FSSHHHH

“and as long as nobody

PPPFFFT PFFFT PPFFFT

“then we’ll both live

PPPFFFFFT PFFFT PFFT

“and all the blood will just

FFFSSSSHH FSHHHH FSHHH FSHHHH

“and then we’ll be hood to go! Any questions?”

Werthers was a shivering, sheared sheep.

“Hamn. No questions.”

Werthers opened his mouth to attempt to say something, anything. But he could not.

“Wormsly youse’ve gotta be da mollusk, if you catch my frisbee. I mean hen! That long meandering explanation of our meeting and youse don’t even need youseself a rebriefing of the rebriefing! I mean cock, youse didn’t even ask for a rebriefing I just spat one out all over you because I was worried youse mighta forgottens somethingseses what what I’d told youse earlier! And you didn’t even flinch when I mentioned how now we have to risk it all to—”

FFSSSHHHH PFFFFT PFFT FSSSHHHH

“—but clearly I was just overthinking it, and I think I might owe youse an apology. I’d tell youse to put ‘er there, chup, but seeing as there’ses a glory hole right here I’d rather you not. Anywhatses, once you’ve finished up in here let’s meet in the waiting room and get started. Toodley-woodley!”

The cigarette’s invasive holder and the blistering stump of tobacco at its end whipped back through the glory hole and Pripkin stood up promptly. He attempted to buckle his belt, but instead dropped the large cigarette holder.

SHHHHHHH

He had accidentally dropped its lit end in the toilet.

“Shit, one second.”

PFFFT PFFT PFFT PT

Someone nearby was shitting.

PT PT PFFT

“There we go, all hood,” Pripkin mumbled as the cigarette holder bumped against the stall wall. Then he opened his stall door and left, leaving Werthers alone with the quiet solace of his thoughts.

PFFFFT FFSSHHH PFT PFT FSSSSSSHHH PFFFFFFT PFFFFT PFFFFFFFFFT PFFFFFFFFFFFFT FSH FSHHHHHHH PT PT PT PT PFFFFT PFFT PT PT PT PT