The Shag Green Rug

The door to the bathroom shifted out of focus as I rushed blindingly towards it, threw it open, and leaped inside.  What followed, relief... That single epiphany defying moment where everything flowed out and into the porcelain bowl of the toilette, never to be seen or heard from again.  I grew limp, my head lolled forward on my shoulders, and my eyes trained on the one thing directly before them: the green shag bathroom rug directly beneath my feet.

The trails and strands of thick lime green material came into focus in the dim light of my comfort zone and now had my full attention.  All else in life had little meaning next to this moment, time shifted out of importance, anxiety inducing family matters where obliterated in the haze of voiding my bowels, and all that remained was this green mat.

Many have spoken of the transcendent nature of the bathroom, how it can bring a mans problems closure and whiten your teeth at the same time, but none of that came to mind now.  The mat was all I thought of, the mat was all that mattered.  My eyes locked on it so hard they strained and in that near painful intense look the chaos of quarter inch thick threads began to shift almost as if they were alive.  Sea anemone, I thought, its JUST like a sea anemone.

Without me taking notice the already time bathroom light grew darker still and in the center of the shag rug pattern a hole began to open.  From it poured the intense smell of limes and darkness crept from in in creeping tendrils of shadow that defied reason.  I still couldn't look away, I still was in the perfect moment of ease. The rug had expanded outward and now the entire floor was alive with movement with darkness creeping over it like mist and the hole now big enough that I could see through it to the other side, and in seeing madness grasped hold of me.  I wrenched myself from the toilette seat and bolted to the door, but the tentacle strands of lime green shag grasped hold me legs and pulled me to the ground.

GOD I hated that rug. As I fell I caught a glimpses of myself in the mirror and saw that my hair, once salt and pepper black, was now thickly streaked with white.  Nothing to do now, no longer at ease, no longer sane, I went limp on the floor, and as I was pulled forward towards that green maw of sanity shattering green I began to hear laughter.

"Who the FUCK would find this funny?"  I asked myself aloud, and on the heals of that realized that the laughter was coming from me...

My feet dissapeared into the hole, and I felt a chill like icewater creeping up my legs, and a poem from my youth came to mind.

I'm being eaten by a boa constrictor, and I don't like it one bit...  Thank you, Shell Silverstien, for putting this moment in perspective.  The lips of the hole expanded outward and drew me in inch by inch, but there was no pain, only the certainty that I was about to die, and if not die, never ever ever feel comfortable in a bathroom again.

Oh heck, its up to my neck...

Bathroom cleaner...

DEATH smells like...

Bathroom cleaner...