The fire alarm went off. I rose from my desk with the other kids in the class. Ms. Nisbett, the math teacher, put the chalk down halfway through a quadratic equation, turned to face us, and told us to line up and march single-file to the school parking lot. A paper airplane hit me in the face as I took my spot in the back of the line, between a lanky black kid in a hoodie in front, and in back, a short Hispanic girl who chewed her own purple-streaked hair. By now accustomed to having light projectiles thrown at me by my peers, I reached into my pocket to check if my lucky kazoo was still there. She was. I sighed in relief.
As we strode down the hall with other classes walking in line, passing by lockers defaced with graffiti and dents, I imagined myself and everyone else in Park Place High School clad in the lorica segmentata of the Roman legionary, embarking the ships to sail to Carthage and lay siege to that accursed city under the wise command of the great Pontifus Maximus Gaius Julius Caesar, son of Mars and flaming fist of the holy Roman Empire, and burn the city to the ground after putting to the sword the dark lord of the Punic hordes, Emperor Barack Obama, and his mercenary army of slingers from Iberia and Gaul, war elephants from India, voodoo ninjas from the jungles of sub-Saharan Africa, viking samurai from the frozen Germanic wastes, and steel-clad Atzec knights on the backs of fire-spitting hell steeds.
In reality, they were a motley bunch of rowdy kids. Dressed in everything from patched jeans to camouflage trench coats to t-shirts dedicated to rock stars old enough to be their grandfathers, they filled the halls with noise and litter. The boys hooted and hollered at each other in ape-like posturing, and the girls were little different. Apparently a place of learning only in name, Park Place High School seemed more a daycare for overgrown infants, a redundant institution pretending to prepare the youth for adulthood when that role was passed on to universities and community colleges years ago. Each one of them was a degenerate, I thought. None of them would have made good legionaries.
The pressure above my loins stretched my bladder’s walls. I’d been holding in pee the whole class, but it was now too urgent to ignore. Knowing full well that my absence would not be missed, I slipped out of the line and skulked to the nearest bathroom. The lack of urinals made me raise a brow. Only when I looked over my shoulder after entering did I notice that the stick figure on the front of the closing door wore a dress. I shrugged, for this was not the first time I had entered the girls’ bathroom by accident. As I approached the nearest stall, a chubby blonde femoid at one of the sinks turned to me with her eyes wide and her makeup half-finished.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
I opened the stall door and stepped up to the toilet. “Gotta pee.” I shut the door.
“In the girls’ bathroom?” Her voice was raising quite high.
“Sorry, it was an accident.”
“Get out of here.”
“I won’t be long.” I unzipped my jeans, raised the toilet seat, and prepared to open fire into the bowl.
“If you don’t get out right now, I’m telling security on you.”
As my glorious stream of urine crashed into the water below, I began to sing, “My little pony, my little pony. Ah, ah, ah, ah, my little pony…”
She screamed, “You fucking creep!”
I smirked. “I used to wonder what friendship could be. My little pony…”
“That’s it. I hope you like getting tasered, you jerk.”
The theme song of the latest television show for Hasbro’s line of diminutive plastic equines continued to play in my voice as the tubby teenage toddler stormed out to snitch on me. I chuckled and muttered to myself, “I bet she doesn’t even lift.”
As the last few milliliters of piss left my bladder, the toilet flushed. My smirk fell like an anchor in the sea. A ghost had flushed my toilet. Or so I thought. Yet, the vortex neither shrunk nor sunk. The air rushed past me from behind into the spiraling water with growing power. I could scarcely believe what I saw. The toilet was sucking in everything around it. Soon, I would be next.
I zipped my jeans and took a step away from the toilet, but the suction continued to grow stronger. Each step back was harder than the last, until the pull of the cortex forced a step towards it. As a final bid to escape the toilet’s wrath, I clutched the stall door as tightly as I could and dug my heels firmly into the floor.
“There is no escape,” the toilet said in Darth Vader’s voice. “Don’t make me destroy you.”
With that, the pull’s power spiked. The stall door groaned with the force. Despite my mightiest efforts, my legs buckled in the pressure, and the door slipped from my hand. I slammed headfirst into the toilet. As first my head, then my shoulders, then parts ever further down were sucked into the school plumbing, my view was completely devoid of light. Slinking down the winding pipe, there was nary enough room to wiggle even a single finger or toe. I held my breath, for I was submerged in piss water. I got dizzy in moments. Dizzy and lightheaded. My consciousness was slipping away. I knew at some point, I’d be gasping for air. Before that happened, however, I landed on a sheet of steel. Lights danced around in the pool of darkness as a crowd’s roaring cheers bombarded my eardrums from all directions.
