Twisted Tales for Toilet Time: Volume II, Part VII

Four PM

Once Upon a Hour of Time…

Pain seared through my hand. It burned so bad, it felt as hot as the sun at 4pm at the height of summer. While it wasn’t summer, it was 4pm. I had started cooking dinner, possibly too late. After chopping all the vegetables for the ‘Trinity’. That is, onion, celery, bell peppers, and garlic for the Pope. I attempted the slow process of making the dark roux required for gumbo, carefully following the instructions of the online video.

Just as it was turning the shade of milk chocolate, a small amount of the intensely hot mixture, made of equal parts flour and oil. Spat out of the pan and struck my hand, on the thumb and across my index finger …

I have never given birth, but I have felt great and lasting pain in my life.

This … this was a new level of torment.

In a feat that may be impressive if not for its coarseness. I spoke a string of words. Well, more yelled or screamed the words. Not quite a sentence in technical terms, however for a solid thirty seconds or more, time had seemed to slow like it does in a car collision. I expelled nothing but the ‘F-bomb’ or variants of said word.

‘-ing,’ ‘-‘en,’ ‘-er,’ ‘-it’ … and so on …

It was likely this, as much as anything else. Combined with a lingering glare at the clock on top of the fridge. That made me accept fate, that gumbo would not be the nightly repast. At least not tonight.

Where’s the pizza menu?

Five PM

Once Upon a Hour of Time…

The last seconds ticked away to bring the clock to five PM. As soon as it did, he was picking up his bag, turning off his computer, and began to head out the door.

‘Did you finish that report?’ asked Nigel, the manager.

Wilson kept walking, placing his headphones over his ears and quickening his pace. It was quittin’ time, and he had no intention of staying late on a Friday to finish reports that could wait till Monday.

As he hurried across the street near his office, he heard muffled screams nearby. Only when he took off his headphones did he fully realise.

They were in fact, Wilson’s own screams of pain and one supposes, surprise. He laid on the road, looking towards the driver that hit him in shock. A few moments passed as his vision un-blurred enough to see the driver more clearly …

‘Nigel?’

Six PM

Once Upon a Hour of Time…

DING... one

DING... two

DING... three

DING... four

DING... five

DING... six

Six chimes …

Six chimes rang out across the small town.

The locals knew what this meant and what they must do. They froze in place, whatever they had been doing previously, when those six terrible chimes rang out. They froze.

Hoping, waiting … Silently begging to whatever higher power that believed in, that they would survive another day …

Another chiming …

Tourists were rare here, usually only guests of the locals, and therefore warned of the chiming. This day however, one lone tourist found themselves staring at the town clock as the sixth chime faded. Looking all around the town square, they saw the locals staring back at them. Wide-eyed, sweat and fear covering their faces, panic in their dilated pupils.

‘What’s going -’

A terrible roar …

A horrible scream …

Five more screams echoed out from other areas of the town …

Silence.

Everyone who survived could unfreeze now, continue about their day and tasks. Free from worry and fear, for at least one more day.

At least till tomorrow, when those six bells of doom came once again …

Until the next chiming.

Seven PM

Once Upon a Hour of Time…

Reginald had looked on hopelessly as the multiple hourglasses before him slowly emptied their contents. The seventh hourglass he watched drain, now this seventh vessel dropped its last few grainy particles.

‘Time’s up,’ said Stan “Cheesy” Pattison.

Reginald looked long and deep into his captors empty white eyes. Breathed slowly, accepting his fate.

‘Just do it Cheesy … Get it over with.’

Stan pushed down on the button before him. The system of hoists and ropes holding Reginald above the large orange vat began to lower.

This is how it ends, he thought.

Cooked to death in a vat of boiling cheese. Worse still, American cheese.

After all, that is how Stan got his moniker, just as all death monks earned their titles when they perfect a new method of disposal.

As Reginald’s feet entered into the bubbling vat of milk product. He was at least grateful he got assigned Stan, and not Ralph “Cat Shagger” Edison.