The Turd: An American Journey, Chptr 8 – Xperience Fiction

The Turd: An American Journey, Chptr 8 – Xperience Fiction – by Liam Sweeny.

If a weary, weathered man could push a train car full of fresh struck coal through the tunnel in a mountain pass, he would surely be a better man than Ernest Kreb, on a toilet, jeans hugging his shins, belt-buckle tapping the shag carpeting in a bedroom his wife had feverishly decorated.

Lugging the toilet up two flights of stairs from the garage where Lysette let him keep it to the spot in their bedroom was a coal man’s task. Ernest would’ve swore he heard his back crack coming around the landing of the first floor stairs, but better it be that than the toilet in the short game.

Lysette had packed herself into a black leather bustier and pink satin panties, sheer long smoke shade gloves and black silk garter belts connected to matching hosiery. It took Ernest’s breath away, which worked against him as he needed every breath to break from every push.

She wasn’t happy that her husband would be sharing the spotlight with her; not that she begrudged him his fifteen minutes, just that she knew damn well that people would rather see him trying to take a shit than to see her pitch her blueprints in all her lustful glory. There too was the fact that the toilet was decorative in their bedroom, and should he actually shit, there was nowhere for that bounty to go but the bowl, or, plumbing principles be damned, the floor.

“So, gentleman, what we have here is a love affair…” Lysette said to her tripod-mounted phone. “with clean air. I have slaved over this invention, and I did sell a version of this, but this particular model is completely different. Even though it does the same thing. This one has bacteria.” She smiled and slid onto her bed, where she had set her new air filter prototype and the blueprints she hoped to sell that day. She slithered around them like a snake gone to the Royal Ballet.

“Oh, I know,” she said. “Bacteria. Icky. But not this bacteria. It won’t hurt you; come back out guys. These little buggers eat everything in the air that isn’t air. And it drinks the water moisture. So you never have a filter to replace, because it grows itself.

And,” she swirled her hand. “It cleans the air.”

Ernest, for a moment, felt a twinge, a bump on the gates of his rectum. Sweat broke off his face. This is going to be it, he thought. But he lost himself, tried to push when he should’ve rocked his body back and forth, and only managed to frustrate himself. False alarm.

Lysette glanced back. “You okay, honey?” To which Ernest grunted.

“Everybody,” she said. “This is my hubby, Ernest. Don’t you worry fellas. We’re in an open relationship. And we swing, if you like that kind of thing. Ernest is a bit of a miracle man. He hasn’t took a dookie in forty-two days. Forty-two days, folks. Can you believe that? So it’s coming any day now. And it might come here. So please, buy my inventions. Buy my blueprints. You might just be a part of something shitacular!”

Lysette danced the dance of a woman that had the presence of a world class

performer but not one bit of the experience of one. She was the sexiest woman he had ever met because she was innocent, with no knowledge of what she could get him to do. Ernest had given up a lucrative auto service shop to be her unpaid copilot. He found his dream and it was her, and her dream was the umbrella covering them both.

She made her goodbye pitch and tapped her phone, turning the camera off.

Ernest stayed on the toilet out of habit.

“Oh please, honey, get off that thing,” Lysette said. “As much as I’d love to see you shit, I’d love it more if it wasn’t in our bedroom.”

Ernest pulled up his boxers and jeans, pulled his belt into its function and went to flush, but caught himself.

“So you don’t mind having the toilet in here, hun?”

Lysette’s face scrunched. “I mind, but Carla’s right. We need a gimmick. And you are my gimmick.”

“It’s the self-esteem boosts I love about you so much.”

“Oh now. I figure we have to sell at least two more blueprints to make the bills this month without dipping into savings.”

“You think I’m helping you at all? I mean I’m just sitting on a toilet.”

“I saw a craft video where this woman, had to be eighty, was sporting little toilet earrings. It’s the thing. It’s the same as showing tit, and I’d rather not do that.”

Her messenger app beeped.

“That’s probably a new sale,” she said. “How much you want to bet?”

“Five dollars.”

“Okay, five dollars.” Lysette went to her phone, and a look of confusion swept across her face.

“What the fuck?” She said.

“Did I win?”

“I guess so,” Lysette said. “It’s someone asking questions about you.”

“I don’t want to get involved in any of that,” Ernest said. “No interviews, no questions.”

Lysette’s phone started going off, a beep, then two, then six in rapid succession.

“These are all about you,” she said. “I guess you’re a hit.”

“So I get the five bucks.”

“Ernest, I gotta do something. If everbody’s just going to ask about you, and I can’t sell blueprints, we’ll be the most famous people at the homeless shelter. Especially if you don’t answer questions.”

“What do you want me to say? It’s not like I’m here creating a sourdough starter.

I don’t know what the hell’s going on with me.”

Lysette checked her phone again. “All questions about you. You’re way more popular than a woman in lingerie. I don’t don’t get shit culture at all.”

Ernest sighed. “Okay, so I’ll answer some questions. Fine. Make you happy. But only for people who buy something. Nobody learns a thing until there’s dough in our pockets.”

