J. A. Konrath’s short work has appeared in over fifty magazines and anthologies. He’s responsible for five books in the Lieutenant Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels thriller series, the latest of which is Fuzzy Navel. He also edited the collection of hitman stories These Guns for Hire, and penned the horror novel Afraid under the name Jack Kilborn. Visit him at www.JAKonrath.com.
Robert Weston Smith walked across the snow-covered parking lot carrying a small plastic container of his poop.
Weston considered himself a healthy guy. At thirty-three years old he still had a six-pack, the result of working out three times a week. He followed a strict macrobiotic diet. He practiced yoga and tai chi. The last time he ate processed sugar was during the Reagan administration.
That’s why, when odd things began appearing in his bowel movements, he became more than a little alarmed. So alarmed that he sought out his general practitioner, making an appointment after a particularly embarrassing phone call to his office secretary.
Weston entered the office building with his head down and a blush on his ears, feeling like a kid sneaking out after curfew. He used the welcome mat to stamp the snow off his feet and walked through the lobby to the doctor’s office, taking a deep breath before going in. There were six people in the waiting room, four adults and a young boy, plus a nurse in pink paisley hospital scrubs who sat behind the counter.
Weston kept his head down and beelined for the nurse. The poop container was blue plastic, semiopaque, but it might as well have been a police siren, blinking and howling. Everyone in the room must have known what it was. And if they didn’t at first, they sure knew after the nurse said in a loud voice, “Is that your stool sample?”
He nodded, trying to hand it to the woman. She made no effort to take it, and he couldn’t really blame her. He carried it, and a clipboard, over to a seat in the waiting room. Setting his poop on a table atop an ancient copy of Good Housekeeping, he got to work filling out his insurance information. When it came time to describe the nature of his ailment, he wrote down “intestinal problems.” Which was untrue—his intestines felt fine. It’s what came out of his intestines that caused alarm.
“What’s in the box?”
Weston looked up, staring into the big eyes of a child, perhaps five or six years old.
“It’s, um, something for the doctor.”
He glanced around the room, looking for someone to claim the boy. Two people had their noses stuck in magazines, one was watching a car commercial on the TV hanging from the ceiling, and the last appeared asleep. Any of them could have been his parent.
“Is it a cupcake?” the boy asked.
“Uh . . . yeah, a cupcake.”
“I like cupcakes.”
“You wouldn’t like this one.”
The boy reached for the container.
“Is it chocolate?”
Weston snatched it up and set it in his lap.
“No. It isn’t chocolate.”
“Show it to me.”
“No.”
The boy squinted at the sample. Weston considered putting it behind his back, out of the child’s sight, but there was no place to set it other than the chair. It didn’t seem wise to put it where he might lean back on it.
“It looks like chocolate. I think I can see peanuts.”
“Those aren’t peanuts.”
In fact, gross and disturbing as it sounded, Weston didn’t know what those lumps were. Which is why he was at the doctor’s office.
He glanced again at the four adults in the waiting room, wondering why no one bothered to corral their son. Weston was single, no children. None of his friends had children. Being a mechanical engineer, he didn’t encounter children at his job. Perhaps today’s parents had no problems letting their kids walk up to strangers and beg for cupcakes.
“Mr. Smith?” the pink paisley nurse said. “Please come with me.”
Weston stood, taking his poop through the door, following the nurse down a short hallway and into an examining room.
“Please put on the gown. I’ll be back in a moment.”
She closed the door behind him. Weston stared at the folded paper garment, sitting on the edge of a beige examination table also lined with paper. He set the container down next to a jar of cotton swabs. Then he removed his coat, shoes, jeans, boxer shorts, and polo shirt, placed them in a neat pile on the floor, and slipped his arms through the gown’s sleeve holes. It felt like wearing a large, stiff napkin.
Weston shivered. It was cold in the room; examination rooms always seemed to be several degrees too cool for comfort. He stood there in his socks, rubbing his bare arms, waiting for the nurse to come back.
She eventually did, taking his temperature and blood pressure, then left him again with the promise that Dr. Waggoner would be there shortly.
A minute passed. Two. Three. Weston stared at the ceiling tiles, thinking about the hours he’d spent on the Internet looking for some sort of clue as to what strange disease he had. There was plenty of disturbing content about bowel movements, including a website where people actually sent in pictures of theirs so others could rate them, but he’d found nothing even remotely close to the problem he was having.
The door opened, derailing his train of thought.
“Mr. Smith? I’m Dr. Waggoner. Please, sit down.”
Weston sat on the table, the paper chilly under his buttocks. Dr. Waggoner was an older man, portly. Bald, but with enough gray hair growing out of his ears to manage a comb-over. He had on trendy round eyeglasses with a faux tortoiseshell frame, and a voice that was both deep and nasally.
“Your blood pressure is normal, but your temperature is 100.5 degrees.” He snapped on some latex gloves. “How are you feeling right now?”
“Fine.”
“Any aches, pains, problems, discomforts?”
“No. I’m a little chilly, but that’s all.”
Dr. Waggoner removed some sort of scope and checked Weston’s eyes and ears as they talked.
“How long have you been having these intestinal problems?”
“Um, on and off for about three months. But they aren’t really intestinal problems. I’m finding, uh, strange things in my bowel movements.”
“Can you describe them for me?”
“Like little stones. Or things that look like strips of fabric.”
Dr. Waggoner raised an eyebrow.
“Well, I have to ask the obvious question first.”
Weston waited.
“Have you been eating little stones or strips of fabric?”
The doctor grinned like a Halloween pumpkin. Weston managed a weak smile.
“Not that I’m aware of, Doctor.”
“Good to know. Tell me about your diet. Has it changed recently? Eating anything new or exotic?”
“Not really. I eat mostly health foods, have been for the last ten years.”
“Been out of the country in the last six months?”
“No.”
“Do you eat a lot of rare meat, or raw vegetables?”
“Sometimes. But I don’t think I have a tapeworm.”
Dr. Waggoner chuckled.
“Ah, the Internet. It gives everyone a doctorate in medicine.”
Weston did the open his mouth and say “aaaaah” thing, then said, “I know I’m not a doctor, but I checked a lot of sites, and the things in my stool, they don’t look like tapeworm segments.”
“Stones and fabric, you said. Can you be more specific?”
“The stones are sort of white. Some very small, like flecks. Other times bigger.”
“How big?”
“About the size of my thumb.”
“And the fabric?”
“There have been different colors. Sometimes red. Sometimes black. Sometimes blue.”
“How closely have you examined these items?”
Weston frowned. “Not too closely. I mean, I never took them out of the toilet and picked them up or anything. Except for that.” Weston pointed to the stool on the table.
“We’ll have the lab take a look at that. In the meantime, I’m going to have to take a look myself. Can you bend over the table and lift up your gown, please?”