I got to finally try Pancheros today. It was like Chipotle, but shitty. It seems it gave me a mild case of food poisoning. I spent all night throwing up and feeling miserable, so I wrote a story in between trips to the bathroom to vomit.

Man Vs. Toilet

The toilet and I stared at each other woefully. We had a lot in common, this toilet and me. We both shared the former contents of my stomach. It all happened so fast. I was walking to my bedroom and the next thing I know my mouth is full of vomit. I ran to the bathroom, my arms flailing like tree branches in a hurricane. Puke had begun to spray out of my mouth and I tried to cover it as best I could with my hands. It happened in milliseconds, Between ticks of the clock and the better half the hallway was coated with stomach acid, spit, chunks of black beans and corn. I hung my face over the toilet and bared my soul to it. My soul at this point in time consisted of the burrito I ate for dinner.
“Food poisoning” I said between retches. Life was painful, I concluded.
The toilet didn’t say anything back.

A string of spit ran from my bottom lip and pooled onto the porcelain like a zip line. There are worse things than throwing up, but god damn it doesn’t seem like the world could get much worse when you are staring at that big black hole in your john. My stomach felt like a hand was wrapped around it squeezing and squeezing. The pain was unbearable. Life was painful, I concluded.
I wiped my face with some toilet paper. I closed my eyes. The toilet belched and gurgled, trying to swallow what I had regurgitated. It clearly didn’t want it either. The gurgling stopped. I opened my eyes and took inventory of what I had for dinner. Cheap sticky tortilla had already digested partly and turned into a thick white paste. The bowl was stained red with either Chollula pepper sauce or blood. It was hard to tell. It all coagulated and slipped down in the water until gravity couldn’t move it any further. Toilet paper had semi dissolved and swirled in the toilet like the white specks in a snow globe. Life was gross, I concluded.

My hand clumsily tugged the lever. The toilet made no attempt to flush. This toilet was my friend and we were in this together until the end. We would both suffer the consequences of undercooked steak. It sat there indignantly and let me empty myself into it. I changed my mind. This toilet would never be my friend. Why would you want to befriend someone who routinely pees, craps and farts all over you? Life was cruel, I concluded.

Of course this toilet was my enemy and it would take any chance it could to fuck with me. The toilet ceased to make any noise aside from the strained grunt of the plunger pulling back, letting whatever water had collected inside the tank to spill inside the pipeworks. Water trickled down the sides and just added to the volume of mess inside. My stomach burned like a boiler. I imagined that through all the spasms it had condensed itself to something to size of a tennis ball.

I thought back to earlier that day. I was at one of those McBurrito joints. I got a steak burrito and only ate about ¾ of it. It wasn’t very good. It was all very soggy and had very familiar flavors. Familiar, like that tired smokiness of cumin and the irritating tang of cilantro. Indigestible matter cellulose chewy tendon grizzle sour cream hurtling out of my mouth at 90 miles an hour. None of it was appetizing nor healthy. My body seemed to hate this amalgamation of pseudo Hispanic culinary disaster more than my tongue.
I didn’t think much of it. The warning signs hung in the air like the sulfur stink of a match. Its easy to ignore them. Everyone gets these feelings when they are nervous or excited. I went to a bar. Three thick brown dopplebocks joined the chaos. Everything was coated and glazed in alcoholic ignorance. I remember the Bears beating the Saints. The hdtv was suspended by thin black chains. Pixels danced across the screen to the soundtrack of a hundred drunk men and women. I remembered the night club we went to. Bottles of liquor lined up on the back illuminated with ambient red light. Each bottle glistened with a streak of pure white light on the curve from neck to belly. I stuck to water. The club wasn’t fun. Throngs of hip losers undulated to obscenely loud remixes upstairs. I felt like a spectator. An outsider. Smoke lights body heat pooled around the dance floor. The mass of humanity pulsed inside to every low frequency thump thump thump. I couldn’t see the appeal of this anymore. Nausea. I went downstairs and sat on a worn green love seat. It looked like a damaged relic left over from a Hapsburg mansion. Chewed on some ice. The DJ bobbed his head and wore giant aluminum headphones that made him look like an air traffic controller from the year 2019. Two girls walked by and smiled at me. I smiled back and sunk into the soft velvet material. They could’ve been anyone really. It was all a cheap dance choreographed by the old white men who owned the liquor companies. They owned the burrito that poisoned me. They owned the dance club. They owned the places we work they own the government they own the toilet manufacturing company. They own the wal- mart where I bought the plunger. My one weapon against this vile fountain of bodily waste was a black piece of rubber attached to a thick wooden stick.

