It was all he could talk about. For the past six weeks, nothing but, “It was a plant!” and “It was only supposed to be a fart!” But I was there along with the other 200-something eager attendees expecting a comedy show and instead being treated to the sight of Bobby Beacon standing on stage and literally forcing himself to crap his pants. We smelt it, dealt it, no ifs, ands or buts about it. However, Bobby was adamant that this was a setup: some kind of elaborate scheme designed to tarnish his good name by the community resource dog, Beacon.
This paranoia had turned the once-loved mascot into a husk of his former self, and I needed to find a way to help him. I needed to get inside him—not in a weird way, but more of a shrunken down “Magic School Bus” sort of way—and luckily for me, University scentologist, Dr. Loretta Lavender, needed a guinea pig to test out her latest mind-linking contraption: The Mind Sniffer 3,000. So, after being shrunken down, stuffed in a tiny pill capsule, and hidden within a bouquet of flowers sent to Bobby with an attached note reading, “Don’t Smell: Stinky!” I was on my way to a place most would never dare venture: The inner reaches of Bobby’s subconscious.
The air in his mind was surprisingly fresh, complimented by a cool Mediterranean breeze. With long, flowing canals of clear, blue water, beautiful gothic architecture and gondolas as far as the eye could see, I realized I was in Venice, Italy.
“Indeed you are,” said the bearded man at the bow of my gondola, somehow responding to my thoughts. I was shocked at the sight of this man, as the last time I saw him he had died trying to overtake the world with an army of fish freaks waging a terrible battle against UMass Boston. It was a battle that resulted in the death of my best friend.
“Fear not,” spoke the father of Bobby. “I am not the real Paul Thomson, only an internal manifestation of him within Bobby’s mind. The daddy inside, if you will. Everybody’s got one. Anyway, I’m here to act as your guide.”
With that, the environment around us began to fade away, leaving our gondola floating alone through a web-like void of neural networks. Humming an ancient sea shanty, Thomson guided our tiny vessel to a big, blue lighthouse on a rocky coast. Thomson stepped out of the boat and onto the shore, sighing nostalgically.
“Christ was born in this year,” he said. “But he was not the only one. Back then, I was a mere dishwasher working for Emperor Augustus on his great luxury long ship. We had stopped here one night amidst a terrible storm, and, well, I won’t mince my words, I had a good, old-fashioned wank inside. Ah, if only I had known it was a magic, sentient lighthouse then perhaps I would have been a better father.”
As a past version of Thomson walked out of the lighthouse looking a bit ashamed, the sun and moon began to chase themselves wildly across the sky, advancing time about nine months. A small, blue head then popped itself out of the soil, kind of like a Pikmin. With a struggle, it eventually lifted its body free of the ground, revealing itself to be a small, baby Bobby all alone in a cold, cruel world with no knowledge of who he was or where he had come from.
Thomson hopped into the gondola and brought us quickly to our next location, which I immediately recognized—even with my limited historical knowledge—as Pompeii.
“For 79 years, Bobby was raised in an orphanage,” explained Thomson. “He was bullied relentlessly for the way he looked, which is why he had decided that he was going to become the greatest hide-and-seek champion Pompeii had ever seen. Choosing to lock himself inside the city’s volcano shelter on this particular day, however, proved to be quite the unfortunate hiding spot.”
In the distance, Mount Vesuvius blew its top sky high, sending a terrible cloud of dark volcanic ash through the city, burning and obliterating all in its path. After another time jump, a young Bobby emerged from the shelter, looking in horror and guilt at the ghastly faces of the citizens who had been clambering to get inside—now frozen forever in stone. The young Bobby fell to his knees in the remnants of the only home he had ever known.
We returned to our humble boat and sailed along memory lane. From the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields to the Seven Years’ War, Bobby fought his way through the centuries on the front lines of many conflicts—often on both sides—growing from a child into a man-child. However, after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, Bobby was taken prisoner by the Duke of Wellington. Seeing as the English were incapable of understanding his language—at this point, it was a cacophony of various ancient and current tongues—they assumed he was some sort of animal and locked him in Mrs. Brindlebottoms Home for Misplaced Mutts—a dog pound.
“Bobby spent a long time imprisoned here,” said Thomson while gesturing to a sad, lonely Bobby sitting cramped in a small cage. “Day after day, families would come in looking for a pet, and day after day, Bobby would be neglected in favor of the other dogs. He tried to act like a good boy; he even taught himself English thinking it would give him a leg up over the other pooches, but this was all in vain. It wasn’t until his cage was accidentally blown open during the bombing of London in the Second World War that he was finally set free.”
“All right,” Thompson clapped his hands excitedly while grabbing his oar, “next up is the time Bobby worked as a drug smuggler for Pablo Escob-AHCHOO!”
With a ferocious blast, I rocketed out of Bobby’s mind, severing our mental link, regrowing to normal size and launching directly out of his left nostril onto the filthy Boneyard floor. I guess he had always been alone, neglected and abandoned. It all made sense now: his fears of being fired, his paranoia of betrayal and even his jealousy toward Beacon. But as I tried explaining these psychological deductions to a very confused Bobby Beacon, all he could say was, “Jesus Christ? You just came out of my f—ing nose! Get the f— out of here, nostril boy!” And you know what? I probably would have said the same thing.