The Turd: An American Journey, Chptr 14 – Xperience Fiction

The Turd: An American Journey, Chptr 14 – Xperience Fiction – by Liam Sweeny.

There was one mid-sized airport in the continental United States. On expansive series of corridors, one baggage claim smelling of industrial cleaner. One row of overpriced restaurants and pit stops, and one by one gate waiting areas with cushioned seats with one color and pattern and carefully invisible stitching. This same airport was in Milwaukee. But it was the layover. Their destination, Sheboygan, was serviced by a smaller airport without a tower, a county spot that they got to in a plane so small a tower might not have picked it up.

They had an hour before their little airplane sidled up to gate thirteen. And Ernest had to go. He had to try anyway, and while the airport restroom left the exchange hungry, it did manage to eat up fifteen minutes. They wandered around, took out a loan for cups of coffee, and sat in their gate.

All of this was to go on like the country were normal, but it wasn’t. The restaurants were clear of people, as every hungry traveler was sitting in their gate, plastic containers in their laps, phones in their hands. Forks were stabbing dookie, which at the point of observation wasn’t fresh. Ernest wondered if it was worse to eat cold poo or hot poo.

Then it dawned on him that he had just pondered the worst thought that had ever been up for him to ponder. Lysette sat there with her head in her hands, not daring to look at anyone eating yesterday’s lunch lest she lose her own.

“They better not have lost my machine,” she said. “Sorry, my Second Go.”

Ernest glanced over at Jasen. “Any luck on the tickets?”

Jasen had his laptop open. “I’m not getting anything,” he said. “They must have bought the tickets in person.”

“They would need a driver’s license,” Ophelia said. “Even if they bought them by hand.”

“It’s not in here,” Jasen tapped the back of the screen. “So slow, damn. Everybody’s online right now. If the FCC doesn’t shut it all down, people might just crash it under their own weight.”

Ernest pulled the box of tortilla laxatives out of his carry-on. “What about this?

Can you track this?”

Jasen took it and spun it around in his hand. “Give me a second. Maybe.”

Lysette grabbed Ernest’s arm. “Ernie, these people are freaking me out.

Remember when we watched that zombie movie?”

“Night of the Living Dead,” he said.

“Right. This is like that. Look; everybody’s just still. Look, the security guy with the golf cart isn’t even driving anywhere. He’s just waiting to chow down too.”

Tristan had been wandering, and she came back, phone in hand.

“Smile everybody,” she said. Jasen looked up and flashed a sarcastic grin. Ernest waved Tristan off.

“Hey you, Tristan’s followers, don’t eat your shit, c’mon. At least throw hot sauce

on it.”

Tristan pressed mute. “Ernest, don’t say stuff like this. You and Lysette ae kind of celebrities right now. People will listen to you. There might be a run on hot sauce now.”

“No way.”

“Way. We’re the number four on VidYou right now.”

“How did they not kill your livestream, after exposing them in the conference room?”

“I think it’s hard to switch off an influencer. Not like it would go unnoticed.”

She turned the mute off. “So Ernest, how goes it, or doesn’t go it?”

Ernest shrugged. “It does not go.” He grabbed the laxative box from Jasen. “Hey folks. Just sitting here in sunny San Francisco. Thinking of going to Wisconsin, but they might not have my favorite laxative. Not that it works, but still. Anyone local can tell me where they sell it, it would be greatly appreciated.”

He handed it back to Jasen, who handed it back to him. “It’s from China. It’s discontinued. If a store is selling it, they shouldn’t be.”

“Great.” Ernest got up and walked over to the window. His gut pounded and throbbed. He tried to think back to when he was a regular Joe, but the memory eluded him. Maybe he was always constipated. Maybe he never took a shit beyond the pseudo-shit that babies took. Meconium. Maybe his meconium was the last thing to come from him. Perhaps his anus had become a vestigial tube.

A tap on his shoulder. He looked around to see a woman in a brown felt overcoat and a beret, a container of poo in her hand, a fork stuck straight up in the poo.

“You’re the man who can’t go,” she said. “I’m so happy to meet you. Is there any way I can get a selfie?”

Ernest sighed. “Sure.” He let her pose beside him. Her duke was noxious.

“Hey, did you ever decide to keep the poo, or are you going flush it? Are you here to have it?”

“We’re just following a lead. Be honest, we don’t know what we’re doing here.”

“Oh, that’s weird. I guess. You do know the guy that did the original turd lives somewhere near here. Rumor has it he lives in Sheboygan.”

“That is weird,” Ernest said. “Excuse me.”

He went back to the group. “You guys are going to be a little bit relieved.”

Of all of them, Lysette was the most relieved to hear that they weren’t on a complete and aimless goose chase.

“He really was the one who sent you the laxative,” Lysette said. “Who else?”

“If it is him,” Tristan said. “Getting everybody in the same room could break the internet. You know, figuratively.”

They got up and walked down the corridor. They had made it past a coffee and pastry kiosk when Ernest spotted an Asian man in a dark navy suit walking toward them with a briefcase in his hand and something shiny Ernest couldn’t make out. As they passed, close enough to whisper to each other, the man unlocked the handcuff from his hand, and in a move filled with choreographic flair, handed Ernest the briefcase, cuffed it to his hand, and tossed the key in the air as he walked away, which Ernest caught. The man ran down the corridor as Ernest and the group hovered over a railing and opened the briefcase.

