Charlie was paying penance for his sins. All that leftover pizza from the party last weekend, a whole 18-inch worth of cheese consumed over the past few days, beleaguered him with the follies of gluttony. It tightened up the bowels, put the whole digestive system on lockdown. Martial law was in effect, and his muscles acted as law enforcement, raiding the occupier encampment and coercing motion.
And so Charlie sat here, twiddling his thumbs and listening to one of the other sales guys groan a few stalls down. It was the wrong hour of the day in the wrong stall. There was only one coveted handicapped stall in the building, and at this hour so close to lunch, it’d be a damned miracle to find it unoccupied. But the occupiers needed to move, even if it meant hunkering down in the cramped middle squat box, clutching the knees and praying for a quick victory.
An occasional splash broke through the cacophony of misery as Charlie’s neighbor hissed and grunted, battering knuckles against the stall walls. It almost sounded like he was sobbing down there too, whispering apologies to a malevolent deity as the air around him thickened with sulfurous smog. The fog of war.
Charlie’s pants buzzed about the ankles. A text. Something to keep his mind off the stench of a thousand torments wriggling under the walls, slithering over the murky piss splatters and shit puddles and wadded up pieces of the sports section. He reached into his pocket and removed his cell phone, toggling it on with the roll of a thumb.
Anna 1:05 PM
Hey baby
Fingers delicately keyed the digital keyboard on his smartphone. A jagged torpedo scraped the sides of his innards – the Chicago Democratic Convention of 1968. Mayor Daley’s machine.
Charlie 1:06 PM
Wut up honey?
Anna 1:06 PM
You thinkin of me at work???
He closed his eyes for a moment, let that violence give way to the promise of serenity. The paradise of Anna washed ashore, and the sea breeze rustled through the palm trees, carrying her floral scent to mingle with the –
Charlie 1:07 PM
Alwys think of u, babe
Anna 1:06 PM
Awwww hunny. i got a suprise 4 u
His phone loaded while his muscles contracted. Flowers and egg farts. That little red bar scurried across his screen before a Heavenly illumination of breasts glimmered through the enveloping fog of war, cutting through the echoes of water splashes with its angelic choir. Milky smooth skin with perky nipples. Her bare cannons were like two softballs without the stitching, unwrapped cabbages freshly plucked from underneath the grocery store mist sprayers.
Charlie grinned salaciously. In the back of his mind, a knight in battered armor and caked with entrails kneeled at the altar of a statuesque woman. The knight blessed himself, whispering prayers before the stone monolith of beauty. His head kept low, gauntlets carefully offered the spoils of war upon the altar – a dowry of the most colorful gems this island’s caves had to offer, gems more beautiful than the exotic fauna she reminded him of. He paused for a moment, let the ocean’s winds rub against his face, accepting his pittance before the fairest of the sea goddesses.
Anna 1:09 PM
U wanna fuk my ta tas l8r?
Charlie couldn’t push anymore. The freight train leaving the station halted on the tracks. There were cattle ahead. More specifically, a bull. Stiff. Rigid. Immovable. Charlie’s dominant hand wriggled across his thigh as the ocean breeze fluttered through his armor. Divinity had beamed down upon him, plucking him from this reality of sin and stomachache.
Charlie 1:10 PM
More than that
Anna 1:10 PM
Moar?
Charlie 1:11 PM
Yeh bebe
Imma fuk u evrywhr
Anna 1:11 PM
In my but?
The guy a few stalls down was sobbing. Little gasps of “Jesus Christ” carried on dead air, mingling with sporadic munitions emptying into the sea as he thrashed within his cage, a prisoner of war held captive by the armies of malnutrition. A Yippie with no escape route.
This is what democracy looks like, the occupiers chanted.
“I just want to get out of here,” he gasped softly. “I just want to get out of here.”
Charlie couldn’t blame him. Someone before them had devoured White Castle for lunch and didn’t flush. Or couldn’t flush.
