Is the UK government’s policy of allowing water companies to discharge raw sewage into the country’s rivers and coastal waters creating deadly mutated monsters – beasts spawned from the bowels of Britain – that could threaten local populations? “Well, there’s no doubt that something evil is crawling out of these waters by night and terrorising the local area,” opines Jason Stoolen, part of a group of crack local scientists currently investigating strange goings on in the River Thames as it passes through Staines, as he wades waist deep among the reeds close to the river bank. “The whole area adjacent to the river bank is littered with dead birds and local residents have spoken of seeing strange shapes swilling around in the water after the dark. Some have even claimed to see weird misshapen figures lurking around local riverside parks.” Indeed, one local woman has told the local newspaper – the Daily Staines – of how she was chased to her front gate by something horrible one night last week. “It was dark and foggy and half the street lights round here are out, so it was difficult to make out what it was,” explained Doreen Flopp, a forty seven year old housewife. “I was coming back from the bingo and cut through the park as a short cut. I caught this movement, from the direction of the river, in the corner of my eye – it might have been vaguely man shaped, but it didn’t so much walk as ooze!” She also noticed that the thing, which she estimated to be seven feet tall, glistened in the moonlight. “It kept following me – the faster I walked, the faster it came after me,” she recalled. “It got closer and closer, but finally I made it to my front gate, just as it was drawing close. As I slammed the gate behind me, the most evil smell engulfed me – I nearly passed out! I’m sure that it came from that thing!”

Police investigating her claims were sceptical, as they were unable to find any evidence of a prowler. “They said there were no footprints on the river bank or anywhere else on my route,” explains Flopp. “The only thing they did find was what looked like a huge skid mark outside my front gate, like someone had scraped their shitty arse along the pavement!” For Stoolen, though, these skid marks were enough to confirm their suspicions. “This stretch of the river, next to the park where the thing started following Mrs Flopp, is down stream of a sewage plant, which we know has been discharging effluent,” the thirty seven year old, who can normally be found teaching GCSE science at a local secondary school, told The Sleaze. “Even before the government approved it, they’ve been regularly dumping tons of the stuff in the river. Damn it, the stench is unbearable – it is probably what has killed the birds – and the river is awash with turds!”

Even as Stoolen spoke, he was startled by a huge brown mass suddenly breaking the surface, accompanied by bubbling methane. “See what I mean?” he declares. “It’s like the scenario for one of those fifties horror films, isn’t it? You know the sort of movie I mean, the ones where some unscrupulous capitalist factory owner is dumping dangerous chemicals into the swamp, or some unscrupulous military top brass are secretly dumping radioactive waste materials into the sea. The end result is always the same: horrible mutated monsters come lumbering out of the contaminated water and start murdering people!” With the authorities refusing to take the fears of Stoolen and other locals seriously, they decided to form their own scientific investigation group, which includes science teachers like himself, a coupe of amateur entomologists and a pharmacist from a local chemists shop. “We have our lab set up at a local Scout hut,” Stoolen explains. “But we can only do analysis at weekends as all the equipment is borrowed from the school and I need it for lessons on weekdays. I know that it all sounds a bit ramshackle, but in all of those old films, the threat was always neutralised by a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs and a crazy old scientist working from a shed, who were all originally ridiculed for their beliefs!”

Stoolen contends that the evidence for the existence of evil mutated sewage based monsters in UK rivers is incontrovertible. “Mrs Flopp isn’t the only one who has had an encounter with these beings,” he says. “Only a couple of days ago a chap whose back garden goes down to the river reported an intruder lurching around his garden by night. He said that it came from the direction of the river and was ‘lumpy looking’. He also reckoned that it made a squelching noise as it prowled round the outside of the house and was accompanied by a foul odour.” Once again, no physical evidence was found, beyond what looked like a huge and vaguely human handprint on the exterior of the back door. “Apparently, it was formed of human excrement,” the scientist says. “I mean, that surely proves it was left by something not human – there’s surely no way a person would dip their hand in crap and do that, is there?” Stoolen and his colleagues believe that it is only a matter of time before the mutated excrement creatures start attacking in numbers. “The authorities really need to start taking this seriously,” he says. “We could easily end up with an army of horrible shit monsters oozing their way out of our rivers and squelching after us. Can you imagine the horror of being chased by a huge bipedal turd?”

But what could these creatures want from humanity? Stoolen believes he might have the , very disturbing, answer. “I fear that it could be like that film Humanoids From the Deep, where mutated man-fish things start coming out of the sea and raping human women in order to create an improved, more evolved, version of themselves,” he muses. “After all, there was that recent tabloid story about that bloke from Bracknell who stumbled into a police station, his back covered in excrement, who claimed that he’d been taken from behind by a huge slimy brown thing. He was taken to hospital with abdominal pains, where he he apparently passed a the most humongous turd that the medics had seen – allegedly, the thing shot out of the chap’s rectum, attacked one of the doctors before crashing out a window and escaping. Obviously, this is entirely unconfirmed.” What defence could humanity possibly deploy against these creatures in the event that they start crawling out of the rivers and chasing people up beaches? Could rolling huge toilet rolls at them be the best defence? Will we see squads of soldiers armed with giant toilet brushes being deployed on Britain’s streets? Stoolen believes that it could be as simple as flushing them away with high pressure water hoses. “Mind you, that could be fraught with peril, as the water used against them could itself be contaminated and cause further mutations,” he says. “Which really doesn’t bear thinking about.”