Otherworldly Ousting
Sam paused nearby, a heavy crate of pinball parts resting against his thigh. He watched the exchange with a weary, knowing sigh. “He has Billy inside him alright!” he whispered the admission to himself. He knew Billy was that temperamental as well.
Miss Jessice shouted again. “Corners! Now!”
Herman groaned but he went to one of the corners anyway. “Do I have to look into the corner at the wall? Or just be in the corner?”
Goz holds one hand palm up and punches his other fist into the palm. “At least the troll is simply being flippant!”
Miss Jessica looked at her chart. She wrote the word Herman down on the list, underlined the name twice and circled it aggressively. She put two check marks next to “Acting Childishly.” She noticed just then she had been spoken to. ’No, try not to turn your back on anyone.”
“Kyle!” Ms Tears called from inside the loading dock itself, having not yet stepped into the light yet. “When is your break over?”
“I just want to ask Goz here one question, mom!” Kyle said over his shoulder. “Hey, if you are a dwarf and I were an efl…. Could we be friends?”
Goz shouted his anger with thunderous intensity. “What do you mean IF i was a dwarf? And you think I would want to be friends with an elf?”
Kyle backed down. “Uh.. if we were in the Alliance or something? Allies! Would we be like Gimli and Legolas?”
Goz “I don’t know those two stupid names! I don’t care for elves! Flighty shapeshifting miscreants! Running around in rotting bark armor filled with maggots! I chop one tree down and I am marked for death! Leave me be!”
Shirley joined Miss Tears on the loading doc. “Kyle! Get over here!”
Kyle got out of the situation in a hurry. He could hear Herman laughing from his corner but went anyway.
Bathroom Dysfunction
“You’ll miss the surprise!” Herman shouted as the door to the loading dock banged shut behind Kyle.
Kyle looked about but didn’t see them at first then he noticed they were standing together down the hall in front of a door to a women’s latrine. There was a crude bio hazard sign on the wall. He ambled over, dread in every step the took.
Kyle looked between the two women. One had given birth to him. The other was potentially giving birth to a stepchild of his to be daddy to, yet the baby inside her was sired by Dylan—their absolute worst enemy.
“We have to talk about boys in the lady’s room,” Shirley led off immediately. She pointed one finger at the door and another at the sign.
“We do?” Kyle was already anticipating the conversation now
“It was cute at first, but he’s in there all the damn time. Literally because his poor digestion or something,” Ms Tears took the lead on this one.
“It not only smells like he had something crawl up his a** an die, but its like he has a whole damn f***ing colony of dead things coming outta his a** that smell so bad all the time!” Shirley agreed.
“Why do you curse so much?” Kyle asked her.
“We are all cursed in some ways, Kyle. Why the hell do you have to be named after your dad?” Shirley griped.
“Don’t broach that subject with my son!” Ms Tears warned.
“I was named after my grandfather!” Kyle told her. “He was a very decent man! He cleaned up the messes in the family and he didn’t complain about the duty. It was ‘a circle of life’ to him. When I was five I found out he stole that from The Lion King but still!”
“My point with the names is you could have been Keith!” Shirley went on.
“Keith was named after Keith Richards! I wished the bastard would be cursed into being some kinda derelict and not last very long in polite society.” Ms Tears explained.
Bleach threw the door open. “Hey! Shut up! I’m in stall one making another deposit here!” He grimaced then retreated back inside.
Kyle felt weird going into the lady’s room with two angry women at his heels but he had to. “Holy s***! What died here!?!?”
Bleach “I’m playing a puzzle game on my Atari Lynx!” The smell impossibly intensified.”Excuse me!”
A millisecond later, the ambient room odor impossibly, violently intensified.
The gray shadows near the corner sinks began to warp and split. Out of the static air, a solid ghost manifested directly in front of the mirrors.
“I feel disrespectful saying this, but honey! I’m home!” The girls screamed and ran for the door. This one was that much more pungent.
He wore a trenchcoat like the one Sam had let Bleach wear but it was stained so badly it was best to say it was a collection of strains that somehow got a bit of trenchcoat in it…. His shoes were mismatched with hole in them. He doffed his fedora to Kyle. “Detecive ‘Stinky’ Silvio Jannells at your service, bud.”
Kyle vomited finally. He did it right where he stood. “Be right back!f” Then he ran out the door. He setup his respirator on his Hazmat suit, put the hood on, and made his way back inside without pausing to explain to the women in the hall.
The first thing he saw was Silvio walking past him, carrying Bleach under the armpits like a baby desperate to be changed.
Bleach was crying, a fresh diaper on him. But he wasn’t wearing the trenchcoat any more. “I soiled my suit! Bad! It was so scary!” He sobbed. “I left the coat on the hook on the door in my stall!”
“I am not scary! I just smell bad!” Silvio defended himself.
“Wait! Where are you taking him?” Kyle asked his words hissing behind the face shield of his suit.
“Hey, gals!” Silvio yelled out the door as he pushed the door open. “Take him to the nurse’s office! There’s a private toilet in there he can take refuge in!”
“I am a highly specialized healer! Not a nurse!” Bleach protested, dismay on his face over the condition of his suit.
“Whatever! Your horsie is a nurse! He can be stationed there with you!” Silvio placated him.
Shirley finally got her courage to shout from way down the hall. ’You are not f***ing haunting the mutha freaking lady’s room! I am a mother to a child!
“I don’t care what gender a person is, they are welcome there as long as they follow basic modesty and courtesy!” Shirley spat. “But you smell worse than his bowel movements!”
“I am the Absolute Master of Poor Fragrances! AND I am going haunt the dumpsters! I miss sleeping in those!” Silvio defended himself and winked out of existence.
