Eating Fury
By Dan Dillard
Collin wasn't fat, but he loved to eat. He hadn't quite reached the point in his life where his metabolism made him pay for every bite, but it wasn't far down the pike either. He enjoyed his single life. He enjoyed not caring. Damn the consequences. Damn the opinions. Damn everyone if they wanted to cramp his style.
The business luncheon was a casual, two drink maximum, outing at a new restaurant called simply, Fury. Something the team tried to do once a week, a new restaurant in the city each time. There were hundreds to choose from. No one admitted keeping strict tabs on their progress, but secretly, Collin tried to note them all. He liked to be able to tell people he'd been to them. He liked to have things first. Newest cell phone, latest game console, best concert tickets, pricey clothes, BMW.
The food was amazing, exotic, and quite spicy. Everyone laughed, they relaxed, and when it was over, they all went back to the office. He walked down the long, straight hallway to his office. Less of an office, really, than it was a room with eight desks in it. Layoffs had emptied six of them, and his roommate was gone for the day. He flipped on the light. His desk was a mess of papers and when he sat down, he shoved them aside. Something the waitress had said made him smile, chuckle to himself.
She had flowing black hair, tied back with a gold and turquoise colored scarf. Her skin was flawless, and she had brilliant green eyes. Or maybe she'd had light laugh lines and crow's feet. She might have been thirty years old or fifty years old, it was hard for him to recall. Either way, not his type. Still, she smiled, and took their orders and brought them drinks. What had she said? he thought. An odd dialect…an odd accent.
"There is much for which you are thankful?" she'd asked.
Sounded like mooch and tank full.
"Yeah, sure," he'd said, ignoring her concentrated interest.
She watched two of his coworkers cross themselves. The other two bowed their heads. Collin checked his phone.
"You should give thanks," she'd said. "Too much excess. Thanks."
Tanks.
Her face was cross, disappointed, growing more so when he dug into his food with greed and a bored look back at her. He swallowed mouthful after mouthful with minimal chewing. He laughed and joked with his companions. He ordered enough food for three men his size and wasted half of it when he left. She thanked the others as they filed out the front door, wished them well. But, to Collin, she smiled. And in her smile, were yellowed teeth. Her face wrinkled, and dotted with blemishes, her eyes dim and bloodshot.
"Excess," she had said.
"There is mooch for which you are tankful?" he mocked at his computer screen.
The computer monitor brightened and he logged in, checking email and glancing at various documents. He fired a pair of blue rubber bands across the room. He stapled papers together for no reason. Then his stomach growled and he belched.
"Gad," he said, sniffing the air. "That's awful."
He pulled a drawer open and found a pack of mint gum, undressed a stick and placed it in his mouth. His stomach rolled, growling again.
"Shit," he said.
Then he laughed.
"Exactly. I've gotta shit. That was some spicy shit. Shit, crappity, shit."
He patted his hands on his desk and stood, or started to stand. Something cramped in his midsection that stopped him from straightening. A wave of nausea followed. Collin stabilized himself, waited for the feeling to pass. It did, but he didn't wait for a second wave to crash and hurried to the bathroom. As luck would have it, the restroom on his floor was blocked off, the cleaning crew inside. He had half a mind to burst in and do his business, but the cleaning crew was all female.
Instead, he took a deep breath and found the stairs. It was two flights down to the main floor, out the back door of the building, and past the smokers' area to his car. Less than ten minutes to his house, the four-bedroom, three-bath with the finished basement. He could make it if he just focused on his breathing. Binge drinking had taught him that. He couldn't prevent the inevitable, but he could hold it off.
The car started up and he pushed the on-off button on the radio for silence. He inhaled deep, then exhaled slowly through pursed lips, and drove, rolling his window down for a cool breeze. Three times in eight minutes, he thought he was going to lose it. It was going to happen, from his ass or from his mouth, he didn't know, but he maintained. He maintained until he was in his garage, then the house, then the bathroom.
Another cramp hit, doubling him over in agony and Collin found himself, red-faced and moaning on both knees, one fist on the ground, loosely balled like a gorilla's, and the other hanging on the sink. The hardest thing was knowing whether he was going to vomit, or shit his pants. He took the only tack he could, ripping his suit pants down around his ankles, crawling onto the toilet and grabbing the trash can off the floor. Then he waited. His gut rumbled and his head throbbed, sweat beading on his brow. He salivated.
Then, the pain was replaced by the sick, hot feeling of his bowels letting go an impossible amount of foul smelling liquid waste. It happened in surges. When his stomach finally settled, he was exhausted.
He cleaned himself and stood up to flush. What he saw made him look away as he pulled the handle. The flush flowed in clear to replace the filth. Collin flushed twice. Then he checked the bowl just in case, a habit. Something was left behind. It was black and seemed to be stuck just under the waterline. He flushed again. It didn't move. Again. Nothing.
"Nasty," he said.
Collin washed his hands, then his face with soap, and patted himself dry with a hand towel that hung from a metal ring. He stared at himself in the mirror, upset by his pale appearance.
"Fucking bitch poisoned us at lunch," he said.
He looked under the cabinet for something to clean the commode and found a toilet brush. I can dislodge it with this, he thought. Then...I can throw up.
He leaned over the bowl and prodded the glob with the brush. It budged, but didn't come loose, like it was suctioned there.
"The hell?" he said.
Collin knelt down and took a closer look. He flushed again and saw tiny bits break loose from the glob and go down the drain, but it held fast. He pushed it with the brush again, harder…and it popped loose. It didn't smear, or fall off, but popped. As it fell into the rising water, he'd swear he saw it move.
"The unholy hell?"
He watched it disappear down the drain and flushed again, just in case. Another pain gripped his middle, sharper than the others. So sharp that he wretched, grabbed the bowl's edges and emptied his stomach from the other end. Something lodged in his throat as he vomited and Collin hacked and coughed trying to expel it. His eyes watered, and he finally coughed out another black glob. With it, a pair of thin, silvery triangles, like fairy wings floated, and several drops of blood bloomed on the surface. He tasted blood and bile and rot.
Collin wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and flushed the toilet again. He spat a mouthful of blood into the swirling water. The glob was still there. Only it wasn’t a glob. It was more than three inches long, tear-drop shaped and looking at him through large black eyes. Fins flicked from each side as it settled against the porcelain in the calming, rising water. Fins that looked like fairy wings. Those were pieces of another one, he thought. That's one…two…three? How many of these things are there?
Collin's stomach wrenched again. He felt heat and moisture dripping from the crack in his backside, rolling down his leg and knew it was blood. He spat another wad of red into the bowl.
The fish thing flicked its fins and swallowed the red fluid. Another pain in his belly, and another. The first was low—deep in his bowels, the second high—where his stomach was. Collin thought he felt…heard…chewing. He pictured pairs of those glossy black eyes moving throughout his body. There was a pain in his left thigh. Another in what had to be his right lung.
The pain outweighed the strangeness and worry. As with most reality, he had no time to process it as it just happened. Quick and violent, but without a lot of fanfare. No witnesses. Just him, alone in his bathroom. Soon the fish would finish him.
END.