Anna 1:12 PM
i like it when u cum on my beck
Charlie 1:13 PM
Yeh bebe?
Anna 1:14 PM
U cum on my ta tas and imam gun lik it up
Concentration. The rallying crying of Master Yoda.
The head of the bull stood fully erect, horns perked to the winds as the goddess unveiled herself to him, caressing him, touching him, exploring him. As it raised its neck higher, the bull brushed against something cold and wet and slimy, something speckled with the drippings of several hundred office drones, something carpeted with the curly hairs of the recently shaved. A murky swamp. A poisonous bog with tendrils so ferocious only Japanese animators had the cultural nightmares to conjure them.
Fear found its way surfing through Charlie’s veins. Paranoia. Hysteria. The encampment had been raided, the fantasy broken. His heart raced as his dominant hand gently removed the bull from its porcelain prison. He clenched his eyelids shut, too afraid to look at what diseases set camp on the tip. Did some hairs ride along? Someone else’s grease?
Anna 1:15 PM
Im gon lik it good, gon maek u cum in my moth
Charlie deflated like a moon jump after the carnival closed. He clutched the dying member in his hand and peeked through one eye, scanning down, scanning just to the rim of the toilet and wincing shut again.
The man a few stalls down was wiping now, tearing sheets of paper from the noisy steel container, but he still sniffled and whined. “Oh my God; there’s blood,” he whimpered. “So much blood.”
Charlie wanted to whimper too. He wanted to open his throat and let the fear shriek its way out, lash out in mortified rage at the disease latching onto him from the murky swamp.
A faucet turned on. Someone else was washing his hands, chit-chatting with another coworker.
“Always stinks in here, don’t it?”
“Smells like someone took a dump on a dead body and left it decomposing in the back. That sickly sweet candy cane bratwurst shit smell, you know? Anyway, did I tell you about the anniversary gift I got for my wife?”
“Whadja get?”
“One of those…”
His phone buzzed again, calling him back, beckoning Charlie once more to the land of fantasy.
Anna 1:18 PM
Y u no txt bak? U jerkin, babe?
Charlie looked at the pic of Anna’s breasts again. Then he thought of the drizzles of Chipotle Thunder caking the porcelain throne yesterday when he walked in here. Two wires crossed, and a resonance blared in his head, a high-pitched mechanical ring that made him both disgusted and at peace. Nauseous and sedated. Disjointed from time and lodged between two states of mind, two worlds, two universes co-mingling like the darkest of Internet porn fantasies. A union. A holy matrimony between billy club and tie-dye T-shirt.
He looked up. He heard the somber coos of a man overcome by digestive grief. He heard the other two at the sink, chatting away about the worst smells their bodies had ever concocted, their voices firm and powerful as their arms race collected a plethora of dietary combinations. Charlie heard the texts of his girlfriend, Anna, in her voice – those heated words rolling off soft lips begging to be kissed. And as he looked up, he saw smack dab in the middle of a blank stall door, a door untouched and unmolested by vandals, something that caught his eye.
It was small and round, greenish-yellow, and stuck in place. A little booger someone had flicked on the door, nonchalantly plucked with organic construction equipment and disposed of like a satellite into space, fired from a slingshot through the fabric of molecules vibrating in the air. And there it sat on the wall. Disjointed. Out of place. A nose hair stood erect on it like a miniature flag pole.
One small step for man.
His phone buzzed again. Another picture, this one was of a chalice, two fingers pressed against the rim. Charlie glanced at it, then back at that booger. A barbarian flung it there. The same kind of barbarian that would eat nothing but pizza for a week and try to masturbate to photos of his girlfriend in the office bathroom.
Charlie grunted and closed his eyes. He bit his lower lip and added fuel to that freight train. This time it’d leave the station.
–Story by Flynn Cargo
–Art by Sagi Kortler
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