********

 

 

 

Receive, retain, release. Works on several levels. We receive ideas. We retain them while we mull them over. Then we release them, somewhat revised, to be shared with others. Eating is another one, if not as elegant – I receive food (eat), retain it (digest), and release…right.

That’s what I was doing when I noticed the message. Sitting on the “throne” can be boring, especially when one needs to be there a while. So I read the messages on the stall door and walls. Nothing spectacular, some with phone numbers, most suggestive, a few peppered with profanities and insults. But the one directly over the toilet paper dispenser. Different.

“Here I am again. Don’t need to go, just wanna get away. Anyone else do this?”

I thought about it, and finally admitted that once in a while – maybe – I did. Like when I had to do something at work that was off-the-charts tedious. Procrastination needed to become an art form at such times, and while I’d perfected several of its ploys (the fake phone call, the lost file folder, the accidental deletion), I did use the gotta-pee-like-crazy dodge from time to time.

The writer of the message had beautiful printing and had used a red marker. Probably a Sharpie since it had survived whatever cleaning this stall got every night. It didn’t look fresh. I took out my arsenal of writing implements that could have been as effective as Sylvia Plath’s pockets full of rocks had I fallen into a river with my purse strapped across my body. Amazing how heavy seven or eight pens can be. Okay, maybe ten or twelve. I love pens.

“I do, but not often,” I wrote. Don’t ask me why. It occurred to me that the writer of the question might not even return to this particular bathroom, this particular stall. But she might. Maybe. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be back, either.

That was that, I thought, wiping, flushing, dressing. The door had a horrid squeak. I think there’s a law that every public restroom has to have at least one of these. Don’t know. Oh, and smeared mirrors. I didn’t like this restroom, had never used it before because the store in which it was built wasn’t a store I normally shopped in.

A week later, I returned because the pants I’d bought had fallen apart after one washing. Ya get what ya pay for. Great. The clerk didn’t argue, which made me think their clothes fell apart all the time and they were used to having them returned. I wasn’t mean about it, though. After all, unless this was a freaky unusual store, the clerks weren’t the ones making the inventory.

When I started to leave, I remembered the message and asked if I could use the bathroom. I got a shrug with no eye contact, so I went to the back of the shop and entered the room of gloom (that’s what I call depressing public bathrooms).

The first stall I opened was either the wrong one or the message had finally been obliterated by some mega-chemical. To be sure, I checked the one beside it.

Ah. Door Number Two – how appropriate. Under my reply were the words, “Thanks for your honesty. Why are you there”?

Huh. “Had constipation.” I added a smiley face, flushed the toilet for effect, and left. No idea why – I doubt the clerk was out there listening to make sure I was really using the bathroom. Still.

I didn’t go back to the store again – why would I? Their clothing was garbage. But about a month later I did use a public restroom in the mall.

“Where did you go? Are you still constipated?” Same red Sharpie, same neat printing.

Holy…no, I won’t say it. But damn. How many bathroom stalls had this chick written on trying to get another response from me? I touched the ink and was shocked to see some of it transfer to my finger. Recent. Within-seconds recent. I sat down and wrote, “Didn’t like that store. Bad quality stuff.”

When I stood, the toilet flushed automatically. Of course. This was the mall, not some hole-in-the-wall shop that couldn’t afford goods even as well made as the proverbial Blue Light Specials at everyone’s favorite Mart.

I went out and washed my hands, again for effect, mainly because several other women were at the sinks. I had to wonder if one of them owned a red Sharpie, but avoided looking directly at any of them. This was a shade too creepy, so if one of the hand-washers was my Bathroom Pen Pal, I didn’t want to know.

Two days later in the supermarket, I decided that peeing in the aisle wouldn’t go over well with anyone, so rushed into the ladies’ room.

“You’re so hard to keep track of! Wish we could have adjoining stalls.” No smiley face. Hell.

So what now? I wondered. If I replied, this stall-stalking nonsense would escalate. If I didn’t, the girl...woman…whatever might give up, but somehow I doubted that. I had the terrifying feeling that whoever she was, she’d want to meet me, and that the outcome wouldn’t be good.

I went home, where I spent a good portion of the evening pacing. What were my options? I mean, all I’d been trying to do was be friendly. But for some, that’s all it takes. Which was a brilliant conclusion, but what to do about it? Call the police? Yeah. I could hear the conversation:

“Hi. This isn’t an emergency yet, but it could become one. I was pooping in a public bathroom a few weeks ago and saw a message on the wall. I answered it, not imagining the person would be back and continue the conversation, but all of a sudden, everywhere I go to relieve myself that isn’t home, I find this person has written back and is now sounding annoyed that I didn’t reply right away.”

Uh-huh. After the police operator stopped laughing, she’d probably hang up, and announce that she’d been treated to the nuttiest call ever.

I could tell friends. That way, if they all knew what was happening, and this stalker did something awful to me, they could report the story and the cops could stake out the bathrooms, or do handwriting analysis, or…no.

I flopped onto the sofa and buried my face in my hands. Great. The Red Sharpie Killer Strikes Again – Details on Channel WTF. Assuming this had happened before, of course.

When my cell phone went off in my pocket, I nearly had a stroke. “What?” I yelled into it, after jabbing the thing with a shaking finger.

“Hey, chill, sweetheart! It’s me.” My boyfriend, or the guy I was calling that until he did something epic in the Stupid category.

“Oh. Sorry. My nerves are a bit ragged right now.”

“Why? Did I do something wrong?”

“No. If you had, I wouldn’t have answered the phone.”

Silence.

“So what’s up?”

