The Saga of the Toilet

The bathroom has been in revolt. As a crucial part of my apartment, I was getting fed up with its constant complaining and spewing up shit that I plainly didn't want to deal with.

My bathroom first started behaving terribly awhile ago. We thought we fixed the problem with a copious amount of cement but that only held down our anarchist toilet...for awhile. I couldn't have known that it was just quietly plotting its revenge for this insurrection.

Like most upheavals, things started off small and quietly. A few times the flush wouldn't completely flush everything in the bowl. Next, I would hear a gurgling noise, a noise that would soon be synonymous with a rebellion; the cries of the toilet empire.

In the passing weeks, things started to move more quickly with this little troublemaker. His sudden cries would be accompanied by a small stream of water trickling out from the bottom of the sink. How dare he. Roping the poor, innocent sink into this he was risking war, war I say! What started off as water soon became littered with the casualties of the fallen toilet paper that had braved the porcelain bowl, only to see the light of day again so soon. To have pledged their service so young, it was heart-wrenching.

Not wanting to risk any more casualties, we made the pact of not sending in any more troops to fuel the fire. We figured that this would stop the floods and for a time, we thought we had won. We cleaned up the mess left behind by the toilet and hoped for the best. He stayed quiet for some time, but there was still that aching fear that he would once again try his hand at overtaking the bathroom.

We went on and off like this for a few days until the toilet decided that it was time to pull out the big guns. One fateful Saturday night, my roommate and I were having people over to our house to eat pizza and socialize. One of our Chinese friends ventured into the bathroom, only to return with the sound of an attack.

"Something is wrong with your toilet."

Our fears had come to a head. We were sure that without the assistance of toilet paper, nothing would come up. Our toilet had decided it was going to just send everything back up. Everything. From sink to wall, the feces looked up at us while we looked down in defeat. We locked the bathroom door and resigned that the bathroom was simply "broken."

The next few days we feared to enter the room. The toilet was seemingly winning with each flush. We attempted a plunger, but nothing could calm his rage. The poop remained stale on the floor as we waited for backup to arrive. It was kind of a shitty time.

The next Friday rolled around and tensions were growing high. Our bathroom had become an unusable mess with a smell that lingered any time we ever tried to venture into it. We even sacrificed a pair of unwanted flip-flops that we'd use like a hazmat suit when we'd walk into the poop zone.

Fortunately to our rescue came our landlord. She ventured into the bathroom and gave the toilet a few flushes to see what the problem was (because fecal matter strewn across the floor wasn't enough). Lacking the ability to properly communicate with her, I can only assume she said, "The plumber will be here soon." That or, "You're on your own, bud."

Fortunately, it was the former. I went to work and came back to find a spotless bathroom accompanied by our toilet standing alone. I doused the bathroom floor in bleach just to make sure things were...sanitized. The cement that had been holding it back was gone, only leaving behind a faint ring to remind us it had actually been there. I walked tentatively into the room, staring at the toilet expecting there to be still be some recoil from our battles, but he didn't make a move. In fact, he seemed slightly askew from his previous position. He was stuck to the floor with actual sealant that was going to forever hold him in this new angle to remind us of his past misdoings.

Could this really be true? I texted my roommate the joyous news.

 "The cement around our toilet is gone."

He responded in kind.

"The toilet gods have blessed us!"

It actually felt like that, like some porcelain deity had intervened to let us release our bowels peacefully. That, or a plumber.

I gave it a flush. Only the sweet sound of trickling water going down a drain was heard. No backing up, no gurgling, no more rebellion; we had won. Every time I flushed, there's still that slight feeling of fear that our own sewage is going to come breaching the borders of the sink, but nothing has happened yet.

He sits in the bathroom quietly now. I wonder if he's resigned his plans to take over the apartment or he's simply biding his time for when we get too comfortable. Strangely, I got used to being on my toes all the time.

 Looking at him without the cement made him seem kind of naked. Now, he was just a toilet that sat slightly askew instead of toilet that seemingly sprang from the ground bursting forth from the cement that housed him.