King Crocodilo

Dream-Pipe Fiction by Nick Winney

This story is one of five featured in SUM FLUX, V.3: “Plumbing.” Our mission is to spotlight the finest writers on Substack, curating a dynamic collection of original fiction. See the full contents page here.

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Saffron held it up to my head, just by my ear and whispered through it.

I laughed; it sounded hollow. “It’s just a piece of pipe, y’know?”

“It’s whatever I say it is and whatever you let it be,” her voice like a Tibetan monk; she could do that, that throat singing thing.

I turned over, reaching for the lamp, and her singing warbled and buzzed. She could catch a burr in the back of her throat every time. I was hopeless at it; an old man hacking up tar, but she could do it; do a didgeridoo too. Just pipes, should be easy, right? But there's a knack, or some biology, some twist of the lips; the thing right back in the depths of the throat.

“This is my dream engine,” she modulated.

“It’s the clothes rail from the wardrobe, Saffi.”

“The drrrrreeeam ennnnnggggg-jinnnn.”

In the lamplight the glitter and sequins she hot-glued onto it in rainbow spirals shimmered like scales.

“You’re such a kid.”

“I am Morphianna, high priestess!”

I snort-laughed, she giggled. An hour or so later, we slept on glitter-dusted sheets.

I dreamed of that hillside sloughing off like a blanket, slipping, unfurling into the beck. A dream of the stirring beast beneath waking: Drain Dragon, Sewer Snake, King Crocodillo. All the names we gave it. I saw myself, me and the gang, racing each other down the hill, throwing stones at the water.

Did she know? It’s just a length of damn pipe from the flatpack wardrobe…but…did she put it back in me, the Dream? Or did it wake up itself?

***

The day the Dream was made? It sleeps, but it never dies. Me and Mikey, Matty and Russ, and if we couldn’t ditch him, Gweedo. Gweedo the Weedo. Gweedo, the kid with the rash. Whatever it happened to be, Gweedo was “‘lergic” to it. You didn't want to touch him, flakin’ freakshow. Worse when he had that egg-stink cream on it. Jeez. We didn't want him along, but there’s only so many places a gang of boys—our gang—would want to hide out, so he often found us. And Guy had his uses; he would go first, eventually.

The day the Dream was made, we found the Tunnel: a cracked concrete pipe, four foot something round, half-hid behind a curtain of ferns. A pipe draining out to the beck, not meant for anything to get up in it over its stubby teeth of rusty broken bars. It sang to us, from under the hill, from deep down in that throat. It sang of bravery and secrets…and later, a monster. The song was silent but it called out loud. As much as we feared the Tunnel, we yearned to be bold enough to beat it.

Matty went in a few yards with his dad’s torch and a 200-yard ball of green garden twine, but he shuffled back out before he even got out of sight.

“I’m too tall,” he nose-whined into a wall of mockery, one octave higher, “but I found this.” He played a joker, held out a gold lookin’ ring. The magic in it silenced us.

“And this…”

A short, thin bone. Like chicken wings. Only…not.

We gawped and touched them like totems, like runes. Then we stared into the pipe, knowing there was more rich mystery, more treasure in there, secrets in the darkness.

“Someone else gotta go,” Matty said, holding out the torch like a stick with shit on.

“Who’s smallest?”

The answer came to us and we fell on it like a wild pack: “Let’s get Gweedo!”

We went looking for him; first time that ever happened. Found him at the back-field oak, swinging lonely on the Tarzan rope, hopin’ we’d show no doubt.

“Hey guys!” He flushed up red around his eczema, blotches and mottles shining sick and greasy with a whiff of egg. “What’s happenin’?”

He’d have set himself on fire if we told him to.

***

“Get in there, Gwe-e-edo. We’ve all done it,” Russ lied and spat, made it a fact.

The tunnel gazed back at us. Gweedo didn’t move but we knew we would make him. Cluckin’ and cawing ‘chicken’ at him like a whip crack and he could only take so many lashes; that and the promise of gang privileges.

He went in a foot or so, barely had to stoop, lil’ Gweedo.

“Does it go far?” His reedy voice echoed then he came back out, torch danglin’ in one hand, rubbing his eye frantic with the back of the other. “I don’t . . . I don’t see no light up there. It’s far, right?”

“That’s whatcha gotta find out, G-man.”

“That’s the point of it, buddy,” I said, slapping at his shoulder, makin’ out friendly, catching smirks from the others.

He scuffed at the dirt, looked over his shoulder, then back at us, rubbing suck-sounds from his eye socket.

“Gimme your hand, G-Man,” said Matty. Gweedo held it out.

“See this ring? We found it. In there. And it’s magic, see?” Matty tied the string to it, double knot then slipped it on Gweedo’s pinky. “There ya go. Can’t get lost now, see? When you get through, just yank it and we’ll come.”

His hand twitched at the string, desperate to get back at rubbing his eye.

“Or,” said Russ, jabbing at Gweedo’s chest, “If ya too CHICKennnnn, you can just fuck off home, EYE-meedy-ATTA- mont.” Kids have no mercy when the victim’s on his back, balls and belly in the air.

“You find anything in there, you gotta bring it back, ok?” Matty called after him, the torch light circle flickered up the tunnel walls then faded. Vanished.

For five minutes maybe we chuckled and joked ‘bout the fear on his face and the shit filling his pants when the string pinged tight. Then it went slack. A wave of water rippled out, like he was swooshin’ it up with his feet. We shouted into the mouth, but it ate up our voices. Matty tugged on the string, it came out easy but I stopped him.

