Be warned: this is a piece about fatbergs, which are really, really disgusting.
Somewhere nearby, underground, growing in the dark, there may lurk a fatberg. The fatberg is here. It has arrived. We have reached fatberg. We have achieved fatberg. We achieved it a while back in fact. The fatberg has been deployed. We are all fatbergers now.
Mmm. Fatburgers. The appeal of the fatberg, I think – the very early appeal – is that it is a word that lies across a strange linguistic divide. Do fatbergs have feet? Grant them feet for a second, at least. One of the fatberg’s feet rests in the world of all things disgusting. But listen to it. Hear its whisper: fatberg! One of the fatberg’s feet brushes up against something that sounds delicious. Who knew that this liminal world existed, that these two kingdoms, disgusting and delicious, had a shared party wall?
All this until you see the fatberg, of course, at which point its waveform collapses and lo, the fatberg is purely disgusting. In the sewer, it squeezes down out of the roof, brickwork giving way to livid white and purple. It is a tumour erupting into the world of Dark Souls. What would it feel like to touch? Not sponge, but some kind of tissue. The fatberg would feel like marrow, like brain.