It was then that I knew I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
I shoved my hand into my pocket to check if I still had my lucky kazoo. By Fortuna's grace, she was still with me. Whatever challenges lied ahead, I knew the gods were on my side.
Pls no bully. My writing is very rusty.
As we strode down the hall with other classes walking in line, passing by lockers defaced with graffiti and dents, I imagined myself and everyone else in Park Place High School clad in the lorica segmentata of the Roman legionary, embarking the ships to sail to Carthage and lay siege to that accursed city under the wise command of the great Pontifus Maximus Gaius Julius Caesar, son of Mars and flaming fist of the holy Roman Empire, and burn the city to the ground after putting to the sword the dark lord of the Punic hordes, Emperor Barack Obama, and his mercenary army of slingers from Iberia and Gaul, war elephants from India, voodoo ninjas from the jungles of sub-Saharan Africa, viking samurai from the frozen Germanic wastes, and steel-clad Atzec knights on the backs of fire-spitting hell steeds.
In reality, they were a motley bunch of rowdy kids. Dressed in everything from patched jeans to camouflage trench coats to t-shirts dedicated to rock stars old enough to be their grandfathers, they filled the halls with noise and litter. The boys hooted and hollered at each other in ape-like posturing, and the girls were little different. Apparently a place of learning only in name, Park Place High School seemed more a daycare for overgrown infants, a redundant institution pretending to prepare the youth for adulthood when that role was passed on to universities and community colleges years ago. Each one of them was a degenerate, I thought. None of them would have made good legionaries.
The pressure above my loins stretched my bladder’s walls. I’d been holding in pee the whole class, but it was now too urgent to ignore. Knowing full well that my absence would not be missed, I slipped out of the line and skulked to the nearest bathroom. The lack of urinals made me raise a brow. Only when I looked over my shoulder after entering did I notice that the stick figure on the front of the closing door wore a dress. I shrugged, for this was not the first time I had entered the girls’ bathroom by accident. As I approached the nearest stall, a chubby blonde femoid at one of the sinks turned to me with her eyes wide and her makeup half-finished.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
I opened the stall door and stepped up to the toilet. “Gotta pee.” I shut the door.
“In the girls’ bathroom?” Her voice was raising quite high.
“Sorry, it was an accident.”
“Get out of here.”
“I won’t be long.” I unzipped my jeans, raised the toilet seat, and prepared to open fire into the bowl.
“If you don’t get out right now, I’m telling security on you.”
As my glorious stream of urine crashed into the water below, I began to sing, “My little pony, my little pony. Ah, ah, ah, ah, my little pony…”
She screamed, “You fucking creep!”
I smirked. “I used to wonder what friendship could be. My little pony…”
“That’s it. I hope you like getting tasered, you jerk.”
The theme song of the latest television show for Hasbro’s line of diminutive plastic equines continued to play in my voice as the tubby teenage toddler stormed out to snitch on me. I chuckled and muttered to myself, “I bet she doesn’t even lift.”
As the last few milliliters of piss left my bladder, the toilet flushed. My smirk fell like an anchor in the sea. A ghost had flushed my toilet. Or so I thought. Yet, the vortex neither shrunk nor sunk. The air rushed past me from behind into the spiraling water with growing power. I could scarcely believe what I saw. The toilet was sucking in everything around it. Soon, I would be next.
I zipped my jeans and took a step away from the toilet, but the suction continued to grow stronger. Each step back was harder than the last, until the pull of the cortex forced a step towards it. As a final bid to escape the toilet’s wrath, I clutched the stall door as tightly as I could and dug my heels firmly into the floor.
“There is no escape,” the toilet said in Darth Vader’s voice. “Don’t make me destroy you.”
With that, the pull’s power spiked. The stall door groaned with the force. Despite my mightiest efforts, my legs buckled in the pressure, and the door slipped from my hand. I slammed headfirst into the toilet. As first my head, then my shoulders, then parts ever further down were sucked into the school plumbing, my view was completely devoid of light. Slinking down the winding pipe, there was nary enough room to wiggle even a single finger or toe. I held my breath, for I was submerged in piss water. I got dizzy in moments. Dizzy and lightheaded. My consciousness was slipping away. I knew at some point, I’d be gasping for air. Before that happened, however, I landed on a sheet of steel. Lights danced around in the pool of darkness as a crowd’s roaring cheers bombarded my eardrums from all directions.
It was then that I knew I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
I shoved my hand into my pocket to check if I still had my lucky kazoo. By Fortuna's grace, she was still with me. Whatever challenges lied ahead, I knew the gods were on my side.
Pls no bully. My writing is very rusty.
