Seven miles northwest of here, there is a bog.

A bog of horrific despair where bodies line the ground

And the stench of wailing souls fills the biting air.

Where poisonous grass shoots toward the sky and past your shoulders,

Where diseased rodents scamper across the murky ground,

Making a squishing gurgle.

The sound of the air and the squishing gurgle together

Sings like an obscene overture to a riotous expulsion of vomit.

 

Seven miles northwest of here, there is the aforementioned bog.

I will go to this bog.

 

I will trounce and tromp and tread through the muck

In only the finest golf shoes.

I will breathe the stench.

I will frighten the diseased rodents.

I will be strong.

I will hear the squishing gurgle.

I will endure all of these things I've heard legend about -

But the only legends I've heard are from those who have made it thus far

and escaped.

 

They never get to tell you about the Beasts.

Woolly, monstrous beasts with Dan Rather dull claws

And teeth like rough, grinding pestles jutting from the gums at whimsical angles.

They never get to tell you about the floating gold mirror in the middle of the swamp

that reflects nothing but an accelerated amplification of your single weakest facet.

They never get to tell you about the skeleton army.

They never get to tell you about the sinkholes.

They never get to tell you about the mausoleum

(which admittedly has become somewhat of a tourist trap).

 

But intrepid I shall be as I enter the bog.

My golf shoes will keep me safe as I breathe the stench,

And frighten the rodents, and hear the squishing gurgle,

And fight the woolly beasts, and stare into the mirror,

And defeat the skeleton army, and foxtrot around the sinkholes,

And buy a tasteless souvenir T-shirt that reads:

"Crack open a cold one at Bog of Despair Mausoleum".

 

I will enter the bog. I will slay the evil. I will maintain my soul pure as I am faced with certain stench and ruin.

 

I will escape unscathed.

I will earn my place to be sung about by a strange anachronistic pantalooned minstrel fellow who walks along Venice Beach.

I will venture forth bravely, I will return million times the man,

I will rescue the princess, collect my fame and fortune...

...and the bathroom will finally be clean.

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