Holy Springs, Batman

Strolling out of the bright shining house of worship that is the Potted Veal Victory Temple , the Reverend Mickey Pontoon lit his fourteenth cigarette of the day and placed it ever so gingerly between his lips. The fresh, unfiltered smoke felt so good as he drew it into his lungs that he lit another and then another. He continued lighting cigarettes until he had eleven smoldering sticks of smoky goodness in his mouth, and with each puff he exhaled such a cloud that he soon looked like a World War Two Naval destroyer running a smoke screen for a trans-Atlantic convoy. “Heavens,” thought Pastor Mickey, “this is making me look like a World War Two naval destroyer running a smoke screen for a trans-Atlantic convoy."  He smiled a grand smile to himself and continued to puff as he strolled.

The headache that had been building in the center of his cranium since early that morning was starting to distract him, and a good, healthy smoke was nothing he wanted interrupted by unnecessary distractions like a headache. “Heavens,” thought Pastor Mickey, “I need to get rid of this headache, and right quick.” This very evening was to be the “Great Festival of Joy” at the Potted Veal Victory Temple, and Pastor Mickey was planning a mighty whopper of a sermon as the crowning centerpiece of the festival. He would be preaching on the sin of despondency, using as his text “The Third Habarabba of the Prophet Orca” - a key prophetical and moral text of the Potted Veal Victory Temple. Within it, the holy prophet warns the faithful to stay happy, and that any lapses of happiness would result in death by crushing.

Don't screw with the Prophet Orca.

The headache began to build even more aggressively and Pastor Mickey thought that the tiny hammers being wielded by the dwarves inside of his head might begin to be heard by passers-by. “Pang, pang, pang,” went the tiny hammers. “Pang, pang, pang...pang, pang, pang.” Pastor Mickey began to time his footsteps with the ringing of the hammers, beating out a tune by Spike Jones as he walked. “Unacceptable,” thought Pastor Mickey, “I need to get rid of this headache.”

Pastor Mickey followed a tiny path that led down a small flight of stairs and into a dim tunnel. The tunnel followed a winding path beneath the city and reappeared above ground in a wooded glen, filled with michaelmas daisies and rusty leaf springs. Casting himself headlong into a pile of leaf springs, Pastor Mickey cried out in a loud voice “set up thy leaf springs, o glen, as an ensign to the world!”

A shard of spring steel pierced Pastor Mickey's skull as his full weight came down upon it and a geyser of bright red blood shot high in the air, looking for all the world like a spout of water from the blow hole of a killer whale breaking the surface of the ocean.

“That thou mayest draw all the world unto thyself,” said Pastor Mickey through smiling lips, breathing his final, headache-free breath.

The tiny dwarf that happened upon Pastor Mickey's recumbent form in the pile of scrap iron studied it quizzically. “Well,” he thought aloud, “ he certainly will remember this “Great Festival of Joy.”