“No, man! What if he can't find the way out?”

Four hours shouting, then screaming “GWEEDO!” ‘til dark was dropping. We didn’t go in after him.

Couldn’t; he had the torch, right?

Too dangerous, right?

All that came out was water.

All that came out was water . . . all that came out . . . was . . . the . . .

Matty started pulling on the string.

***

In the Dream I’m always screaming at my twelve-year-old self, and I’m inside it again and screaming at us, “Tell someone! Do something!” I’m looking down at us, looking at each other, looking into that black throat, eyes all saying the same thing, but only Russ spoke it. He had the mouth, out of all of us.

“We don’t say nothing to nobody. We haven’t seen him. He wasn’t with us.”

***

I woke with a sound like a shout ringing, echoing off into nothing in my ears.

“What dream did you give me?” I asked Saffi over coffee, down in the kitchen. She wafted about, weighing up muesli or granola, not really listening.

“Hmm?”

“Your dream pipe thing. What did you give me?”

“So you did dream, huh?” she twirled, smug smiling, then a pistol-fingers double tap PA-POW Toldya! She poured out some of both cereals, hacked up a banana on it.

“Tell me!” I kicked at her beautiful backside, then we footsie-fought under the breakfast bar and she’s chuckling, batting me off with one hand, digging blind in the fridge for coconut milk with the other.

“Oh . . . just pipes, honey. Just the pipes. Like you said. Did it work?” Her eyebrows all up and down in mischief, “Tell me!” she mocked, then tickled me until I gave up something.

Not that though. I told her something else. Something that seemed like a dream waking up.

I told her I’d dreamt about a thing in the drains that I used to swear was following me, scraping and sniffing for me, from below, from out of manholes and street drains all over town, when it got dark.

“King Crocodillo, we used to call it. Drain Dragon. Just kids’ stuff, scaring ourselves, y’know? But all of us said we heard it; a sorta ‘glok glok glok’ sound, like when the bath empties right out.”

“Behold! I have power in the underworld . . . power to summon dreams to the realms of sleep,” She said, sounding like a mystic. Then she wrinkled up her nose. “You smell something?”

“Your bullshit, maybe?” I sniffed.

***

I dreamt again that night; felt it coming. This one time when Dad was chatting shit with the guy two doors down. We were out, getting ice cream or something, and the guy stopped us. “You smell that?” He says. Water was bubbling up from under his drive and flowing away down the street: “Rotten, ain't it? That’s drains! Water Board’s spinning me some yarn that it’s a natural spring just so they don’t have to fix it.”

And in the dream, the water . . .

The water coming up from the ground?

It slows to a stop then flows towards me . . . uphill. Slow at first, but then it picks up and I’m backing up and up but it keeps coming, the stench getting worse and worse.

***

Saffi’s voice from the bathroom wakes me and I’m dank with sweat.

“Honey, can you help me?” She’s grumbling at something.

“Coming . . . ” I rub at my slept-bad-again neck and haul my sweaty ass out and up and over to the door and into the hall and across the landing but the bathroom door is shut and from behind it Saffi’s huffing.

“What is it?”

“The sink won’t drain. Pipe’s blocked, maybe.”

I try the door. It's locked.

“Can you open the door for me?”

“I can’t, honey. I’m stuck!” She laughs her silly-me laugh “I was trying to get the thing out, you know, the pushy down plug thing?”

I go cold.

“And I got my finger stuck in it, and . . . Oh!”

Drain sounds start up, the bubbling knocking sound of drains not draining. Glok glok glok—

“Oh GOD! It stinks!” she shrieks “Georgie! What do I do? George!”

Glok glok glok.

I can’t move.

“Fuck sake, George!” She’s straining, fingernails scraping the door like the damned cat, trying to reach the bolt. “Are you going to help, or what?”

She runs the tap but the sound doesn’t stop. It's coming from the overflow, it's bubbling up in the basin water. Then there’s a pop and a bang of something metal hitting something and she screams once “Fuck!” then the bolt on the door slides back and I push it open and she’s there by the sink, sucking on the side of her finger, plug on the floor and spray of slime up her yellow T.

I’m hit with a stink of drains. Bad eggs. “You ok?” I croak.

Saffi leans over, looking down into the sink. “There’s something stuck down there, honey. Stuck in the pipes.” She reaches down into it, still suckin’ her finger. “It looks like . . . like string . . . ”

I’m back at the Tunnel. Matty pulls on the string and it comes out easy.

“It is string . . . ” she starts to pull it out of the plug hole.

Yard after yard, Matty pulls it and it comes out easy. We don’t stop him.

“Green string . . . what the fuck?” she pulls it, finger and thumb, slowly out of the hole, strands of slime shining on it, her face puckered up disgusted.

And Saffi’s pulling it, inch by inch and Matty’s pulling it yard by yard and I can’t speak and I can’t move because I know what’s coming. Yard after yard and we don’t stop Matty now cos we know Gweedo ain’t coming out.

—“STOP!!”

I shout it, surprising myself. Saffi turns to me, still holding the string.

“Oooops,” She squeaks, tipping her head coquettishly. She tugs the string with a flick of the wrist and something chings against the tap and off the porcelain. She looks down, then back and holds my gaze. I swear something gristle white flitters across her eyes.

“Oh Georgie. You shouldn’t have.”

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© N Winney April 2025.

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Artwork by:

Jon T

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