Bored-Room by Fenton Grant

My piss smells like boredom. The urinal becomes a carnival attraction. Hit the baby blue hockey puck. Nail all three drain holes. Force the pube to slide down the side and onto the hockey puck. It’s the coffee. Runs right through me. Old men say that. Everyone knows it. Coffee makes you piss.

I should get back. I look in the mirror, the overhead lighting making me balder than I am. I fluff the sides of my widow’s peak. Might as well. Just in case it’s not the lighting.

A hole in the center of the double sink platform serves as a trash receptacle. It’d be funny to climb under the sinks and pop up out of the hole. I’d wait until an equally numbed colleague finished washing his hands. He’d lean over the sinks, drawing closer to the mirror. A quick pick and jab at the nose, and he’d sense the wetness at his waist. Leaned too close. Puddles always run the length of the countertop.

“Ah, shit,” he’d think, blotting the wet spot with a paper towel.  I’d steady myself. The sinks’ victim, fallen prey to the puddle, he’d grind the brown towel into his crisp white shirt. Then I’d emerge.

Popping up from the hole between the sinks, my head a rocket at lift off; I’d channel the whack-a-mole attack plan.

“Stop it,” I’d scream.

Stop it. Get back to the meeting. I dry my hands, toss the towel toward my potential hiding spot, and step to the door. The wood veneer worn thin by countless freshly washed hands, the door weighs against my will.

I’d tried. I tracked the reference points. I sat before the power point firing squad and held my blindfold at bay. But I waned. Coffee, morphine to attention’s wounds, did little to seduce interest. The speaker, a company automaton, used inflexion. He stalked the boardroom. No man’s land, the oak table, littered with literature before me, I tried. With a therapist’s patience, I listened to the automaton.

Fall back.

Retreat, called my bladder, my common sense. I waited for a pause, a break in the automaton’s edict, and I rose. In two fluid steps, I escaped the boardroom. I held my breath and closed the door. Freedom.

I can’t go back.

The light over the mirror blinks. The toilet gurgles, a wet affirmation. I’m a traitor. I’m a resistance fighter in a two-button suit jacket. I enter the handicapped stall. The railing next to the toilet stained with fingerprints, I rethink my strategy. Next door, I shut the door to the middle stall. The lock turns with ease, and I hang my jacket on the hook. With a handful of toilet paper, I scrub the day old piss from the seat and sit down. I surrender.

Fenton Grant frequents diners and record shops in Pittsburgh. He recently completed his first novel and is pursuing publication. For updates and more stories, follow him on facebook and twitter.