Toilet Stories

by Pat Dowd

  Today started out to be an ordinary day. It was a school holiday so I was bound for the closet as soon as my mom got ready and had to go off to work. I had snuck my usual stuff into the closet the night before so when I heard my mom turn the key in the door to lock me in for the day I was ready and at ease. I waited like usual for my eyes to get used to the lack of light when all of a sudden I saw these little whiskers sticking under the door moving slowly from side to side. Then the little creature stuck his little head under the door as well. It was the cutest little mouse you had ever seen. It had these little pointy ears that were grey on the outside but had a little pink on the inside. The black eyes were shining in the dim light that was coming under the door and the mouse seemed to be looking right up at me. I was scared to move because I did not want him to run away. I sat there as still as one could possibly be just watching the mouse gradually making his way into the closet.

  Mice can almost flatten themselves out to get into closed spaces so getting under the door was easy for this one. Once he got fully into the closet he just walked around looking at the shoes and things not really getting in a hurry to do anything. At that point I knew that we were going to be friends so I just sat back quietly and watched him for a while. He slowly went around and explored every inch of the closet before coming up to me and then he sat down, started grooming himself, stretched with his arms out and then said, “I am an old mouse with just one more day of magic left in me. I was looking for a place to lay down and die when I snuck into here, do you need anything while I am still here?” “In what way,” I said. He then explained to me that he only had one day to live, had limited magic powers but if I wanted to use any of them on myself I better speak up now. He said he was tired and was going to go take a nap but when he got up later that if I wanted anything to speak up then. The mouse then curled up next to me and fell asleep. I sat there thinking of what to ask for but before long I ended up falling asleep myself.

  When we woke up it took us a few minutes to feel normal and awake again. What helped is that I shared some tea and cookies that I had stashed over in the corner. We did some small talk until we finished our snack and then we got down to business. The mouse said that I could have two wishes and he would do his best to fulfill them before he went off to his reward in mouse heaven. “Okay,” I said, “I wish this closet was a little bit bigger so I could lie down comfortable in it.” Poof, the closet expanded out to be an eight by eight foot square with plenty of room for an eight year old boy. Wow the boy thought, it was like opening up a whole new world for him to play and read in. I did not know what else to ask for. The expansion of the closet was great but it was so dark in the closet that the little light that was coming in under the door was not bright enough to reach to the back of the closet. I said to the mouse, “How about putting a little more light in this place so I can see all the way to the back?” The mouse then looked up at me in wonder “Okay” he said and poof there was sort of a golden glow in the place that was pleasant but not too overpowering like a 60 watt bulb hanging out of the ceiling or anything like that. It was great, from now on not only was I going to be able to lay with my feet stretched out and read my books but I had all kinds of room to play games or exercise so I would not be so stiff when I came out of the closet at night or at the end of my mom’s shift when she got home.

  That night when my mom came home and unlocked the door to the closet, I told her I would be right out after I straightened up the shoes and things I had moved to the side to get more comfortable earlier in the day. She then went down the hall and I got out of there before she saw the expansion and light that was now in there. She would not believe my mouse story and would have punished me with who knows what kind of torture until I told her the truth of what happened. I did not want to go through all that tonight. We ate dinner and my mom got on the phone like usual while I went into the living room and watched a little TV. When I got to bed I went to sleep right away because I was excited that I had a new place to play and hang out in during the days when I wasn’t in school. Things were looking up.

  Today was Sunday, my mom was off occasionally on Sundays. If she did not have to go anywhere I did not have to go into the closet. This Sunday was going to be a little different. My mom said she had to go see an old friend that was in the hospital in the next town. She said she did not want to take me because they did not let anyone in the hospital under 12 because of the noise that they might make talking loud or running in the hallway. She said that she would lock me in the closet for just about half of the day until she could get back home. Then maybe we could go out for pizza or something later. Wow, I thought, that would be great, we haven’t gone out for pizza in over a year or so. In fact, we haven’t gone anywhere together in probably a year and a half. It was going to be a good day I could tell already. My mom got dressed, handed me a snack and a bottle of water, then locked me in the closet as she went on her way.

  It felt good to be in the modified closet. I made myself a comfortable place in the corner and sat back and read one of my books. There was no sign of the mouse, he must have climbed into the wall somewhere and found him a place to lay down and meet his maker by now. The day went on which seemed to be longer than usual. After my nap and a half a bag of chips I noticed it was getting late. I did not have a watch or any way to tell time but my mom said just before she left that she probably was only going to be gone half a day to visit her friend in the hospital. More than half a day had already gone by. I waited a few hours longer and then I began to get worried. Was my mom coming back or did she just forget about me and is coming back a little later? It was a shame that I was so anxious since it was the first day of me spending time in the revised closet space because up until now I was really enjoying it.