I didn’t want this. I wanted to sleep and make the sick clenching pain on my stomach go away. I wanted the bitter coffee taste of bile out of my mouth. Most of all I wanted a refund. I couldn’t believe I spent 8 dollars on that piece of shit. The pain didn’t go away and neither did the sick that I had unwillingly sprayed all over the bathroom. Bits of multicolored viscous liquid clung to walls and seemed to glow like Christmas lights. The air in the bathroom was oppressively hot and thick, so thick I could separate it with a pathetically weak swipe of my hand. I spent the next half hour whispering secrets into the toilet. I told it things I usually never tell anyone. I told it “HUAARRHGHGAUGLGRG” and “BLARHGAROGBLARRARLA”. I washed my face. The cool water splashed on my face and instantly the temperature of my skin dropped 5 degrees.

I was back at the night club. The bathroom was dingy and covered in grime, floors slick with urine and walls adorned lovingly with epithets. My reflection was pallid. I needed water. The tiny cup of water cost a dollar. My stomach knotted as the single exchanged hands. I was back at the bar now. An acoustic guitar jangled across the bar. The german beer had a thick malt flavor with notes of caramel. It was made by monks to hold them over through lent. I drank three of them. It was a fine beer that coated your mouth like a high quality burgundy. It smelled like roasted malt and brown sugar. Alcohol perfumed the aroma and diffused it around my nose. Every sip squeezed my tonsils and made me gag. Half digested food was being peeled off of my stomach lining and it raged inside, tumbling around in expensive beer and gastric fluids. I attributed the queasiness to the really bad cover of Wonderwall.

My face was suspended over the ceramic throne. This jail of china had no bars, only a moat. At the bottom of that moat was a soulless black hole that sucked up the dregs of my life. No amount of jiggling could force the toilet to make all of this go away. It wouldn’t flush. God damn it why wouldn’t it flush. I puked again. Instead of the bitter battery acid taste, a thick syrup that tasted like iron filled my mouth. God damn it Why doesn’t this thing flush. I spat blood in the sink. When the plunger hit the water, the loud splash echoed through my head. A frenzied glug , the sound of a thousand bubbles popping the click click of that useless fucking toilet handle bouncing helplessly. My stomach was seized in horrible twisting, this burrito ripped my insides apart.
“If I survive this, I swear to god I will go vegan!” I said to the toilet.
The toilet said nothing.

Esophagus muscles flexed and tightened as more blood came up. Blood and spit ran down my jaw. Droplets evaporated as they hit the water and slowly turned the whole thing red. Pain rode down my intestines and I felt the hot rush of diarrhea surge through my body, racing towards its destiny regardless if I was ready for it to come. I threw the lid off the tank and tugged and pushed anything in there I could. Nothing was working. I puked blood into the water of the tank. Guts were being ripped apart by some unimaginable burrito demon. His weapon was a blade forged from hot molten Salmonella. He rode a battle horse named Clostridium perfringens and they tore through my body like the spear of Longinus. Red eyes beamed like forest fires. Hooves thundered kick drum thuds. The rider took off his helmet. His skin looked like chewed steak, his teeth a dull corn yellow.

I collapsed to the ground in a heap of organ failure. I felt warmth ooze down my asscheek. I shit my pants. It was hard to decide which was worse: losing bowel control, or not being able to do anything about it. The stench of feces filled the air. More heaving and more blood came out of my mouth. I was back at the burrito place. I picked out pieces of pink steak from the mess of food and popped them into my mouth. At least the meat wasn’t overcooked, I thought. Needs salt though. I lay on the floor. The world grew a thick black fog which started at its edges but slowly moved inward. Souless black seeped from peripheral vision and soon there was nothing. The toilet finally flushed. Life was undignified, I concluded.