Here's a fun new thing to add to my list of awesome things. When I get the itch for putting fiction through my fingers, I'll post it here and compile them under the fictions heading. How about a story?
The gray-blue doors of the elevator stood hard and unmoving. There was a sign on the right-hand sliding door framed in beige masking tape – “Out of order”.
“Shoot.”
I hit my head against the wall. I didn’t feel like doing anything, let alone walking up five flights of stairs. My bag was weighing heavily on my back and shoulders, pulling my arms back and knotting muscles from the weight of my cleats, clothes and books. I was still slick with sweat and had a dirty mix of blood and mud caked around my calves. My intramural team had gotten soundly pounded in another game, and the loss was draining. I had nearly passed out from the heat and humidity in the game, but kept on playing from a lack of subs. I had worked a full shift at the bar, and had a paper to write for the next day. Today was too long. I thought the end was in sight, but it was five floors up. I wanted to shower terribly, wash the stink and grime of a hard day off of me. But the elevator was out.
I hardly trusted the elevator, with its’ rickety cables and shaky, slow rides up that threatened to drop me at any given time. As much as I feared the elevator, though, I wished that it was still functioning. Five flights. My exhausted mind kept repeating the same thing in my head, an unthinking refrain: 100 steps up, 100 steps up. I stood in the entry level of the building, head resting against the wall as I worked up the energy to climb to the top of the building.
Out of the last shreds of hope I pressed the call button, but nothing happened. Zilch. Five flights to go, then. I rubbed the short black crop of fuzz on the top of my head, still soft and pliable due to the sweat of the game. I wrapped one greasy hand around the bar on the fire-door that opens to the stair well and stepped in.
It always smells like onions and elderly body odor in the stairwell, with an undercurrent of urine. A biting, salty, acrid taste. The stench was overwhelming, filling every inch of my nostrils and permeating my already soiled clothes. My white t-shirt was still sticking to my chest, and the black shorts I had worn in the game were damp as well. Stink upon stink, I started the climb up to my apartment.
The walls of the stairwell were stark and unadulterated from human experience, so the smell surrounding me wasn’t radiating off the walls, it seemed. They were a green-gray that more like a parking ramp than a livable building. A flight of ten steps, turn 180 degrees, another ten up. One floor down. There were single-bulb lamps posted on every landing between flights, but the cement steps did a poor job of reflecting light, instead stopping and breaking it in weird angles that made the stairwell feel sinister. My flip-flops that I habitually switch to after soccer slapped against the concrete and echoed abundantly in the empty walls.
After climbing up a second flight, I heard a door swing open somewhere on the floors above me. A young man’s laughter bounced off the walls, louder it seemed, than if he was laughing next to me. My body was spent, and I felt too tired to keep climbing. I would have sat down to rest had I not been suddenly overwhelmed by the strongest urge to take a shit I had ever experienced. My abdomen flushed with heat and I could feel my bowels shifting, to me a sure sign of immanent activity. I broke out in a light sweat (again) and hastened my pace up the stairs.
I hopped quickly up ten steps, then ten more, all the while flexing every muscle I could below my waist to ensure I wouldn't contribute to the already appalling funk I was surrounded in. I passed the two young men I had heard on their way down. They nodded a hello and I nodded back, focusing too much on my task at hand to be cordial. It was worse now, and I was sweating profusely. I was nearly sprinting, my black leather gym bag weighing me down like a ball and chain convicts would wear. I thought of the immaculate and pristine toilet in my apartment. I clean the bathroom meticulously, and I like it that way.
Keeping the finish line in my mind helped to ease the burden as I bounded up the final flight of stairs to the fifth floor, where I threw the fire-door open and rushed down the hallway to apartment 54. I pulled my keys out of my bag as I hurried to the door.
I threw open the door and quickly stepped in, dropping my bag behind me as I shut the door. I was about to make a bee-line for the bathroom when I whirled around and saw a mess that I knew I hadn’t made. There was broken glass in the main room under the window. It looked like the window had been blown in, but not terribly hard. Papers were strewn about, a few unlit candles and a couple old glasses had been knocked over. I looked over at my black leather couch and saw white streaks criss-crossing the length of it. Bird shit. Great.
The bird could wait, though, my body had decided for me. The shit was still on deck, waiting for me to get to the bathroom. It might not be so patient if I waste time I thought as I walked down the short hall to my bathroom. I stepped in, quickly scanned for the trespassing bird, then shut and locked the door behind me. I slid my shorts to my ankles and sat down. There was a moment of relief that followed my body’s realization that I had made it to the safe-zone, but that was quickly replaced by a ripping pain in my lower abdomen. I bore down and forced, gently but uncompromising, and in a moment I heard a small splash in the water below me.
I let out a sigh of relief and rested my head in my hands for a moment, glad to be done with that troubling ordeal, and relieved to be home. The bird, if it was still out there, would be dealt with in good time I told myself. I reached for some toilet paper, but stopped when I heard a noise beneath me. Not a grumbling of air in the water pipes, but a slow croaking sound. Suddenly terrified the bird might be in the bathroom with me, I stood up and spun around with my shorts still around my ankles. They tangled around my sandals and I almost tripped in doing so.
There was a frog in the toilet. No shit floating there, just a small green and brown speckled frog, about an inch and a half long, sitting complacently on the porcelain, partially out of the water. Not sure of how to proceed, I pulled my shorts up and stepped out of the bathroom.
I walked out to the kitchen of my apartment to grab something to pick the frog out of the toilet with. I pulled my barbecue tongs out of a drawer, but then decided I’d like to be able to use them again someday. Nothing else in the utensil drawer looked plausible, and I was out of paper towels, so I decided to go back in and just flush the damn thing. I turned around to go back to the bathroom.
I was almost in the bathroom when the bird flew out of my open closet door at the end of the hall. It fluttered out and stopped on the carpet in front of me. It looked like a goose with its long, curved neck and tiny, spindly legs, but the beak was much more pointed and menacing. Probably a heron I thought. It was three feet tall and had black feathers all over, with wings accented in deep shades of red. At the back of its narrow head three thin feathers hung off the end like the greasy ponytail of a Hollywood exec. It looked up at me with dull, stupid eyes and cocked its head. I just stared back. I didn’t know what to do.
The heron took a step forward, and I took one back. It looked around, seemingly confused as to where in the hell it was. I ran through things in my mind I could trap it with. As I stood in the end of the hallway near the kitchen wondering what to do, the bird sauntered into the bathroom. I hesitated a moment, then followed it.
I peaked my head around the door jam and spied on the bird. It pecked at the toilet paper for a moment, grabbed a sheet and gave it a good yank. The bird looked startled as the roll rotated around the spindle. The heron then hopped up on the edge of the toilet seat and peered into the bowl. I held my breath in anticipation. I knew what it saw.
With a click of beak on porcelain and a splash of water, the heron had scooped up the frog out of the toilet and swallowed it in one gulp. My stomach did two somersaults and lurched into my throat. I held it back, and stepped back into the kitchen. The bird, now satiated, ambled into the hallway. I stayed out of its’ path as it gradually made its way into the living room. When I felt it had gotten far enough into the room I ran up behind it and yelled and clapped my hands at it.
As I had hoped, the heron flew out the same hole in my picture window that it had crashed through. It disappeared in a rustle of feathers and tinkling glass. I let out a sigh of relief. I decided that except for the bird shit, I could clean up my apartment in the morning. I walked into my bathroom and peeled of my now-drying t-shirt and looked in the mirror. There were still dirt and sweat lines on my face from the game. I reached into the tub and cranked the hot water on and hit the shower switch. It would feel good to wash this day off once and for all.
