A Mixed Bag of Blood (10 page)

She entered the store, bells ringing annoyingly against the glass, and asked to use the restroom. The clerk, an elderly man with thick lenses that made his pupils appear like pin-holes, and a ring of puffy white hair around his bald, age-spotted head, handed her the key. Marla held it up, admiring the attached two-foot piece of graffiti ridden two-by-four block of wood.

“Don’t run off with that,” the clerk told her.

She needed the men’s room key. Women could be nasty, messy things, but when it came to the punishment, she wanted Peter to be in the men’s room.

She walked around the side of the building and waited a minute before returning to the store.

“That was fast,” the clerk said, holding out his arm to take the precious key back.

“No, no,” Marla said, shaking her head. “I need the men’s room key. The women’s is all clogged up.”

“Dammit,” the clerk grumbled. “You females and your feminine hygiene products.”

“Don’t blame me. I only just arrived at your establishment.” She placed the key on the counter, the man no longer holding out his arm. He looked at her hard, sighed and then handed her the men’s room key. It was identical to the women’s, graffiti and all.

Marla walked around to the side of the building where the restrooms were located. She slid the key into the keyhole and opened the door. Stepping inside, she immediately pulled up short as if she struck an invisible barrier. A pungent odor, like raw sewage, assaulting her olfactory senses.

Spinning around, she stepped back outside, hoping to quell the gag reflex building in her throat. She took in gulps of fresh air and gathered her senses. When the episode passed, she smiled. The place was perfect.

She returned to the restroom, this time breathing through her mouth. Flicking on the light switch, she gasped. The place was disgusting, and if she hadn’t thought it the perfect place to punish her son, she’d call the health department and have the place quarantined.

The overhead fluorescent bulbs flickered, the shadows coming and going like ghostly apparitions. Honey colored fly paper dotted with numerous insects hung from the ceiling like the long curls of a sweet little girl. The walls, white at one time, were caked with grime and graffiti. The sink was a giant rusted bowl of filth. The metal stall housing the toilet was painted an olive green, but had been done some years ago—the numerous rust spots, like cankerous soars, attesting to its age.

Inside the stall, the walls were layered in graffiti and decorated with scribbled drawings of men’s and women’s sexual parts.

The commode had cracks in the seat and what appeared to be smears of fecal matter at the rear. Flies buzzed on and off the smudges, grabbing their meals on the go. Like an overflowing mug of hot cocoa, the side of the toilet was cascaded with trails of dried diarrhea. Fearing to do so, but needing to see it all, Marla stepped forward and peered into the bowl.

Inside the toilet, the water was the color of rich, dark chocolate milk. A long, snake-like piece of shit rested halfway in and out of the water. Marla cringed.
Pigs
, she thought.

Losing herself in the horror, never having imagined herself in such a place, Marla closed her mouth and inhaled through her nose. The smell was palpable. It was as if she were breathing in a solid substance, and the odor was much stronger than when she stood at the entrance. She felt the bile ride up into her throat, the gag reflex kicking in and she immediately pinched her nostrils closed. She took deep breaths through her mouth and with her eyes closed, imagined the pleasant scent of lilacs and honeysuckle.

Under control of her body again, Marla removed the Container of Holding, unscrewed the lid and poured the contents along the rim of the toilet seat. A sapphire blue haze emanated from the seat like a morning fog as the particles dissolved into the commode. The toilet began to vibrate as Peter’s essence became a part of it.

“Peter?” his mother called. She held a necklace containing a red gem over the toilet. The rock glowed, indicating the spell had worked. “I hope you learn your lesson, young man. You have one year to think long and hard about how you want to live your life.” With that, Peter’s mother turned, grabbed the bathroom key and hurried out of the restroom.

* * *

Peter awoke with a horrendous taste in his mouth and his eyes already open. How could he wake up without opening his eyes? He tried blinking, but couldn’t. He tried moving, but couldn’t. What was happening? Looking around, he saw his environment all at once as if he had numerous eyes around his head. A grimy tiled floor and the graffitied walls of a bathroom stall stood before him. Confused, he tried sitting up, but realized he was up and still unable to move. He was completely paralyzed. The last thing he remembered was falling asleep in bed.

