"What are you looking at me for? I don’t exactly know what to do next either, it’s been thirty years this year since I’ve been shrunk, October 14th, 1993. I’ll never forget that day” Tony says, I see Dave trying to ring the toilet water plus any excess stomach acid or the like out of his shirt a little, wringing it out a little at the bottom of the shirt.
“Damn, that’s almost a month before I was born, I was born November 15th that year” Dave say, really starting to put lot of elbow grease into wringing out the bottom of his short, a decent amount of liquid seemingly comes out, landing onto the toilet seat, some of it flowing out into the toilet, landing not making much of a sound though, since it’s landing on the side of the bowl and not directly into the water.
“Please, please don’t make me feel old. It’s already bad enough that it isn’t ten years ago anymore that I was shrunk and that I’m in my fifties now” Tony says, chuckling a little, running his hands through his hair a little, getting the liquid out of it, toilet water seemingly knocking a little bit of it out.
I’m about to say something but we hear footsteps and we all collectively go quiet and abruptly quit doing whatever we were doing before, this woman’s shoes sound pretty clacky and echoey against the tile floor as she takes her steps, hoping she doesn’t come into our stall. Not really knowing where to hide if she does, and jumping into the toilet to get pissed/and or shitted on if she doesn't notice us first and then flushed away to some place God knows where I’m sure is something all of us don’t wanna go through with. I hear her walk a little bit more and go right into the stall next to us, opening the door with a creaky sounding swing, and then walking right in and closing the stall door with a loud bolt lock. I hear the noises of this lady’s belongings being placed on the ground, and I can see the bottom of her purse on the ground, seemingly black and leather. I get the thought to maybe peek in more out of curiosity than anything else, but I quickly dismiss it with the fact that I have a wife and I’ve been married nearly ten years now and it would still be wrong.
I hear the noise of her letting her pants and everything down, it all landing on the floor, and she goes to sit. I hear a few small and airy farts and the sound of a steady stream of piss splashes pretty loudly into the toilet. I hear this chick sigh a little bit loudly, seemingly out of relief and a mix of just seemingly breathing. The stream of piss goes on for a little while I notice, she must have had a lot to drink beforehand or something like that if the stream’s that strong and it’s still going on. It eventually ends, and she farts again, although a little bit louder. I notice she reaches down from the toilet and into her purse, knocking it over, her phone and Coach brand wallet landing on this side under the stall. I see that the time is 6:13, I know Nicole is probably called me a million times and is wondering where I’m at, I get that sinking feeling thinking about the fallout of me being gone for as long as I’ve been gone, and I’m sure that Dave and Tony have thought about it as well too about their loved ones and how they’ve probably called them on their phones and the like as well too. I notice that this woman’s home screen is her and her husband, seemingly near the Grand Canyon, the chick is blonde and tanned and blue eyed dressed in some sorta gym wear, in this pic she seems like she might be in her mid to late 30s. Her husband looks like more on the Gymrat side, he being more muscular and he’s wearing a loose fitting black T-shirt, he’s got a full bushy beard but he’s seemingly bald. He reminds me a little bit of Bane from Batman. I see a few notifications, one for some Instagram live for some Hairstyling account, and another for her Gmail, her email handle being “Hot4Teacher”, I’m assuming this is her personal account and not something that she uses for work or ever, one of the email notifications that I can see is seemingly something about a Taylor Swift concert, the email notification being sent by Stubhub.
I see her wallet wide open, showing off her driver’s license in a plastic pocket, seemingly from California. Her name’s Ashley Jennings, she’s 5 '6, born on 09/23/1982, and lives in Chula Vista, California which is in the San Diego area if I remember correctly. She’s seemingly an organ donor as well, judging by the pink dot that says it on her License. She’s a pretty girl, she’s got a pretty nice and warm smile judging by her picture on her license, her nice straight, white picture- perfect teeth and blonde hair. The type of girl I would, I guess the kids these days say, “simp” for back when I was in High School, and I guess I have a thing for blondes considering Molly was one, although that was more coincidental and just another thing I found attractive about her. A lot of people that I bring this up to if it’s relevant to the conversation we’re having and even my parents find it crazy that I’ve only technically had two girlfriends (if you count my now wife) in all my relationship life. But I was with these girls for a good awhile so these relationships did grow over the years, 8 years I think for Molly until we broke up, and six years for Nicole until we married.