“Just calling to see if you’d like to take in a movie.”

A movie. Hmm. “That might be exactly what I need. If you’re awesome and buy me a large popcorn, too, I’ll consider telling you what’s been going on.”

“What – you wouldn’t tell me otherwise?”

“Nope. It’s too weird.”

“Oh.”

I had no intention of telling him, popcorn or not. How could I possibly explain something like this without sounding like a candidate for the padded room special (straight-jacket thrown in for free)? But the movie was about some tiresome couple who did nothing but argue using the most amazing profanities almost from the moment the flick started. Yawn. Bleh.

When the thing was about an hour in, I stood.

“You okay, hon?”

I smiled down at him. “Fine, thanks. Just have to go to the bathroom. Be right back.”

For some reason, it didn’t occur to me that using the theater restroom would pose any danger.

“You’re avoiding me. I can’t imagine why. I thought we had lots in common.”

It was a good thing I was sitting on the toilet because had I seen those words sooner, I would have wet my pants. “What the hell?!” I whispered. My purse was on my seat next to my boyfriend. My purse with my pens and my cell phone.

I finished to the combined sound of my – and another – toilet flushing accompanied by the rumbling and booming of movie sounds in the theater next to the restroom.

Screw the sink. My hands would have to forego being washed – I’d just try not to lick my fingers. Ew. I zoomed toward the door, only to find it blocked by an angry-looking redhead.

“I bet you didn’t even answer,” she said, eyes narrowed.

“Wait – uh, you’re the one leaving those messages in red ink?”

“Of course. Do you hate me or something?”

“Hate…I don’t even know you! Look, this – ”

“Don’t tell me this is ridiculous! Everyone says stuff like that, and it makes me crazy! All I wanted was someone to talk to! Why couldn’t you keep talking to me? Why?”

I gulped and took a step back.

She stepped with me.

“What do you want?”

“I want to know why you keep ignoring me.”

“I don’t live in public bathrooms, that’s why!” What else could I say? “I’m not ignoring you – I didn’t know who you were until now, or what you look like, or where you live, or – or anything about you except that you liked to hang out in bathroom stalls when you needed to get away, okay?” I was shouting. Fear sucks.

“Don’t you yell at me!”

“Then stop stalking me and accusing me of doing something to you I’m not!”

“What?”

I closed my eyes. The end would have to come soon. When I looked again, she was doing the last thing I was expecting. Her face had gone bright pink, her features scrunching up, and she began to cry. Shaking my head, I went down on one knee and took her by the shoulders. “Hey. Don’t do that – who are you?”

She sniffled and gulped a few times before answering. “M-Mika. I don’t have a place to live, bu-but some nice lady gave me a bunch of red markers.” She stopped to wipe her nose with the palm of her hand. “I’ve been hiding from the foster-home people, and sometimes I go into a bathroom to get away from them or the police.”

Wow. Her words had been literal. “What happened to your parents – and how old are you?”

“I think they died. They went out one night with other people and never came back. I was nine when that happened. It was last year. I’m ten and a half now.” She started to hiccup.

“Oh, Mika, I’m so sorry.” I pulled her closer and gave her a hug.

Her arms went around me and she squeezed me, burying her face in my shoulder. “Are you going to report me?” Her voice was muffled, but I made out the words.

“Good question. I hate to think of you being out on the streets by yourself. There are so many people out there who wouldn’t think twice about hurting you.”

“I know. Where is your purse?”

My purse? What? “Why? Do you need some money or something?”

“No. Where is it?”

“On my seat. My boyfriend is watching it for me.” I pulled back, holding her at arms’ length. Searched her eyes, her face. Something wasn’t right.

“He’s cute.”

I went cold. “How do you know what he looks like, Mika?”

She giggled. “You never figured it out, did you!” Giggle.

I stood. “Okay, you’re freaking me out here. What’s going on?”

Reaching into her pocket, she got up on her tiptoes. “This is what I wrote with.” She showed the red marker she’d taken out – yep. A Sharpie. “It’s special – all I needed was someone to answer what I wrote.”

“Okay, call me dumb, but I don’t get what you’re saying.”

“Your handwriting. See, this end is a marker, but this end is a camera.” She turned the Sharpie over and removed the cap, then pointed to something near its top. “See?”

And like an idiot, I lowered my face to look more closely. That was the last time I saw anything out of my left eye. At the time, I wondered in passing – as I began to pass out – how a ten-year-old could have the strength to stab a person through the eye.

Later, I learned that poor little Mika wasn’t a child at all, but a full-grown adult known in current parlance as a normal dwarf – someone with dwarfism but perfect proportions. The police later concluded that she was into identity theft, and used her bathroom messages to attract victims.

As I was lying on the bathroom floor in the theater, she went to my boyfriend, told him I needed my purse, and he gave it to her.

When I didn’t return, he had one of the employees check the bathroom, and I was found with – he told me – a theatrical scream by the maintenance worker. Seems I had a lovely pool of blood soaking the floor and my hair by that time.

Mika, meanwhile, was long gone, and before anyone could report my credit cards missing, she had wiped out all my accounts. I’m still waiting for a refund from the IRS because someone else with my name and Social Security Number had already filed.

I wear a patch over my eye, a false eye taking its place when I go out to dinner or attend a formal event. My boyfriend proved himself worthy of the title and we eventually got married.

And, no, I’ve never gone into a public restroom since that day, nor will I, and none of my pens is a red Sharpie.

In fact, nothing I own is red. Well, except the handle of the letter opener I keep in my purse in case I run into Mika.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 12.05.2015

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