Outhouse
Rafael needed to shit, but he didn’t want to go here. He was camping out in the wilderness and had to use this dilapidated outhouse or try to find a place in a bush where no one would find his feces in the morning. He’d tried to wait until morning to do it, but his stomach wouldn’t let him. Here in the pitch black, save for the glow of his flashlight, Rafael’s body shook. He knocked softly on the door, hoping that no one was inside, but also hoping that someone was, so that he would feel safer and not alone.
No one responded.
Rafael pushed on the creaky door quickly so as to get it over with as fast as possible. He shined the light into the little room and squinted to try and distinguish where the toilet was. The little room moaned under his weight and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He held the light up high above his head to try and illuminate as much of the room as possible. He unbuttoned his jeans. He thought that he saw something move around in the crudely cut hole that served as a toilet seat. He tried to convince himself that it was just his own shadow, the shadow of his quivering head looking down into the muck.
Rafael pulled his pants down slowly and prepared himself to sit on the hole, exposing himself to whatever may live down in the depths.
He moved the flashlight around a little to see better what he was about to sit above, to reassure himself that there was nothing to worry about. He gulped in anticipation.
It was much more shallow than Rafael would have guessed. The hole contained what was at the bottom of most all outhouses. There were small piles of wet and dry fecal matter, lots of used toilet paper, pieces of white and pink chewing gum wads and a couple of condoms.
His stomach ached but he was still too afraid to sit down, despite seeing nothing that scared him in the hole. He decided he needed to relax his body more and lowered the flashlight to click it off so that he could concentrate on the act of defecation in the darkness.
As he brought the light down towards his body, though, the light shined deeper into the hole and Rafael saw a dark yellow eye with a dark brown pupil. Rafael drew in a small gasp and dropped the flashlight onto the ground. When the flashlight hit the floor of the old outhouse it killed the power to it, and now the outhouse was dark as he had wanted it to be, but he was concentrating not on relaxing so that he may void his bowels, but rather on the eye in the toilet.
He yanked his pants back up and didn’t bother fastening them. He crouched low to the ground and felt around for the flashlight.
He couldn’t find it.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Rafael was panicking now, wishing he’d held it until the morning. He shouldn’t have had that last hamburger before he lay down for the night.
In the darkness all he could see was the yellow eye in his own mind’s eye. Watching him, waiting for him to turn on the light.
His hand found the hard plastic of the light and he tried to click it back on again.
Nothing.
“Come on, you motherfucker!” Rafael banged on it. It came on.
The light shone on the side wall of the outhouse, on some old graffiti that told him that Jim had been there in 1986. He moved the beam over to the toilet again and saw a dark brown mass with three yellow eyes studying him. It was climbing and pulling itself slowly out of the toilet. Rafael’s body let go of its inhibitions and he soiled himself as the monster lunged at him.