  I waited all evening and then I knew that something must really be wrong. She had never left me in the closet for that much time before, only when she went out with the guys to clubs and such. I finally got so tired of waiting that I fell asleep. The next morning when I woke up she still was not at home. I began to panic. I began to try to get out of the closet on my own. I took a belt off the hanger and used the point off the buckle to try to get the door unlocked from the inside. I tried to jimmy the door latch by inserting the buckle tongue between the door frame and the little tab that falls into a slot and keeps the door closed. It took a while but all of a sudden click, the door opened.

  I felt proud of myself for getting the door open. I had never tried to do anything like that before. I had spent many of hours in that closet over the years and not once did I ever try to escape before. I went out into the kitchen to get something to drink. There on the kitchen table was a note with my name on it and inside was a hundred dollars in twenties. I sat and opened the note that was folded over and stapled shut. It read, I knew you were old enough to find your way out of the closet eventually and would read this. If you were too stupid to get out then you would have deserved to be locked up in there and die like a moron. I am running away with my new boyfriend and won’t be back ever. He doesn’t like kids so you are on your own. I should not have to give up my life and sacrifice my happiness for you. You got your whole life ahead of you to have fun, my life is already half or better over. I left you some money and the rent is paid up until the end of the month. If you are resourceful then you will survive, otherwise see you in hell, Mom.

  The End

  The Girl With The Metal Teeth

  It all started not too long ago at the café along the main highway that ran through town. All the main roads in town had a 35 mph speed limit. There was not much traffic on the old highway since the interstate went through about five miles away, just the locals and some truckers trying to bypass the scales on big highway. There were some tourists that came by because they liked traveling on the back roads along with some biker groups that would come by mainly in the summer months when the weather was good. The café normally would have a few people in the morning for breakf
ast, then the lull before lunch time would set in. The lunch crowd was mainly regulars who sat in the same seats every day. If they came into the café and some stranger was sitting in their seats sometimes they would just leave and come back later. Change was not a popular experience around here. It was slow in the evenings, there were a few people that came home and did not want to cook that would show up now and then but it was generally a mixed bag of people after dark.

  The evening menu would include a buffet style set up. They had on one side of the café along the wall a hot table with food already cooked so you did not have to wait on your food. It did a decent take out business for a small town which probably kept the place in business. They would put out fried chicken, beef patties swimming in gravy, mashed potatoes, black eyed peas, pinto beans, the vegetable of the day and some apple pie for desert. It was good eating for sure.

  The main waitress that worked the evening shift was Betty Lou. She was an attractive girl in her early to mid-thirties that carried herself well and had a pleasant way about her. She was good at her job and the regular customers loved her. She was about 5’6 inches tall and had an inner shyness about her that made her stand out even though she tried to blend in with her surroundings and stay in the background. Maybe some of her shyness came from her having bad teeth although the regular customers did not seem to notice them much.

  One day a stranger came into the café and changed her life for ever. He was a dark haired man around 40 that looked like he had been traveling a ways and was looking for a place to land for a while. Betty Lou noticed him right away but took a minute or so to go over to the counter where he was sitting. She did not want to spook him or bring any unwanted notice to him in front of the others that were there. She slowly went over to him and said, “Can I get you something?” “A menu” he said, so she handed him one and told him to take his time and look over her way when he was ready. When she came back towards where he was sitting he looked up at her and said, “I will have the buffet and a glass of unsweetened iced tea.” Betty Lou took back the menu and walked over to the pass through window, turned his order in and then brought back some ice tea to the man at the counter. She had never seen him in there before so she was curious as to where he came from and what he was doing in this little town out in the middle of nowhere.

  “You are not from around here” she said in a friendly way. “No” he said, “I am from Up State New York. I am just traveling through looking for a warmer place to spend the winter.” She gave him a friendly smile and went about waiting on the rest of the customers in the café. Slowly one by one they finished their dinners and left the café heading home to catch some shut eye before the next morning came creeping in to wake them up. Before long everyone was gone except for the stranger and Betty Lou. “What is there to do here in the evenings around here,” he said. She told him there was not much night life in this little town. There was the bar that was actually part of the independent motel down the street. It was a small dingy place with an old juke box that had 20 year old CD’s still there for playing and a dart board that was showing some signs of the years of wear it had on it. Betty Lou did not care too much for that place although she went there from time to time when one of her relatives or friends would have a birthday party or wedding reception there. Her favorite place to go in the evenings was to go down to the lake that was behind the café and sit at one of the picknick tables where she could watch and listen to the fish and birds that seemed to be everywhere. They would eventually settle down and it would get almost quiet except for maybe the sound of a fish splashing in the distance. It made her feel good just being out there.

