“Asshole, asshole!” the visitor taunted, stepping from the darkness into a bedside dusk.
With dismay Alfred recognized the visitor. First he saw the dropping’s slumped outline and then he caught a whiff of bacterial decay. This was not a mouse. This was the turd.
“Urine trouble now, he he!” the turd said.
It was a sociopathic turd, a loose stool, a motormouth. It had introduced itself to Alfred the night before and so agitated him that only Enid’s ministrations, a blaze of electric light and Enid’s soothing touch on his shoulder, had saved the night.
“Leave!” Alfred commanded sternly.
But the turd scurried up the side of the clean Nordic bed and relaxed like a Brie, or a leafy and manure-smelling Cabrales, on the covers. “Splat chance of that, fella.” And dissolved, literally, in a gale of hilarious fart sounds.
To fear encountering the turd on his pillow was to summon the turd to the pillow, where it flopped in postures of glistening well-being.
“Get away, get away,” Alfred said, planting an elbow in the carpeting as he exited the bed headfirst.
“No way, José,” the turd said. “First I’m gonna get in your clothes.”
“No!”
“Sure am, fella. Gonna get in your clothes and touch the upholstery. Gonna smear and leave a trail. Gonna stink so bad.”
“Why? Why? Why would you do such a thing?”
“Because it’s right for me,” the turd croaked. “It’s who I am. Put somebody else’s comfort ahead of my own? Go hop in a toilet to spare somebody else’s feelings? That’s the kinda thing you do, fella. You got everything bass ackwards. And look where it’s landed you.”
“Other people ought to have more consideration.”
“You oughtta have less. Me personally, I am opposed to all strictures. If you feel it, let it rip. If you want it, go for it. Dude’s gotta put his own interests first.”
“Civilization depends upon restraint,” Alfred said.
“Civilization? Overrated. I ask you what’s it ever done for me? Flushed me down the toilet! Treated me like shit!”
“But that’s what you are,” Alfred pleaded, hoping the turd might see the logic. “That’s what a toilet is for.”
“Who you calling shit here, asshole? I got the same rights as everybody else, don’t I? Life, liberty, the pussuit of hot-pussyness? That’s what it says in the Constitution of the You Nighted—”
“That’s not right,” Alfred said. “You’re thinking of the Declaration of Independence.”
“Some old yellow piece a paper somewhere, what the ratass fuck do I care what exact paper? Tightasses like you been correcting every fucking word outta my mouth since I was yay big. You and all the constipated fascist schoolteachers and Nazi cops. For all I care the words are printed on a piece of fucking toilet paper. I say it’s a free country, I am in the majority, and you, fella, are a minority. And so fuck you.”
The turd had an attitude, a tone of voice, that Alfred found eerily familiar but couldn’t quite place. It began to roll and tumble on his pillow, spreading a shiny greenish-brown film with little lumps and fibers in it, leaving white creases and hollows where the fabric was bunched. Alfred, on the floor by the bed, covered his nose and mouth with his hands to mitigate the stench and horror.
Then the turd ran up the leg of his pajamas. He felt its tickling mouselike feet.
“Enid!” he called with all the strength he had.
The turd was somewhere in the neighborhood of his upper thighs. Struggling to bend his rigid legs and hook his semifunctional thumbs on the waistband, he pulled the pajamas down to trap the turd inside the fabric. He suddenly understood that the turd was an escaped convict, a piece of human refuse that belonged in jail. That this was what jail was for: people who believed that they, rather than society, made the rules. And if jail did not deter them, they deserved death! Death! Drawing strength from his rage, Alfred succeeded in pulling the ball of pajamas from his feet, and with oscillating arms he wrestled the ball to the carpeting, hammering it with his forearms, and then wedged it deep between the firm Nordic mattress and the Nordic box spring.
He knelt, catching his breath, in his pajama top and adult diaper.
Enid continued to sleep. Something distinctly fairy-tale-like in her attitude tonight.
“Phlblaaatth!” the turd taunted. It had reappeared on the wall above Alfred’s bed and hung precariously, as if flung there, beside a framed etching of the Oslo waterfront.
“God damn you!” Alfred said. “You belong in jail!”
The turd wheezed with laughter as it slid very slowly down the wall, its viscous pseudopods threatening to drip on the sheets below. “Seems to me,” it said, “you anal retentive type personalities want everything in jail. Like, little kids, bad news, man, they pull your tchotchkes off your shelves, they drop food on the carpet, they cry in theaters, they miss the pot. Put ’em in the slammer! And Polynesians, man, they track sand in the house, get fish juice on the furniture, and all those pubescent chickies with their honkers exposed? Jail ‘em! And how about ten to twenty, while we’re at it, for every horny little teenager, I mean talk about insolence, talk about no restraint. And Negroes (sore topic, Fred?), I’m hearing rambunctious shouting and interesting grammar, I’m smelling liquor of the malt variety and sweat that’s very rich and scalpy, and all that dancing and whoopee-making and singers that coo like body parts wetted with saliva and special jellies: what’s a jail for if not to toss a Negro in it? And your Caribbeans with their spliffs and their potbelly toddlers and their like daily barbecues and ratborne hanta viruses and sugary drinks with pig blood at the bottom? Slam the cell door, eat the key. And the Chinese, man, those creepy-ass weird-name vegetables like homegrown dildos somebody forgot to wash after using, one-dollah, one-dollah, and those slimy carps and skinned-alive songbirds, and come on, like, puppy-dog soup and pooty-tat dumplings and female infants are national delicacies, and pork bung, by which we’re referring here to the anus of a swine, presumably a sort of chewy and bristly type item, pork bung’s a thing Chinks pay money for to eat? What say we just nuke all billion point two of ’em, hey? Clean that part of the world up already. And let’s not forget about women generally, nothing but a trail of Kleenexes and Tampaxes everywhere they go. And your fairies with their doctor’s-office lubricants, and your Mediterraneans with their whiskers and their garlic, and your French with their garter belts and raunchy cheeses, and your blue-collar ball-scratchers with their hot rods and beer belches, and your Jews with their circumcised putzes and gefilte fish like pickled turds, and your Wasps with their Cigarette boats and runny-assed polo horses and go-to-hell cigars? Hey, funny thing, Fred, the only people that don’t belong in your jail are upper-middle-class northern European men. And you’re on my case for wanting things my way?”
“What will it take to make you leave this room?” Alfred said.
“Loosen up the old sphincter, fella. Let it fly.”
“I will never!”
“In that case I might pay a visit to your shaving kit. Have me a little episode o’ diarrhea on your toothbrush. Drop a couple nice globbets in your shave cream and tomorrow a.m. you can lather up a rich brown foam—”
“Enid,” Alfred said in a strained voice, not taking his eyes off the crafty turd, “I am having difficulties. I would appreciate your assistance.”