Here in Dunwich as everywhere in America, COVID has been a scourge.\u00a0 Of course, the spread and the symptoms in Dunwich are atypical and highly disturbing (as is everything here).\u00a0 The disease is completely restricted to a one-mile radius around the historic home of Zebadiah Cobblestoner the legendary Whaling Fleet Magnate.<\/p>\n
Zebadiah was known in the early nineteenth century as the whale prostate king.\u00a0 His company sold pickled whale prostate throughout the New England region where its healing properties were much in demand.\u00a0 And with the proceeds of this lucrative trade Zebadiah built a magnificent mansion in his native town Dunwich.\u00a0 And there he lived in great opulence until the great whale prostate crash of 1841.\u00a0 In that year the medical profession actually investigated the \u201chealing effects\u201d of whale prostate and discovered that its only effect on humans was to imbue its users with a decidedly bright blue coloration around their private parts.<\/p>\n
Needless to say, Zebadiah\u2019s fortunes fell on hard times.\u00a0 In addition, a local witch named Hepzibah Goodbody was so outraged at the coloration she had contracted that she put a curse on Cobblestoner that not only killed him but rendered his mansion a nexus of contagion and miasma ever after.\u00a0 At first this miasma was restricted to anyone foolhardy enough to inhabit Zebadiah\u2019s mansion.\u00a0 But over the years the contagion grew until now it had reached out to all the inhabitants of the formerly prestigious Toenail Hill area.\u00a0 The malady starts out as general abdominal discomfort but in its terminal stage it presents as an exaggerated swelling of the lower abdomen followed by detonation of the prostate which usually leaves only the legs and upper body of the victim intact.\u00a0 Surprisingly both males and females are equally afflicted in this syndrome.<\/p>\n
Now you may be asking yourself how a nineteenth century witch\u2019s spell that causes people to explode could be diagnosed as COVID.\u00a0 Well, it turns out that the federal and state governments have provided, let us say, inducements to local governments for finding COVID cases in their areas.\u00a0 And let\u2019s face it, it\u2019s not cheap cleaning up the biohazard when someone\u2019s pelvic region explodes so First Selectman Cthulhu worked it out with the Dunwich Department of Health to sort of roll the Cobblestoner Curse victims in with the COVID census.<\/p>\n
But with the recent state budget cuts the \u201csubsidy\u201d for the COVID cases has dried up and so the Board decided something should be done to clean up this problem.\u00a0 I was contracted to do it.\u00a0 And it was stressed that I could employ all means necessary.<\/p>\n
Using satellite imagery, I was able to triangulate the source of the miasma to a corner of the Cobblestoner estate.\u00a0 In fact, it turned out to be centered around Zebadiah Cobblestoner\u2019s private cemetery.\u00a0 I brought along one hundred tanker trucks, each loaded with 6,000 gallons of aqua regia which is a combination of saturated hydrochloric acid and fuming nitric acid.\u00a0 My team excavated down to one hundred feet where we started to uncover a stone-like mass of enormous size finally we could see its shape was spherical with a diameter of over a thousand feet.\u00a0 When we reached the bottom of this structure, we saw with horror that it was attached to the centuries dead but normal sized corpse of Zebadiah Cobblestoner.\u00a0 We had uncovered his decidedly malign hypertrophied prostate bulging out of his body!<\/p>\n
We climbed out of the excavation in a panicked rout but before following my team in a sprint for the hills I slammed the valve actuator that released the veritable lake of hyper-corrosive acid into the pit.\u00a0 As I panted from the effort of escaping the scene, clouds of acrid fumes spread along the ground.\u00a0 Earth tremors made it difficult to keep my legs under me but I finally reached a ridge about a mile off from the pit.\u00a0 And there I witnessed a sight that has shaken my sanity and left me a shell of the man I was.<\/p>\n
The ground around the pit convulsed and swelled.\u00a0 The prostate swelled up to ten times its size and glowed a bright yellow.\u00a0 Then the prostate shrank down and disappeared below ground.\u00a0 But suddenly the corpse of Cobblestoner took its place swelling up to the size of the prostate and even larger.\u00a0 Its face was distorted with pain and rage and I feared something truly horrible was about to occur.\u00a0 All at once an enormous flatulence erupted from the nether regions of Cobblestoner.\u00a0 A hurricane of unbelievably foul air stormed past me.\u00a0 But almost as soon as it arrived it passed and a look of angelic peace suffused Cobblestoner\u2019s face and then he slowly shrank back into the pit.<\/p>\n
After a safe period of time had elapsed, I dared to return to the top of the pit.\u00a0 There was no sign at all of Cobblestoner or his cursed prostate.\u00a0 The area had been miraculously cleansed by the potent acids and the miasma was gone!\u00a0 There are signs in the last few days that Toenail Hill is once again a healthy place.\u00a0 I\u2019ve notice that Zillow has quadrupled the value of all the local real estate and speculators have snatched up all the likeliest properties including the Cobblestoner mansion and gravel pit.<\/p>\n
One other salubrious result of the exorcism is that for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic not a single COVID victim has exploded.\u00a0 That means I\u2019ll probably get paid for my efforts by the Town of Dunwich.\u00a0 And I call that a win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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