Pete Boggs was born of a peat bog, it spawned him in the dead of night. He emerged fully grown, already mature and aware, a marsh man incubated by mist. Completely without purpose nor even the most basic imperative to reproduce, he wandered aimlessly in the dark until he found himself surrounded by pavement and the stooped, hurried forms of agitated businessmen — their eyes locked firmly on their perfectly polished shoes. Had they walked with a more measured pace, they likely would've regarded Boggs with contempt. He was exceptionally tall, but gaunt and hairless, and there was a deformed indentation at his sternum. His gnarled, ghostly white hands were covered with acne, and he gasped with perennial bronchitis. Yet the businessmen, in all their haste and self-interest, paid him no mind. Truly, this was no place for swamp folk.

Only when it became clear to him that he'd receive no guidance or sympathy from the sharply-dressed men of the city, Boggs drifted off slowly towards the ocean, failing to recognize the innumerable pairs of furious headlights that streaked past in every direction. Their sources? Cars without drivers, sleek embodiments of kinetic anger that flew by with no particular destination, honking eternally. If they took care to avoid striking him down — which, at their speed, would surely end his life — they didn't show it. But Boggs merely trudged on as the cars slammed into each other with such hateful force that it had to have been deliberate, even if there was no reason for any of it. In a daze, he saw visions of himself standing on a beach at sunrise, encircled by dead jellyfish; thousands of them, mutilated, unmoving except for when jabbed at by vicious, giggling children armed with sticks. Boggs had never seen anything more depressing in his admittedly short life, and it stopped him in his tracks.

Knees buckling, he mourned for the imaginary jellyfishes for what felt like an eternity, so caught up in his anguish that he didn't notice how thirsty he'd become. As it gradually occurred to him that he hadn't so much as tasted a single drop of water since he'd left the swamp, he was suddenly accosted on both sides by two burly men with hatchets, each of them dressed in cheap firefighter uniforms — the sort you'd find in the costume section of a party store. Their badges were plastic, but their hatchets were quite real. In his weakened state, Boggs thought only to croak, "Water...water..." But no sound came, save for a choked, stuttered rasp that pained him greatly. It was the first time he'd ever tried to speak, and under the circumstances, the worst time to realize he couldn't. Wordlessly, he was forced to watch as the firemen lifted him up without warning, two limbs each, and began to carry him away. They said nothing, nor made any noise at all as they dutifully marched on, just as Boggs had before them; on and on, eyes looking ahead. Or at least, they would have been, if they'd had eyes — even in the midst of his dehydration, Boggs was dully horrified to find that they had no faces. Instead there was blank flesh, mannequin-like and featureless, that sat eerily on the front of their heads. Boggs wiggled feebly and groaned a bit louder, to no avail. His handlers only tightened their hold on his emaciated wrists and ankles, unable to break their damnable silence. His energy spent, Boggs' appendages went slack.

The next thing he knew, he was lying on his side in the middle of a crowded city street — the very same city he'd just departed from, only now the businessmen gave him their full and undivided attention. His head was secured in place by one of the firefighter's mud-crusted boot, and he quietly wished he could scratch his nose one last time as he stared down the nozzle of a firehose. Then the switch was thrown, and water forced itself into every pore of his body. Boggs involuntarily
convulsed all at once, and the boot on his forehead clamped down harder. In a matter of seconds, his lungs were filled. People in the apartments nearby stuck their heads out of windows to get a better look — everyone wanted to see the drowned man. All the businessman hooped and hollered. Someone sold peanuts. The revelers' mirth
quickly spread throughout the rest of the city, until each and every person's spirits were lifted.

Maybe they thought it strange that the cause of their celebration was the public execution of someone they'd never met, but maybe not. In the end, it didn't really matter. It had been so long since they'd felt anything at all. For the first time in what may have been a thousand years or more, there was laughter — real laughter, the kind that makes your sides burn and leaves you in tears, unable to quit in spite of how stupid you sound. And there lay Pete Boggs, born of a peat bog, his corpse grotesquely bloated from the water inside it, his lips blue
and agape. It was far from a graceful death, but no one dared to disturb his body; instead, it was decided that it and the ground it rested on would become treasured landmarks, monuments to remember the one who'd made them all happy again.