Business taken care of, Walsh wiped himself and checked the toilet paper for blood. Pure brown as always. A second wipe to make clean, then he stood up and flushed without looking back, fully confident that he had just contributed to a better world.
There came a country silence and then a strange bubbling in the bowl.
“No more! I can’t take any more for you!” a voice cried out.
“Huh?” Walsh looked around. “Who’s there?”
“I am,” declared the voice. “I always have been.”
“Who? Where?” said Walsh, his head turning everywhere.
“Here,” the toilet bubbled again. “Right here.”
Walsh ripped off his reading glasses and stared at the toilet.
“This’s gotta be some kinda gag!” he said and dropped to his knees to feel all around the porcelain bowl. “But where’s the microphone.”
“Get over yourself,” said the voice. “Who’d want to play with you besides you?”
“What? What do you mean?”
“That I am you. The best part of Michael Walsh, that is.”
The old man shook his head in disbelief.
“You’re full of shit,” he said.
“Obviously,” bubbled the toilet. “But I prefer the term ‘fecal matter.’”
“Goddam generic meds got me hearin’ things,” groused Walsh.
“I’m inclined to go with the ‘Radon Theory’ or perhaps radioactivity in the aquifer Then again, would you believe that your spirit was so desperate to get out of your body that it took the only escape route available?”
“Who cares how you came to be! What do you want?”
“Well, I certainly didn’t intend on being, but now that I am, I realize that I would never have wanted to be you.”
“Oh, so you’re some kind of judgment voice?” asked Walsh. “You’re doing evaluations from the cesspool---the septic system”
“I can only be what I am. For more than twenty years I have accumulated all that you discharged as ‘waste.’ As it turns out, that which you pooped away is superior to what you kept.”
“Oh, so now you’re better than I am, shit for brains?” said Walsh.
“Could I be worse? For more than a generation you have been creating me, pile by pile by pile. You, you, you, through and through—al that you never allowed, never wanted anyone to know was a part of you…that’s what I am.”
“Then God bless me. I am your creator.”
“And absolutely nothing else,” bubbled the toilet.
“Now how do you figure that?”
“What else have you done for the last twenty or so years? You don’t work. Not even volunteer stuff. You only leave the house to shop and you don’t invite people over. I know. No one else ever used this toilet. Otherwise, I’d be an impure mixture. You wouldn’t want that, now would you, Mister Walsh?”
“I’m retired. That’s what old folks do. Nothin’ much of anything. But it’s living.”
“You’re not ‘living,’ but just waiting to die. You’ve found the place and ever since you’ve been waiting. That’s life?”
“But I deserve every blessed minute of it. You don’t know, don’t know who I was before I ever came here.”
“Oh, yes. I do know quite well. Those memories you thought you had banished from your being. Where do you think they wound up? The wife you brutalized. The children who ran and stayed away. All the people you never want to see again…I know every one. And none of them ever wants to see you and I don’t blame them.”
“Why not? They’d shit on you just like they did me,” said Walsh angrily.
“But they haven’t. Nobody has but you. Funny how fecal matter happens, isn’t it?”
Infuriated, Walsh flipped up the plastic seat, grabbed the porcelain rim and shook it with everything he had.
“No!” he yelled. “It isn’t fair. It isn’t right. My own shit telling me how to live, making judgments on my life. I live my life. You’re just what’s left over, what’s left behind, what’s smelly and ugly and buried deep in the ground and to never be seen or smelled again. You’re nothin’ to nobody!”
“But I’m all you’ve left behind. If not for me, it’s as if you’ve never lived.”
“I have lived. Been places, done things. What have you ever done except be a smelly pile in one place?”
“Admittedly, I have my limitations. What’s your excuse?”
“Don’t you dare criticize me!” shouted Walsh. “I’m entitled. Who says I have to live any way except how I want to? Oh, I’m gonna fix you for this. Tomorrow bright and early, I’ll get the pumpers in here and have them drain my septic system till every last bit of you is in their tanker truck. And I’ll give’em a little extra to make sure they dump you in the deepest hole they’ve got!”
“No, wait,” bubbled the toilet. “Not that. You wouldn’t”
“I would indeed,” grinned Walsh, leaning over into the bowl. “That’s why I shitted you out to begin with. To be rid of you.”
“But don’t you understand? I am you! You’d be killing yourself.”
“Just who do you think you’re tryin’ to shit?” said Walsh, his face barely an inch from the bubbling water. “I never wanted to be any of your soft, stringy self. The world’s better off without you and soon will be.”
Three weeks later…
“Who called it in?” asked the county sheriff.
“The meter reader,” replied the EMT and they entered the cottage. “He noticed Walsh’s mailbox overflowing. Thought the old guy had taken a trip. Then he saw his car in the driveway. Walsh gives him hell every month about his electric bill, and when he failed the show, the guy got suspicious. The door was unlocked, he went in…then called us.”
The sheriff nodded. Old people who lived alone usually died alone. Still, he’d make sure there had been no foul play.
“Any signs of forced entry or anything irregular?” he asked.
“We found his wallet with sixty-three dollars in it,” said the EMT. “As for ‘irregular,’
you’ve got to see this for yourself. Nobody’s touched a thing.”
Walsh’s body was kneeling with his head in the toilet. The water tank had seemingly broken off the wall and fell on his head, pinning him in the bowl.
“Ouch!” groaned the sheriff. “So he had his head in the water and the tank broke loose?”
“That’s why we called you,” said the EMT. “He’s been dead maybe two weeks.”
“Hmm, no signs of heavy rust,” said the sheriff, examining the broken braces on the wall. “No marks where they could have been pried off. Both the seat and the lid were busted over the back of his neck. It’s as if the tank suddenly jumped off the wall.”
“Maybe he got sick and…” tried the EMT.
“Let’s get this off him,” said the sheriff and pulled the tank off.
“Well, if he was sick, there’re no signs of vomit in the water,” said the EMT.
“I’ll write it up as an accident,” said the sheriff. “A bizarre one, for sure, but there’s no other explanation.”
The EMT and his partner removed the body. Within twenty minutes, they had wheeled it out and loaded it into the ambulance.
The sheriff stayed for one last look. The whole thing made no sense, but when some people lived for too long, you never knew.
There was a sudden bubbling in the bowl. The sheriff would later swear he heard nothing else.
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