King Pest

This is a short story written in 1835 about two mates, Legs and Hugh Tarpaulin, who go on a drinking spree in London, get waylaid and stumble on a den of drunken inequity somewhere down a dingy dark alley.

One friend is extremely short while the other is excessively tall, and there's a smattering of the John Steinbeck story Of Mice And Men about it, which is maybe where he borrowed the idea from? I imagine James Joyce giggling with drunken glee if reading this, too, with its barroom rumbles and stumbles from door to door.

It's written in that compelling Edgar Allan Poe prose: complicated on first glance but easy to understand in comparison to some of his other short stories.

It's also different because of the unusual amount of weird wit and humour.

Finding themselves in Will Wimbles's undertaker shop, Legs and Tarpaulin encounter six pestilent drunks, King Pest, Queen Pest and their lesser subjects, who offer the dreaded Black Strap liquor to drink!

Sup this yon drinking fellows and further submit to alcoholic ruin, or refuse and pay the consequences!

The moral of this story, perhaps, is that no good comes from heavy drinking besides more heavy drinking and a sore head.

This is an entertaining and bizarre little story that's more enjoyable than a tempting tipple of Black Strap.