by Adrian Norvid
It’s Tuesday noon in Fake Lake and the smell of the Tire Stack (still smoldering after 30 years) is wafting through the window of the Greasy Spoon Diner. Inside the radio’s tuned to YFUK – Fake Lake’s own Talk Dirty Radio. Mayor Dundoing is tucking into a rasher of surreal back bacon while perusing the Bottom Feeder’s Crassified Ads – there’s a used cemetery plot and a fat bum door knocker for sale, a hide-a-bed has gone missing and Mistress Grind wishes to reduce someone to a mere nub…
The town of Fake Lake is a sludge pit of goings on and the Fake Lake Bottom Feeder (the local paper) has been kept busy chronicling what amounts to a mild apocalypse - collapsing bridges, a gap in the street that swallows the high school band, an awful bacterial business at the hot springs and a great blowout at the Fakeola bottling plant. Seeing souls ripe for the picking, Lucifer (ever a prominent presence in Fake Lake) has even taken out a paid advertising supplement – Writhing Bodies Herbal Tea Mix anyone?
The Fake Lake Bottom Feeder is a replica of a weekly edition in May complete with Children’s Section (try not to freak out Trippy the clown), Industrial News (it’s work injury week, again), a fulsome Food Section (beware the Flakey Bakery’s Sticky Buns) and a special double page spread of the Dregs Coffee Shop’s Sponsored Expedition to Ascend Old Frothy (their espresso machine) with exclusive photos of bearded hipster explorer types hip deep in milk foam. Fake Lake! There’s a seat for you in the Polished By Bums Tavern and it looks like someone’s signed you up for the Midnight Churchyard Digs