Inside was something most in the group had never seen before.

“Is that a?” Ophelia said. “Wait, what is that?”

Ernest grunted. “A toilet snake,” he said. “A 24 karat gold toilet snake.”

***

Ernest flipped the key in his hand, through his fingers, silver, real silver. The cuffs were stainless steel and in Ernest’s carry-on in the trunk of the cab, along with the briefcase. The Ernest that spent his mornings in the junkyard chewing the day’s prices with Earl Vickers would swear that something the size of a toilet snake cast in twenty-four carat gold could easily fetch ten thousand dollars, eclipsing what the plane tickets probably cost.

Jasen had worked with Tristan trying to find any store in Sheboygan that carried the expired boxes of laxatives.

Lysette rubbed Ernest’s leg. He jerked.

“Baby, what’s going on?” She asked. Ernest rubbed his midsection.

“Just a little bit of pain, the usual,” he said. “I think it’s just from flying. Maybe the altitude.”

“Maybe that’ll trigger it. It would be something, huh? Flight as laxative?”

“Sure, might make sense,” Ernest shifted in his seat. Lysette rested her head on his shoulder as the cab tore down the street toward the chain store Jasen and Tristan had found. But when a car moved in front of the cab and a car slid up behind,

Everyone’s conversation went below a din.

“Shit, I knew it.” Lysette said. “Does anyone have a weapon?”

Tristan let out a laugh. “You’re joking, right?”

The cars slowed, and with them, the cab slowed, and the ersatz convoy came to a

rest on the beginning of Sheboygan’s downtown.

Ernest got out to face off their would-be abductors, and he hunched over, his hand on his stomach. Lysette came around from the other side and wrapped her arms around her husband as two and two came out of the car wearing brown robes, like monks.

One monk stood in front of Ernest, bent down, and gently pat his head.

“You have nothing to fear from us,” he said. “We’re here to protect you. Please listen.”

“Do you always block cars into pulling over?” Ernest said through gritted teeth. “Just let us go on our way.”

“Well, we can’t really do that, Ernest. We have to help you. Did you know that the lives of the constipated are often lives unfulfilled. They bottle in their emotions, their aggravations and it just becomes a physical manifestation. As in your case, we can’t imagine the pain you’re in.” The monk glanced at Lysette. “The pain you’re causing.”

Ernest could feel two of the monks behind him, and his only wish was that he didn’t have to leave his buck knife at home.

“Brother Arnold here is a surgeon. He is wonderful with ligaments and tendons, and he is Milwaukee’s best colon puller. We’ll take good care of you. You just have to come with us.”

“Jesus, what the hell are you planning to do?”

“We’re going to deliver you, Ernest Kreb,” the monk said. “We only want the turd we deliver. We will treat it with extraordinary care.”

Ernest laughed, which caused him to groan. He tried to get up and was shaky.

Lysette propped him up.

“You guys are fucking crazy. Don’t you know what’s going on right now? They’re gonna shut the damn internet off. This thing is going to be over. What could you possibly gain from getting my turd?”

The monk rubbed his hand over his head, which turned into a shrug aimed at the two monks behind Ernest and Lysette.

“Okay, so it started on the internet with that turd-on-a-dinner-plate idiot. I thought it was stupid when I first saw it. Never thought it was worth getting all the internet’s attention but one day, see, one day I had a go with a big bag of pretzels and there I was on the toilet, couldn’t pass without a strain like you’d see in the Olympic weightlifting competition, and I got my phone and all I can see is shit after shit, toilet after toilet and it just felt like home. It was an act of the expulsion of evil from my body that had taken place throughout humanity, from the pyramid builders to the Dutch

Masters to the soldiers that stormed Normandy.”

“So that’s what this crazy religion is,” Ernest said. “Expelling evil?”

“Not really,” the monk said. “It’s the celebration of the turd. It’s the acknowledgment that we can’t use what we take in; we’re flawed. That’s why we need you, Ernest. You’ve gone over forty days without releasing; it’s a miracle. Your poo is a miracle. The world needs a miracle, and whether or not they shut everything down, your poo will bring the Shite faith out of what’s coming.”

“You’re fucking crazy,” Ernest said.

“Am I?” The monk pulled a cigarette out from the folds of his robes. “Look at the crime rate lately. Look at the wars. Notice it’s been quiet? It’s the sacred mystery, and if you come with us, we’ll tell you that mystery.”

Ernest was standing by then, and he eyed his surroundings. The cab was still sandwiched in between the two cars that had blockaded them. Jasen sat in the front seat across from the cab driver. He didn’t see Tristan or Ophelia. That unnerved him. Was there another monk? The thought had barely trailed off before he heard the crunch of the cab’s rear bumper. The monks to turn their heads and Ernest caught what had happened.

The rear car’s driver side door opened and Ophelia poked her head out. Tristan was in the passenger seat,

“Hurry up, come on,” she said. “We gotta go.”

Jasen hopped out of the cab and one of the monks chased him. Jasen was lithe and the monk was a caricature trying to keep him from getting to the getaway car. Lysette pulled Ernest toward the car, but the monk with the runaway mouth grabbed his arm.

“Take it off or I’ll use that hand to dig for evil in your back end.”

The monk had no real intention of letting him go, but the threat gave him enough hesitation for Ernest to yank free. They ran to the car, and once inside, left the

Sheboygan chapter of Shite in the dust.

 

 

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