The Dumping Pot

Something cold and slightly damp encases my ass. I look down. A beige, tile floor fills my sightscape. Beneath the tile floor sits another floor, a replica outlining the first, and beneath this floor sits another and another and another. I look to my right. The beige linoleum stretches to an unseeable conclusion. I look left. Tile on tile on tile. I look up. A mirror reflects the beige, the tiles, the tiered floors and a porcelain toilet, but no me.

“What the fuck?” I whisper. The whisper chimes through the chambered dimensions, down, down, down through the tiled floors, gaining volume and velocity with each passing, “what the fuck, What The Fuck, What The FUCK, WHAT THE FUCK, WHAT THE FUCK!”

I glance up. The mirror is still there.

Yet, no me.

I can feel the porcelain cutting into my ass. I can feel my body immobilized and stuck. Only my head can pivot, up, back, down, around.

“Where am I?” I think.

From out of my chest a creaky voice breaths,“where is not the question. Neither is why. When matters not. What and how survive.”

An unprompted chain of “what the fucks” clatter through the beige prism, although I say nothing.

“What the fuck is going on?” I ask. “What the hell are you?”

The words reverberate through the dimensions, a sticky snowball of syllables gaining volume and urgency that eventually whip my awareness with a loud “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU?”

A chuckle escapes my chest. “I am the dumping pot, I’m part of the journey. Here to take your waste and subterfuge, so you may keep learning.”

I feel like I’m blinking, but I don’t know anymore.

“How did I get here?” I say, stunned.

“You died, silly goose.” The voice says with delight. “The big yellow school bus ran a redlight!”

“Shit,” I mumble.

Hushes of “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit” fill the void, reverberating off the walls like restless pigeons about to take flight.

“Well, what am I doing here? Why can’t I see my body in the mirror?” I say.

“Well, right now your body is stuck, suspended in space. You need to take a shit to ease the distaste!” sing-songs the voice.

“What does that even mean!?” I shout. A cacophany of booms echo my outburst.

When the ringing subsides, the voice answers,

“Your body is bound to the life of the past,

your consciousness is here, speaking fast.

The duality is broke of mind and body.

Now it’s time to move on by going potty.”

Ah, I think to myself. I must of recently died and my body hasn’t taken its final shit, one of those glamourous death reactions people rarely speak of.

“Okay… so I just need to shit?” I ask. “Like, physically, try to take a shit?”

“You can sit and strain and push with all might. The body, eventually, will yield with delight. It’s not physical shit I’ll ask for in here, but your memories and habits, your emotional ware. Once you let go of who you used to be, your sphincter will open, your body set free.”

“What happens if I refuse to push?” I ask defiantly.

“Then your consciousness will stay tethered to beige.

Your body will relinquish and one day decay.

Until that day comes, you’ll stay in here,

attached to a body you once held dear.

And while you wait, that mirror above,

will play movies and clips of the ones you once loved.

Friends and family, lovers and all,

lives that begin without you this fall.

You’ll watch from a distance, a lingering ghost,

watch all the lives that mattered most.

“So now, please, sit dear friend, let go of the self caged within.”