  After she finished cleaning up and was ready to lock the place up, she asked the stranger if he would like to go out there to the lake with her and sit a while. He said, “I would like that very much, I have been driving all day and that sounds like it would be very relaxing and the perfect way to end the day.” So the two of them went out to the lake and sat and talked about life in general being careful not to say anything that might get under each other’s skin. She told him she was single, that she was married for about two years right after high school but the guy took off when she became pregnant. She lost the baby in the fourth month and has been living by herself ever since. The stranger on the other hand had not ever been married and for the last fifteen years he has been shipping out on freighters and traveling all over the world. He said he was getting tired of it and wanted to find a place where he could have a less hectic life where he could settle down and get a chance to make some real friends.

  He had saved up enough money to buy a small house and had some investments that were paying him a regular amount of money that he could live on without having to work every day. Before they knew it hours had gone by but they did not seem to notice. They were still out there at the picknick table talking up a storm. Betty Lou finally noticed the time on her watch, “Look at the time,” she said. “It has been nice, but I have to get home and get some rest because I have to work a double shift tomorrow. “Where are you going to stay tonight?” She said. He said that he was thinking about trying that old motel down the street so he went on back to his car in front of the café and got in after saying goodbye to Betty Lou.

  After he checked into the motel, he laid on the bed and turned on the little 13 inch TV that was on the top of the dresser in the back of the room but all he could think about was Betty Lou and the good time that they had at the lake that evening. He was feeling good all over and after a while drifted off to sleep despite being able to hear in the background the noise coming out of the bar that was attached to the motel. The next morning he got up feeling like a new man and walked down to the café picking up a local newspaper along the way. Betty Lou was not at the café yet, she was to come about nine and stay until 10:00 tonight when the place closed. A woman usually worked from nine to three but she had to take care of some personal things today and could not work her shift. Betty Lou had to work both shifts today but didn’t mind since if she needed a day off the woman she was subbing for would do the same for her.

  The stranger finished his breakfast and then went out to check out some places to rent that he circled in the paper while he ate. He drove around for a few hours before settling on a small house that was close to the café. It was within ten minutes walking distance to the café. It had a porch across the front that would be an excellent place to do some people watching at the end of the day. It was furnished somewhat and had a nice yard with a tire swing hanging off a beautiful shade tree that was in the center of the yard. It was perfect for what he wanted for now.

  That evening he went back to the café so he could tell Betty Lou all about it. She seemed almost as excited about it as he was and hung on every word. “By the way, my name is Danny Styles, I forgot to tell you that last night when I was talking to you.” Maybe that was because he felt so comfortable talking with her that he felt that they already knew each other for a long time. He didn’t normally feel that comfortable talking to women since he did not get that much practice on the merchant ships that were mostly all men. The women on those ships are mainly office personal or working in the medical areas of the ship. Regular worker guys on the ship did not go in those areas unless they were sick or needed to send a message out for some reason or another. He did not date much when he was in school because he lived on a farm and his time was usually taken up with chores and the animals around the farm.

  It wasn’t long before he and Betty Lou were spending almost every night after she closed up sitting out at the lake or going back to his place hanging out sometimes taking turns pushing each other on the tire swing in the yard. They were slowly falling in love. Soon Danny wanted to ask her to marry him, but was trying to work up the courage to do so. He was scared to death of being turned down by her, after all he never even went steady with a girl no less got engaged to one. He practiced in the mirror over an over trying to get up the nerve to ask her.


  Several days had gone by and then one night while they were sitting out at the lake at one of the picknick tables he decided to go ahead and ask her the big question. She seemed to be in a good mood so he got down on his knee like he saw guys do in the movies and said in a shaky but sincere voice, “Will you marry me?” She looked a bit in shock, scared and nervous while looking down at the ground as a tear began sliding down her cheek and said, “I don’t know, how can I marry you with my teeth in this kind of condition?” She said that she was saving up the money to get her teeth fixed but had a long way to go on that. Betty Lou had terrible teeth and to say that any other way would be a lie. When she was young her parents never took her to the dentist or doctor for anything. She got her shots that were required for school but not much more. Danny had made teeth for some of the guys that he sailed with on the ships. He did not have all that much to do on the ships when things were going well and the weather was good. He liked to tinker and made things in the shop next to the engine rooms and sometimes he would make some teeth for the guys that needed them. He got to were he could make some of the finest metal teeth that anybody ever saw.