By Scott “Duke” Berkey

Volume 1, Issue 1, Page 8 (November 1988)

He sat quietly before the crackling, soft warmth of the open fireplace, gently removing boogers from the warm moist interior of his nose. He had been at work for only minutes, but over the years had worked on several other generations of young boogers. In times past the boogers had been passive, often willing prey before the unfeeling fingers that branched from the ends of his long arms. Indeed he had found little resistance to his pokings and proddings into the cozy confines of the mucous mainstream. This time, though, many boogers were resistant to removal, remembering the most recent picking that had resulted in a nasty infection and little positive action. Still, the boogers had little choice in the matter.

They could be picked out now, or blown out later and thrown into the wastebasket to rot. He removed the boogers, indifferently scrutinized them, and deposited all but the most slimy on chairs, tables, walls, floors, desks, carpets, anything that needed a lone booger to fight the never-ending onslaught of nearly sterile cleanliness. If a booger survives the battle against cleanliness it will return hard, like those that have returned before: hardened by a war fought far from home, in an uncaring land, for a cause not its own, against an enemy it could never understand. There will be no one, perhaps no way, to soften them up again once they have fought this new kind of war, a war fought with high-tech weaponry like Improved Lysol and New Carpet Fresh With Baking Soda. They will have gone through Hell, and they will return burnt to a crisp.