image [https://i.ibb.co/3mMgY1J/Titi-Chapter1new.jpg]

Once upon a time in the year 3080 there was a planet called Sifillis, and on this planet there was a continent called Pus, and on this continent was a country called Bonertania, and in this country there was a quadrant called Plotz, and in this quadrant there was an over-flowing garbage dump, and in this over-flowing garbage dump lived a boy named Titi. There was more to his name than that, for his master, the nefarious crone Gonorrena, often declared that his whole name was Tititarius; but no one was expected to say such a long word when “Titi” would do just as well.

Gonorrena once terrorized all of Plotz Quadrant. She had been born with dark powers and used them to dispatch the royal family and take over their castle. She then ruled as a tyrant, making the Plotzians as miserable and insecure as possible.

However, the powerful thaumaturge Nobgoblin put together a team of thaumaturgic crime fighters. They stripped Gonorrena of her thaumaturgic powers and erased all her memories of charms, concoctions, incantations, and enchanted gas. Gonorrena was banished from the castle, taking with her the one servant she could bully into accompanying her- a young boy named Tititarius.

And that is how Gonorrena and Tititarius came to live in the fetid garbage dump, hiding from Plotzians who would love to take their revenge on the now powerless old hag. Titi frankly hated the withered old prune. As the years passed the less respect he showed her, and the more he slacked off on his assigned chores which included shaving Gonorrena’s back, draining the sores on her feet, and cleaning the gunk and grit that collected in her wrinkles and skin folds. He had to constantly disinfect the toilet as the old woman seemed to perpetually have rancid diarrhea. He also fed and milked the purple four-horned iguana that was Gonorrena’s especial pride.

The caramel complexioned Titi remembered nothing of his parents, for he had been brought when quite young to be a slave in Gonorrena’s castle. He didn’t know how old he was for he never had had a birthday. Titi wished he had a family and often dreamed he had a twin sister. But as it was he was all alone, shy and awkward and never feeling quite comfortable in his own skin.

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Titi’s sole source of joy was Ghasday nights, when Gonorrena allowed him to watch a feature film motion picture with her on her 22-inch TV. Gonorrena always picked the entertainment, so it was usually a gory true crime drama, but Titi always cherished movie night. He dreamed of running away to be in pictures but was too timid- Serving Gonorrena was the only life he’d ever known.

In the garden behind the grungy hovel there were lumpy, swollen, fleshy goiters growing on thick, moist, veiny veins. These had been planted and carefully tended by Titi so that the iguana might eat of them. One day, after the goiters had all been harvested and stacked, Titi took a notion to make some art. He had plenty of time to accomplish this task, for Gonorrena had gone to another quadrant- to buy groceries, she said- and it was a journey of at least four days.

Titi often made hot glue sculptures out of the junk he found in the dump, and he had the lower half of a mannequin he was dying to use. The legs featured two points of articulation each, allowing the legs to be stiffly posed. Titi attached a large plastic water cooler tank for a torso. For one arm he used an old dryer tube, for the other, the arm of a swing-neck lamp. The hands he made out of gloves stuffed with used tissues from Gonorrena’s collection. Now all his creation needed was a head.

So he selected a fine, big lumpy goiter, and- once it stopped pulsating- drained out the blood and pus. He took a hammer and smashed two jagged holes for eyes. Then, with the point of his machete he made two uneven nostrils and a jagged gash for a mouth. The face, when completed, could not have been considered strictly handsome (one asterisk-shaped eye was bigger than the other); but it wore a smile so big and broad, and was so gay in expression, that even Titi laughed as he looked admiringly at his work. Good enough for government work, as Gonorrena would say. Titi attached the large goiter to the neck of the water cooler jug. He stood the figure up against the wall and admired it. Titi decided to stand it in a place where old Gonorrena would meet it face to face.

“And then,” said Titi to himself, with a laugh, “she’ll be so scared she’ll pee in her dirty undies! But it would be much more lifelike if it were dressed.”

To find clothing seemed no easy task; but Titi boldly ransacked the great garbage bag in which Gonorrena kept all her clothes, and at the very bottom he discovered some blue jeans and a red-and-black checkered flannel shirt. These he carried away to his dummy and succeeded, although the garments did not fit very well, in dressing him. Some phlox socks belonging to Gonorrena and a much worn pair of her old old work boots completed the dummy’s apparel, and Titi was so delighted that he danced up and down and clapped and laughed aloud in boyish ecstasy.

“So good a dummy as this must surely have a name. I believe,” Titi said, after a moment’s thought, “I will name the fellow Nate. Nate Goiterhead!’”

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