Mike Norton

From August 24th to September 15th, Reporter held a writing contest asking participants to write 600 words or less based on an interpretation of the illustration below. 21 entries were submitted. From those, five finalists were selected based on writing quality, and posted online for a public vote. The winning entry, “A Critique of Democracy,” by Jim Cottage, a fourth year Illustration major, is below.

Gregory was stationed in France and fled to the sewers when the Germans invaded. They would call him a coward, he knew, but at least he would still be alive.

The sewer system of fered not much by the way of decent meals, but he made due with whatever f leshy things he found f loating by. Rats were a precious commodity, and feces a frequent delicacy. On the fourth of his days in the sewers while he was hunting for rats, he could have sworn that he saw a shark.

“It will not do to compete with a shark for these measly portions of food,” he decided, and set forth to hunt down the shark instead. Shark meat would taste better, perhaps, and there would at least be more of it.

He only had enough bullets to reload once, but he was no rookie when it came to shooting his pistol. He knew the trick was to be patient, and to wait for that good clean shot, not wasting bullets. Amateurs waste their ammo like a lonely man wastes his seed in tissues, he often thought.

But the truth was Gregory was the loneliest man of all. Not a night went by when Gregor y hadn’t spilled his slippery soldiers into the soil, or flushed them down the drain. And as fate would have it, here he was in the sewer system where they might have all gathered together, creating a veritable orphanage of unborn potential.

He was drawn away from his pursuit of the shark when he heard a woman’s moan. “A woman,” he thought, “in the sewers?”

The moans kept coming. And coming. Longer and faster they came, until f inally Gregory knew that what he wanted to see was beyond the wall that stood in front of him. There were holes there in the wall and so he peeked through the hole, being too nervous to walk around it.

What he saw there did three things for him. First, it corrected his mistake in assuming the dorsal fin that he saw moving throughout the sewer system was belonging to a shark. Secondly, he knew that the rumors about German mindexperiments with dolphin navigators could be confirmed. Lastly, he got a chubby.

Beyond the wall was a dolphin with wires and probes dangled about its head, thrusting its midsection into a woman who was only one of many.

If nothing else infuriated him, this did. “Here I am, wasting away without a female companion, while this dolphin gets all the French ladies he wants? It will not do to compete with a dolphin for sexual gratification!” He cocked his pistol, preparing to shoot and reload.

He leapt out into the open, popping the dolphin more than thrice in its overly large cranium. The women screamed, as did men from behind the walls. It became abundantly clear to Gregory that he hadn’t been the only man watching this strange show from behind peepholes.

“What in hell do you think you’re doing?” the German camera man who was now doused in blood demanded to know.

“Why, defending these women from a lecherous dolphin!” Gregory explained.

“You fool! These women were all volunteers! You’ve just shot our dolphin porn-star in the head!”

“You’re filming porn in the sewers? There’s war upstairs! What are you doing down here filming pornography?”

“Why, don’t you know?” explained the German, “This was the whole reason for the Nazi invasion of France. There is nothing kinkier to a Nazi than French, underground interspecies erotica.”