Lysette jumped on Ernest and wrapped her arms around him.

“You are the love of my life,” she said. She pinched his ass. “That bun in the oven’s going to become big bread for us, baby.”

***

Poo is True.

When Buddy told them that, Jasen figured it was some homespun wisdom, perhaps a ‘Buddyism’ made up on the spot for them. But when they got down the stairs from the back entrance of Buddy’s and into the spare room, the sign, spray painted and outlined in green, white, and silver glitter, called out those very words; “Poo is true.”

There were just shy of twenty people in the room, most dressed in garb that wouldn’t draw even one glance from passersby on the street, but in a celebration of feces, they may well have been overdressed. Tweed long coats and matching flat caps, thick ties, and the women to a one wore floral blouses and polyester slacks. It was similar to cosplay as twenty people were lost in time.

Jasen and Ophelia grabbed one of the folding chairs in the back. As they sat, Jasen noticed that the members of the congregation each had a mason jar in their hands, some decorated on the top with lace and beads, some bare. They weren’t close enough to see what was in the mason jars.

A man entered from the bathroom in a tuxedo minus the bow tie, looking every bit like a conductor. He had bushy gray brows and matching mutton chops. He had what looked like a brass urn in his hands, which he set on a small round table. Behind himself and the table was an 18 x 24 picture of the original turd on the dinner plate.

He walked up to work the crowd.

“Welcome to Wednesday,” he said. “Hump Day, or as we have rechristened it,

‘Dump Day.’ Do you shit me?”

“We shit you not,” the crowd said.

“Excellent. Now we have spent a week out in the world, and we have seen some shit. Now has anybody strayed from our circle? Have any other shit beholden?”

“No shit,” they said.

The man cast his gaze on Jasen and Ophelia. “I see we have visitors,”

Jasen raised his hand like it was shrugging off the gesture. “We’re just curious, that’s all.”

“Well, you can be curious up here, can’t you?”

The crowd motioned them forward, and they relented, claiming seats directly behind the congregation. And then they could see what was in the mason jars.

The men, the priest or pastor, he stood before the congregation with his hands behind him, holding his bum.

“So we declare our faith,” he said, and cleared his throat. The congregation sat on their hands, balancing the mason jars in their laps and cleared their throats, and Jasen and Ophelia did it when they realized it was part of the service.

“In the beginning days we were adrift,” he said. “Creating gods of thin air, and then gods of men and women, and we built them all to great heights, only to tear them down, because they weren’t true. We swapped out the gods for the trappings of the gods and fitted new gods with the same old trappings. But nothing was true.

“Then he posted a lowly turd, but with such magnificent trappings that it tempted us all to make poo our new god. And thus we did, the poo god, a god we personally commune with every day. We now create our god, and we live for our god. And now we sacrifice for our god. Are you all shitting me?”

“We shit you not.”

The priest-pastor went out before the congregation and one by one, collected their mason jars, putting them on the table around the urn. He paced the table and dipped to peak at the jars before picking up a jar with lace frills around the mouth.

“Joanna,” he said. “This is some pretty fine poo. Can you tell us about it?”

A woman, Joanna, got up and repositioned her hands on her cheeks. “I had a meat-rich diet yesterday with a little bit of pumpkin pie, and the day before that was pasta salad and lentil soup. I call it “Hearty Autumn.”

“Hearty Autumn.” He opened the jar and the whole room caught a whiff. Jasen hid a gag; Ophelia, not so much.”

“Honey, you’ll get used to it,” the priest-pastor said. “Now we commune with our brothers and sisters.” He dipped his finger in the jar and pulled out a big clump of

“Hearty Autumn” as the congregation got out of their seats and approached him.

He wiped a scant amount of Joanna’s poo on the noses of every man and woman to come forth. He offered the service to Jasen and Ophelia, but they politely declined.

“Okay, but you’ll be expected to partake next time.”

Everyone settled down, and the priest-pastor grabbed the brass urn and lifted it.

“True pooper,” he said. “Seer of the way. I have taken torch to the greatness of my bounty, my turd from Monday. Only you know its heft and its texture, and only you know that its odor was strong and fierce. And in its ashes, so I eat.”

With that, the priest-pastor pulled ash-coated French fries from the urn and began to chow down. This time Jasen couldn’t stifle his gag.

“This too you will get used to,” he said. “Poo builds the perfection of humanity. What they cannot use, they poop. And should they poop something they could’ve used, light the mighty corn, it is a mark of how far we have to go.”

They sang songs after he ate, religious songs with variations of the word shit for fitting spots. After that, they hung around and talked. Jasen and Ophelia took that as an opportune time to talk to the priest-pastor.

“Mister-, or father,”

“No. Farter.”

“Okay,” Jasen said. “Farter, where can we get a, I don’t know, bible?”

“I’m assuming you mean a bible for Shite.”

“Yes.”

“There is none,” he said. “We just kind of make this up as we go along.”

“But this is a religion,” Ophelia said. “You can’t just wing it, can you?”

The Farter smiled. “What do you think all the other ones did?”

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