I had been writing all afternoon, sitting in the same spot so long that my legs were useless numb little meat-sticks. For years, I’d done all my work this way---while occupied with something mundane: taking a shower, walking the dog, or sitting in a waiting room. My best ideas always came out from the dark little corners where they hid when my body was busy, and my mind was loosed upon the page to soar.
My best shit always came out when my actual shit did.
I was writing on the toilet.
You might find that inappropriate, or strange, or even disgusting---the idea of sitting there, pants pooling at your shins like a snake’s carelessly discarded skin, your imagination spilling out as freely as…well. You have every right to think whatever you like and to go away and write your own boring story I won't read because you're kind of a dick.
Life is about choices.
Writing while I take a deuce is one of mine.
The flush was supposed to be simple---stand up, look down, admire, wave goodbye, and woosh.
That’s all it ever was.
But this time? This time was different.
This time, the flush became something voracious, alive, and determined to change my life forever.
I pressed the handle, and instead of taking everything away, the water swirled into a shrieking, spiraling maw. Both hand and mouth at once, it reached up from the porcelain depths to grasp at me.
I should have run, but I froze. The water twisted into long, translucent fingers, wrapping around my ankles and yanking me off the ground. Then it pulled me down---sucked me into the funnel and swallowed me whole, slurping me into a tube that circled around me. It spun so fast it was impenetrable. I pressed against it, but it was like trying to claw my way through liquid glass.
It yanked me from the filthy Denny’s bathroom where I’d been perched, half-naked, for four and a half hours with my laptop bridging the gap across my nudity. One moment, I was buttoning my pants; the next, I was tumbling headfirst into chaos.
The descent was immediate and relentless. My body twisted unnaturally, bending past the U-bend and down into the sewers. The claustrophobia was suffocating, yet the space stretched endlessly around me---both infinite and crushing all at once.
Rushing liquid roared in my ears, a cacophony of unholy sounds that ripped through me like countless clawing hands. Colors erupted---hues I couldn’t name---each carrying a tactile weight that stung my skin and peeled the top of my skull away like damp paper. They prodded at my exposed brain, triggering a cascade of sensations: deep, inescapable sadness; a searing, muscle-deep burn; and uncontrollable, manic laughter---all crashing together in the same unbearable instant.
Experiencing so much at once was profoundly unsettling, nauseating in a way that defied explanation. It felt as though my senses had been turned inside out, forced to consume one another---then themselves---while I stood helpless, powerless to stop their complete cannibalistic collapse.
At first, it was overwhelming. Then, it became infuriating.
What else did this disgusting, sludge-colored vortex have to show me? The novelty wore off fast. The endless noise and chaos throbbed in my head until it perfectly mirrored the growing rage boiling within me.
The laptop was in my hands when it all started. I’d been working on it for hours---after breakfast-for-dinner-at-4 a.m.---typing, rewriting, brainstorming branding updates, and mentally cataloging the work I wanted to finish later. I’d been in that stall from the moment my plate was scraped clean until the sun rose and burned its way into the morning sky.
When the portal seized me, I clutched the laptop instinctively. At first, I held it because it was there---because I needed something real to ground me in the chaos---but as the swirling insanity dragged me deeper, the device became more than that. It was a symbol of my work, the hours I’d poured into updates, ideas, and revisions. Losing it would mean losing proof that I’d been doing something meaningful at all.
And yet, as my anger mounted, so did the temptation to throw it at the vortex.
“Alright, you fuckin’ asshole,” I snarled into the swirling maelstrom, holding the laptop in front of me like a shield. “Real cute at first, but repetitive after five minutes. How long are we doing this? Because honestly, I’ve seen more entertaining TikToks.”
The water gurgled mockingly but offered no reply.
“What the fuck are we doing? Let me out of here!”
Nothing answered.
“Listen, wormhole,” I growled, clutching the laptop tighter. “Your whole vibe? One star. Ancient, eldritch, horrific, and incomprehensible at first---but rapidly devolves into boring and derivative. Would not recommend. I wouldn’t even send my grandma here---and she’s a bitch who deserves it.”
Nothing.
“I said, ONCE I’M OUT OF HERE, I’M LEAVING A YOU A SHITTY REVIEW!”
The vortex might have laughed---quietly, subtly---but I couldn’t be sure.
“LET ME OUT OF HERE, DICKHEAD!”
Finally, something answered.
Not in words, but in sound.
A deafening howl tore through me, like groaning pipes dragged across concrete. It reverberated in layers: metal on metal, static interwoven with distant screams, each sound sharper than the last. It felt like sentient shards of glass—dislodging themselves from the void and hurling through time and space---tearing into my skull with malicious, intentful precision.
I clamped my hands over my ears, but the sound burrowed straight into my head. The slick, pulsing walls of the pipe clenched around me, moving like living intestines.
Yellow liquid gushed past me in bursts, carrying the stench of decay, sewage, and something older---something ancient and sentient, leaking into my skin like an infection. The darkness alternated with bursts of light that emanated from nowhere.
Shapes brushed against me. Slimy, slithering things trailed along my legs, their touch leaving behind chemical burns that seared straight through my pants and into my skin.
The air---or maybe it was the water---was vile. Metallic and acrid, like chewing on a disused sponge rotted through with mold. My senses blurred, each one reduced to a grotesque parody of itself.
Time became meaningless, but by my estimate, I had been tumbling for over an hour now. My thoughts fractured, rewrote themselves, splintered again. Was I dead? Hallucinating? Being digested? The idea of existing in the guts of some cosmic stomach became less theory and more probability with each pulse of the walls around me.
They thrummed with a rhythm too deliberate to be random---a heartbeat pounding in my ears.
If this is digestion, I thought, it is offensively slow.
If this---this thing--this being---this whatever---had any decency, it should’ve bitten my head clean off at the start. To be consumed consciously and forced to endure all of this was completely insulting...
When I finally emerged, I fell out of the endless pipes of the cosmic sewer. Mid-yawn and dozing with exhaustion.
I landed in a bathroom stall---spotless and glistening unsettlingly. The sight of it made my stomach churn. It was too clean. Too artificial.
Sinister sterility.
That thought rooted itself in my mind as I sat in the overwhelming, oppressive presence of this place---a place so pristine, so grotesquely opposed to what I’d just endured, it felt like another fucking insult.
Add it to the list.
Where the fuck was I?
I shuddered violently.
It wasn’t just the disturbingly spacious cleanliness of my surroundings that caused the convulsion---it was the bone-deep wetness. The kind of wet that clings, burrows into your pores, and settles beneath your skin. The kind of wet that nestles into every crevice: between the conduits of your veins, between your joints---deep into your marrow.
It’s the kind of wet that makes you certain your insides will never feel dry again.
Well…
Sometimes, it’s the small mercies handed down by fate that you end up appreciating after enduring something unbearably grotesque. This bathroom floor---gleaming, sterile, emanating its profound disquiet with its dustless corners and mirror-polished surfaces---was one such mercy.
At least it was the kind of floor you didn’t have to think too hard about when you finally regained consciousness.
So, if I had to have my very first seizure on any bathroom floor, at least it was this unsettlingly glossy, spotless one---one that probably didn’t give you ringworm just for lying on it.