He searched his mind for an answer, but the putrid taste in his mouth was making him want to vomit. He tried swallowing, but couldn’t. Something was lying in his throat, a thick, moist cake-like substance. Under cooked brownie? He felt something tickling his lower region. Lower region? Where the hell were his legs? Looking upon himself, he saw that he had no legs, arms or body. Disbelief flooded his mind. Impossible! He was a damn toilet! His mother had turned him into a fucking toilet. Damn her and her witchcraft.

Peter freaked out for a while, his mind unable to comprehend his predicament, especially after seeing what the brownie-like substance was: a slug-like turd. Not a turd, a monstrosity of a turd. He needed to retch again, but nothing came forth.

After a few hours of solitude and contemplation, he relaxed. How could his mother do this to him? She was a crazy bitch, but this? Something began tickling his lower region again. Checking it out, he saw a huge cockroach crawling over him. It rested on the semi-dried diarrhea that caked the commode's—his—side and took a few mouthfuls before scurrying away.

This whole situation was one big mind-fuck. How could he possibly survive the mental anguish of being a receptacle for human waste? Even if he made it through this punishment, as his mother would call it, he would never be the same. Rest stop bathrooms would forever be banned from his presence.

As the weeks passed by, slow and agonizing like some demented, no not
like
, but definitely
demented
nightmare, he grew numb to the tortures.

The first day had been horrible. Truly a living hell with razor sharp teeth. His first . . . customer—was that what they were, customers—was an elderly man. He came into the stall, unzipped his fly, pulled out a wrinkly sausage-like pecker and relieved himself as if a stone were blocking the way. It came in spurts, the obscene and gruesome task taking forever. Peter tried over and over to close his eyes, but he had no lids, no eyes in fact, yet he could see all around him.

Worse was the taste. It was as if he had the most sensitive tongue in the world, tasting every drop—the toilet water diluting nothing—on every taste bud. Of course he possessed no tongue, but it didn’t seem to matter. When the old man finally flushed and washed the salty urine from Peter’s mouth, he had the first sensation of what relief would feel like as a toilet. That had been one of the better customers.

To Peter’s surprise, most customers didn’t bother to flush, leaving their waste resting to reside for however long it took for a decent person to come along.

The rest stop must’ve been located in a remote part of some highway in the desert because Peter didn’t receive an overly abundant amount of customers. They were mostly truckers or families from out of town. He could tell from their speech and clothing.

Peter hardly saw a janitor. The man maybe came in once a week or if the toilet—his throat—was clogged. Some people, no matter how dressed or seemingly educated, were simply idiotic. He hated the bunchers, as he called them. People who, instead of folding the toilet paper over into neat squares, bunched the paper into wads, wiped once and then deposited it into his mouth. Before he knew it, half the roll was gone. Then the dipshits would flush, watch it not go down and leave.

A few times a week, women would use the men’s room. Peter guessed it was because the women’s was occupied or out of order. Women were fine, he liked them more, except when the dumb bitches, and not too many, but some, had their periods and tossed their sanitary napkins or tampons in his mouth and flushed them. They’d always get caught in his throat, the coppery taste of blood, usually mixed with their urine churning in his mouth, causing him to want to gag, but of course he was unable. Those were some of the times he begged for the janitor to come and plunge his ass clean.

On the third day, a large beast of a man—easily three-hundred and fifty pounds of blubber—entered his stall. Peter trembled at the sight, trying to run, but of course remained as he always did.

Most people, not nearly enough though, put toilet paper on the seat. This behemoth did not, simply sitting down bareback onto the filthy seat. Peter was afraid his old, decrepit porcelain body might buckle under the man’s girth, but he held. It was awful. The man let his saggy ballsack droop inside the bowl, touching against the inner lip of the toilet where tons of grime rested. Then the man jostled around for a minute as if trying to line up his gigantic asshole with the toilet’s opening.

The things that came out of that individual were evil. Only Hell could produce such vile and foul beasts. Each log of shit must’ve weighed that of a newborn infant. It kept coming, like tubes of fudge at a chocolate factory.

