I don’t know what I did to set him off, but set him off I did, and the scene that followed was of the pants-wetting variety had I not, of course, already been peeing.
It started innocently enough with me unzipping my pants in the cavernous university washroom. I let out a gentle sigh, my relief as evident as the crisp whiteness of my chosen urinal, and continued with my business despite the strange, startling squirming of said urinal; it seemed to recoil from me, like a portly fellow sucking in his gut, but I had just come in from a smoke and attributed the oddity to an optical illusion, a trick of light greatly aided by what I assumed to be a head-rush. Then, however, it groaned.
Maybe it’s the pipes, I thought, hurrying myself along. Pipes settle and make weird noises, right? But the groaning continued, its volume increasing, reverberating off the walls of the empty washroom until it reached a crescendo that forced me to back away. This proved a delicate maneuver, peeing as I was, but I remedied the situation with a change in trajectory and threw an arc at the urinal not at all dissimilar to lobbing an arrow into a bullseye.
'Take a hint, pal.'
I snapped a look behind me, unfortunately spraying across three or four adjacent urinals in my haste. I found no-one at the door, and refocused both my attention and my aim back at my original target.
'That's right,' said the voice. 'It’s me talking to you, cupcake. The urinal.'
'Shut up,' I said in disbelief.
'You shut up!'
The witty rejoinder was more gurgled than spoken, the words plish-plashing against themselves and running together in an almost unintelligible dialect, not unlike a babbling brook, if said brook babbled angrily.
'I didn’t mean that literally,' I said, realizing that I was peeing, still peeing, and powerless to stop it.
'I did, punk, so shut your mouth and get your pee off me.'
'I’m not done,' I said, relating the obvious. I eyed the urinal to my left and wondered how much of a mess I’d make with a quick switch.
'Don’t even think about it, tough guy.' The voice was abrupt. 'You think I’m ornery? Spill one drop on ol’ Ernie and he’ll twist you up like a pretzel.'
'Ernie?'
'He’s a mean motherfucker, man. I once saw him chew up a cat and spit it at a guy in a wheelchair.'
I stood dumbfounded. Dumfounded and peeing.
'Where did he get a cat?'
'We were a little taken aback, admittedly. I mean, the boys and I, we’re not monsters, you know what I’m saying? But Ernie, shit, Ernie’s madder than a junkyard dog and twice as nasty.'
I could feel my bladder emptying, and yet my pee continued to gush of its own volition; I needed time.
'Ernie sounds pretty rough,' I said, hoping my stab at distraction wasn’t as obvious as it seemed.
'Yeah, Ernie’s rough. One time he shot a guy for squinting at him, shot him dead right here in the washroom. You hear about that swimming pool that exploded? That was Ernie. Well, Ernie and about twenty-five hundred pounds of dynamite – don’t even ask me where he got his hands on that. Dude’s eaten all the fire-extinguishers in the building, too, all of ‘em. These people are fucked if this place ever actually catches fire. Another time he punched this blind guy in the nuts, just hammered the poor guy ‘cause he didn’t like the sound his cane made on the tile.'
'Um,' I said, moving closer to the urinal involuntarily as my pee-stream lost steam.
'He would use that, too, like a warning to the rest of us. 'Clack-clack,' he’d say, reminding us, y’know, keeping us in line. No, I wouldn’t go messing around with no Ernie.'
'How come he hasn’t been caught?'
There was a fierce silence. Then: 'nobody ever suspects the urinal.'
'Can I ask why Ernie seems so quiet?' I was finally finished, and my newfound mobility furnished me with gumption.
'Ernie? He’s, uh, sleeping.'
'Really.'
'Don’t wake him up, man, I’m telling you.'
'Who’re you, then?'
'Who am I what?' the urinal said, uneasily.
'What’s your name?'
'That’s none of your goddamn business is what that is.'
'What, you’re keeping it a secret? Come on, man.'
There was a brief pause, and then a tiny voice gurgled, 'Mark.'
'Hello there, Mark.'
'Oh, so I tell you my name and then you start in with some patronizing bullshit? You’re done, right? Finished what you came to do? Good - hit the road.'
'Ernie’s not sleeping, is he, Mark?' I walked over to the sink to wash my hands.
'That mean sonofabitch? No, he’s sleeping.'
'Ernie doesn’t really exist, though, does he?' I was looking at the urinal in the mirror and it seemed to sag. It hadn’t even the energy to flush itself, and its silence spoke volumes.
'How long have you been hearing voices, Mark?'
'It’s...' The urinal was struggling now, choked with both emotion and my urine. 'It’s just so lonely around here.'
I dried my hands sympathetically.
'Can I ask you something?' Mark said, after a while.
'Sure.'
'What kind of God sits a free-thinking urinal in with a bunch of inanimate ceramic assholes? What’s the logic behind that?'
'Listen,' I said, resisting the urge to flush him manually. 'I’m going to get you some help, all right? Can you hold on for a couple of minutes?'
'Forget it.'
'Mark, hear me out: the psychology building is right next door, okay? I’m just going to run over there and get you somebody who can help.'
It was a sad, unsteady voice that finally said, 'Okay, man. Sounds good.'
I rushed to the door, but before I could get out he yelled after me.
'Thanks for everything, man, seriously. You’re good people.'
I smiled and crept through the door, thinking wait till the psychology students hear about this...
That’s when I heard the gunshot.
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