Presenting the winner of F Newsmagazine’s Flash Fiction Literary Contest of short narrative on the theme of “transitional movement.” Entries were carefully considered by Toronto-based artist, curator and collector Micah Lexier, F Newsmagazine Managing Editor Alyssa Moxley and Web Editor Jessica Barrett Sattell.
Illustration by Meghan Ryan Morris
INT. BEDROOM – NIGHT
Before I could comprehend what was happening, I was pissing the bed. I was pissing myself. One moment I was in my head, enjoying a sensational necking session with a girl who was not yet my girlfriend but who I wanted to make my girlfriend when my dream self felt the need to — well, piss. I ditched the bird-who-wasn’t-my-bird-but-who-I-wanted-to-be-mine and magically teleported to my toilet.
Jump cut, wham bam.
There I was, sans bird, but enjoying the feeling of being in my own proper bog nonetheless.
Well, it wasn’t the toilet in my flat, but I knew that it was mine.
Whatever, it was a dream. You know the feeling in dreams where something isn’t yours in real life, but in the dream life you know —
(I am confident that you are smart enough to catch my drift. And my drift is this: I was in my own fucking toilet.)
Jump cut once more.
To a new location, to a new time.
It was an unacceptable amount of time for me to realise
I was not releasing myself into the once controversial white Marcel Duchamp readymade, but under my covers, on my sheets. Against my legs.
Holy fuck, I am a twenty-three-year-old man pissing his own goddamn bed.
And because I am a twenty-three-year-old man who is secure enough in his gender, sexuality, and everything else belonging to what makes me-me, I am not afraid to tell you that for a moment — a moment that by all polite society would agree upon overstayed its welcome — it felt nice.
Comfortable, safe, welcome, even as the warm liquid waste was being drained through my urinary tract and as it spread itself against my thighs and my grey sheets. I would have gladly continued to piss myself and mattress until I woke myself up enough to realise that I was actually fucking pissing myself.
Upward and onward.
Downstairs to my toilet (my actual, real-life toilet, not the dreamt up version).
And to utter amazement, there wasn’t much left to squeeze out. And by that time, in my misguided, unwanted night-time adventure, the stench of urine produced from consuming too many late night diuretics in the form of coffee was disturbing. I’d forgotten how badly piss could smell and how quickly it could fill up your nostrils. The extreme cold of air hitting my not-yet-soaking-but-more-than-just-damp sleeping pants and bare legs prompted me to pull up my soiled trousers as soon as I was sure I had nothing else to add to the light amber offerings in my porcelain collection plate.
And would you like to know the most disgusting bit?
— If everything else hasn’t completely turned you off yet? —
I didn’t even change out of my wet trousers.
Why would I? It was dark, and the darkened world that I could see was marred from the absence of my prescribed lenses over my eyes. I didn’t even have enough decency to grab a towel and try to clean myself. I pulled my trousers back to my waist, possibly pressed down the flusher, and climbed back to my bed. I spread out an old towel that only happened to be lying on the floor next to the cot because I had been too lazy to clean anything for the past fortnight.
And after spreading this dirty green towel down in a spot that was the spot I had been lying in only minutes ago, I took off my trousers on account of my legs, thighs, knees, and toes, knees and toes beginning to fucking freeze. I threw the offending trousers somewhere behind me — mind you, I couldn’t see for shit — I laid back down on my stomach, only moving to cover my bare arse with my dry sheets. I pressed my nose into my pillow, trying to remember the exact image of the bird I was feeling up, but trying to remember her exact features only made the vision of her vanish even more quickly from my mind.
Eyes closed, I wondered if she crossed the dream/reality spectrum and thus knew about me pissing my own self and bed.
(Not that I have any personal experiences, but I know that the occupants of the fair sex wouldn’t want to lay a lad who pissed his sheets.)
Bare, alone, lying on a towel that I had forgotten about, blocking the smell of my own liquid waste by stuffing my nose in a pillow, I thought to myself of how this was the first ever occasion that I preferred dreaming of feeling up a bird instead of actually feeling up a lass in real life.
(Not that I had any personal experiences, but I sort of figured a girl in real life wouldn’t have wanted to have been woken up by the feeling of another’s warm piss creeping over her legs.)
But then again, who am I to judge?