Peter fought frantically with every ounce of his being to run, but he was a prisoner; only able to watch and taste the horror.

After the man flushed—smears of shit left around the porcelain like a Tupperware container emptied of fresh cake batter—Peter screamed with relief inside his head. But the man had simply flushed to make room for more. How fucking polite of him. Peter endured two more mouthfuls and flushes before the behemoth hefted up his jeans—shit smudges left on his left ass cheek—and exited the stall.

After two months of enduring ass cheek after ass cheek, having almost lost his mind, Peter had decided he’d had enough. A customer had left the toilet clogged up with toilet paper and waste, not having the decency to flush. Peter, incensed, never having felt so much rage in his entire life, exploded within, and the toilet flushed.

He’d never been so elated with joy in his life. It was a minuscule amount of control, but nonetheless he’d flushed by himself. He tried again to swallow, to flush, but nothing happened. How had he accomplished it, he wondered. Anger?

He received no sleep—ever, as a commode. His nightly time was mostly spent alone, staring at the same walls over and over like some comatose mental patient.

He ate nothing, not needing to, unless swallowing loads of people’s waste was considered eating. He decided to spend his down time thinking about himself, his soul, and his body. He allowed himself to feel the bugs and rodents that crawled on him instead of withdrawing into himself. A fact, it seemed, in which there was nothing he could do about it.

After numerous tries at movement, his mind reeling from accomplishing so little, he cracked. Not literally, but mentally. Something inside of him snapped, like a brittle twig. His sanity broken.

Like a mental patient amped up on methamphetamines, Peter went crazy, thrashing around in his mind. He did this for some unknown amount of time. Was it days? Weeks? He had no idea, but it no longer mattered because something incredible happened. The lid on the toilet sprang up. Concentrating, he was able to open and close it. Flushing soon became as routine as swallowing. He still couldn’t leave the stall, but something had happened that allowed him to become more a part of the toilet than ever before. He’d let go. Accepted his situation. In return, he was able to attain a portion of control back. He’d even grown bumps, like sharp plastic teeth that he could extend or protract at will along the rim and underneath the seat.

Seething with the need for revenge, he waited patiently for the next customer.

A young man, in his twenties, entered the stall a few hours later. After whipping out his penis, the man scratched at his incredibly hairy balls and let his bladder drain without bothering to lift the toilet seat. Infuriated, Peter lunged up with his mind, his body following his command. With piranha-like teeth protruding, Peter clamped down and tore the man’s member from his body. The urinater screamed in horror as blood spewed like a burst fire hydrant. He stumbled backward, slammed into the far wall and ran out, leaving a trail of crimson behind.

With the small piece of meat sitting at the bottom of the toilet, the water the color of diluted fruit punch, Peter swallowed and flushed the severed penis down the pipes, lost forever.

Over the coming weeks, he grew more and more elastic, able to lunge as if he were made of rubber. He sunk his teeth into numerous asses and genitals, leaving the authorities baffled. Police continuously responding, only to find no assailant.

The bathroom was even visited by paranormal investigators and was dubbed as possibly being haunted. News stations from around the country came to report on the infamous and elusive Bathroom Killer. But ultimately none of the organizations found a thing.

Peter kept killing and maiming until people were too scared to use the bathroom. But over time, customers began showing up, people who didn’t believe or weren’t aware, and then Peter started up his reign of terror again. He continued his onslaught, the only way he knew to keep anyone from dumping in him.

Then late one night, as a crescent moon hung high in the air, his mother came for a visit.

* * *

The bathroom was remarkably cleaner than when Marla had first visited. She could almost swear, if she did such things, that she was in a different place. The walls were scrubbed clean and painted over and the air quality had a flowery aroma to it. Lilac, she presumed.

She approached the stall and stepped into the small space with a look of disgust on her face. Looking at the commode with the eyes of a maddened dog, she said, “I’m extremely disappointed in you, Peter. I left you here in the hopes of teaching you a valuable lesson.” She sighed, then put the seat's lid down and sat. “Maybe I was too hard on you. This punishment too rough. Did it push you over the edge?” She patted the bowl’s side as if patting Peter’s head.