The Potent Crumb - Part Two
I decided to stand and take a few steps. Firstly, I focussed my entire will on moving into a seated position, whilst my fragile mind crashed all about me, like an orchestra in a tumble dryer, in an avalanche. Then I stood, very shakily. For a moment I inspired slowly and deeply, composing myself, carefully aware of not wanting to alert my friend asleep in the next room. Then I began to move, agonisingly putting one foot in front of the other and shifting the uncertain weight of my cold, sweating, shaking body, gradually towards the centre of the room. After completing a few steps I suddenly felt a pressing urge to urinate. I had not foreseen such a necessity, but my body ushered in this unavoidable urgency which I needed to accommodate immediately.
The toilet was located in a small room, beside a separate bathroom, outside the lounge I was in, across a narrow hallway. It was just a few steps away. I had to turn, approach the lounge door and open it, move across the hallway, and, silently slipping into the small room, close and lock the door behind me. That was my objective; simple. And so, with a huge mustering of concentration and in hopefulness, my mind overloading with thousands of flickering lights, nausea-inducing motion, illusory cacophonic sounds, hideous incalculable imagery, and intense incomprehensible thoughts jabbering, I managed to complete the first stage of my quest, relocating my body safely and silently.
I was in the room, a metre wide and just over two metres long. I saw the toilet, its lid upright, and seat down, flat. I slowly stepped forward, towards it, but my attention was suddenly diverted. My eyes caught some gentle movement of light and colour, upwards and to the right. A glass portal. The window was small, vertical, with a patterned pane and had an open section at the top, allowing in a sample of the external nightly ambience. There was a streetlamp outside, and tree branches were gently moving in front of it, bobbing to the subtle turbulence of the cold night air, refracting the light that shone from its glow and creating shifting sparkles on the patterned glass.
My feet deviated slightly from their course as my eyes were drawn to the dancing illuminations. I wanted to see outside, I did not know why, a compulsion, but the open part of the window was a couple of feet above my eye level. The toilet was now approximately 45 degrees to my left, and (for some reason choosing the right) I lifted a foot, placed it on the toilet seat, in order to raise myself to the height of the window opening, and proceeded to lift the weight of my body onto the foot.
I had made a gross miscalculation. The toilet seat shifted away from me horizontally, immediately and rapidly, breaking away from its securing bolts. My body flipped, feet flying into the air above the level of my head, which, facing upwards, dropped downwards swiftly. The back of my head bounced off the rim of the ceramic toilet bowl and my body thudded onto the floor.
For a brief, perception altering moment, I found myself looking down at my own face, eyes wide open, staring upwards. Had I just killed myself? I noted that I didn’t seem alarmed, just mildly disconcerted. But then, as fast as those impressions were upon me, they became a memory and I was staring up at the ceiling, having re-joined the incoherent couplet of a mind unable to focus and its body confused as to which reality it was in, if any at all.
An alertness aroused in me, even though my mind as yet was still mangling and churning thousands of unending trails of relentless and inane thought rants, mashing, crucifying, strangling my brain. I felt for my arms, they were trapped. I had landed with them, like crumpled scissors, splayed behind me into the corner of the room, beyond the position of my head, and my shoulders were wedged tightly between the base of the toilet and the wall. Somewhere, far, far away in my psyche there came a mirthful chuckle, and a disembodied palm thudded into a slowly shaking, down-turned forehead.
After a few moments of squirming I managed to release myself and recover a standing position. I was feeling slightly nauseous and swayed on my feet, steadying myself with a forearm pressed flat against the wall. I felt I no longer had the ability to urinate, my body in some kind of shock. I also felt a twinge of paranoia which urged me to flush the toilet, as though to let someone/anyone know that I had actually visited the room for its intended purpose. I was aware that the room next to me was occupied by my friend’s flatmate, who was probably asleep, but perhaps not, and might have heard my accident, even been awakened by it. I turned and pulled the chain of the old-fashioned toilet, releasing a cascade of water down the pipe leading from the cistern, which was bolted to the wall near the ceiling, and turned away to leave the room. I unlatched and opened the door, but was suddenly gripped by a sense of alarm that my ears subtly conveyed to me; the soft innocuous sound of water, beyond that of the fading echo of the flush, the gentle sonorous lapping of water, all around me. My feet felt wet. I looked down. The whole floor of the room was flooded with about half a centimetre of water. What little analytical part of my brain was still functioning in my own service searched keenly for an answer as I turned aghast, but none came. The water seemed to have stopped encroaching though. I hesitated. I was horrified at the proposition of cleaning up this nightmare scenario which had so mercilessly compounded my already incomprehensibly compromised situation.
In my mind, in my heart, I apologised to him, my friend, and woeful at my inability to function responsibly, returned, shaken to my makeshift bed. I cowered beneath the duvet for an undetermined period of time, wishing the night would last for many hours more than it obviously would, and dreading the thought of the journey home I would inevitably have to make when morning arrived, exposing myself to the world of daylight, gravity, people. Though finally, seemingly against all odds, I succumbed to slumber, grimly owning the thought that some day I would have to explain to my friend this insane episode, should I ever return to a state of lucid normality. And so, here you have it; my account, explanation and sincere apology.
The End.
Foot note: my friend contacted me during the ensuing days, enquiring as to what tragic event had befallen his toilet. By this time, my mind totally recovered, I was able to re-trace my actions, and realised that as my foot had slipped with the shifting of the toilet seat, it must have kicked the inlet pipe, dislodging it and allowing the water, released from the cistern, to cascade directly onto the floor below, bypassing the toilet completely.