I hear the sound of her leaning down and reaching out her hand, showing off her bright nice diamond wedding ring and her hot red painted nails, she reaches out and grabs the wallet first, and uses it to slide the phone over, making a bit of a scratchy sound on the tile floor as it moves, luckily she has a case on her phone, seemingly a iPhone as well. I hear her lean over to go and pick it up. It’s kinda weird she doesn’t respond to the grossness of touching this stuff that was on the floor especially in this world we live in now with people even more conscious about germs in this somewhat Post-Covid-19 world, but granted what can she do in this situation I guess if you’re just sitting on the toilet and you’re trying to get your stuff back without getting out of your current position. She drops the Wallet in her purse, you can hear the keys and the other objects inside, I see her hesitate a bit and then she tosses her phone in there too, landing with a healthy plunk. She yanks the purse up and back to her side of the stall. I hear her plop it on the floor to get out her phone, and she seemingly has a Facetime conversation with her husband, who’s seemingly out in the car judging by the sound of the hum of it’s engine. She’s seemingly on some girls trip with some friends she went to high school with back in San Diego, seemingly stopping here for the evening, although going a bit out of their way for a friend who was interested in the area. She talks about her kids and how they’re doing since she’s left for the trip a little bit I notice, seemingly elementary school aged and seemingly obsessed with their Nintendo Switches she jokes about.
I can tell she has a bit of that classic SoCal Valley Girl accent, although a little more softened a bit I can tell due to age. She’s on the phone for about 15 minutes if I had to guess, me and the rest of the guys wait for her to get done and out of the stall before we make our next move. She finally does finish her conversation, saying something about getting a text from one of her girlfriends that they’re waiting on her to get out. She quickly grabs her purse and pulls her pants up and opens the stall door and walks out and washes her hands and drying it off with paper towels, the sound of the electric paper towel dispenser really echoing as Ashley waves her hands around to really get that motion dispenser to work, you can hear the drops of water on her hands land on the floor as she waves her hands around. For almost what feels like an eternity, she finally leaves the bathroom. And it’s just us guys again.
“Alright, how much do you wanna bet we don’t get caught trying to make a run for the Exit?” Dave says.
“Ehhh, I don’t know about that man. I guess we could try but someone could see us” I say.
“Just make a run for it, with the way people are glued to their phones these days, plus the fact not everyone’s paying that much attention to the floor unless they're a custodian or whatever. I’ve done this a million times, especially back in the eighties especially when this type of shit was a daily occurrence for me” Tony says.
“Yeah, but we don’t know the layout that well, at least I don’t” I say.
“Can’t be that hard, this place isn’t Costco or Sam’s Club or some huge warehouse store. At least I don’t think it is. We can B-Line it to the door pretty easily that way. We better start making a run for it now before our luck runs out and someone comes into this bathroom again” Tony says, as I notice he starts to shake his left foot a bit, seemingly splashing a little bit of toilet water out of it as does, splashing onto me a bit. I notice he quickly says sorry as it accidentally splashes onto me.
“Alright, I guess since you’ve been in this longer than we have” I say.
Tony makes a bit of a running jump first, landing on the floor with a pretty loud oof. He says he’s alright and he gets up, saying that jump looked pretty far on the way down but when he got down there he didn’t think the fall would be as painful though.
“Fuck it, I’m only technically 29. I’ll be fine, my joints and stuff are still good” Dave says, as he makes his running jump off of the toilet seat and onto the floor, he lands pretty good, despite the far fall that it seems he doesn’t make any noise about pain or anything like that.
“Your turn, Matthew. Make it quick, I don’t want another chick coming in here before we escape” I hear Tony say, a little bit mockingly and jokingly with the “Matthew” part.
“Alright, just give me a sec and let me position myself” I say, starting to get into a stance.
I run off the toilet seat, and do a running jump, not quite putting my all into it but I do enough to really get some air off the toilet seat when I do jump. I land on the tile floor on my side, and I feel a bit of pain in my rib cage but not that much, seemingly being dulled, seemingly that lessened pain effect from being shrunk previously, remember when I jumped off that sink over in Sarah’s apartment back in England all those years ago, a event I vaguely remember now, this individual memory I haven’t thought about in years.
“That looked a little rough” Tony says, as I get up and brush myself off, this sticky and kinda gross bathroom floor all over my acid stained jeans and my discolored black “The 1975” t-shirt. The words all blurred out due to Michelle’s acids.
“Yeah, says you. You landed way rougher than I did” I say.
“Whatever. Let’s stop with the chit chat, let's start getting a move on” Dave says to both of us, and we all start to speedrun to slight jog out of the bathroom, and into the grocery store, it’s weird seeing a bathroom seem so large and huge that was normal sized to me yesterday, I remember feeling a little bit of this reverse shock feeling when I came back home from Europe all those summers ago, when the thought that I had gone through something no human being or any living thing in general has been through (at least until the Jack Cooper stuff a few years later) had really settled in.
We run out of the bathroom and onto the sales floor, we all collectively look around and then quickly run, me taking the lead. We run around shopping carts and mobility scooters, although I notice you don’t see as many people on them as in Atlanta in the stores, since I guess the south is pretty well known for larger people, to say the least. I think we ran through the cereal aisle trying to get to the door. I notice that Tony is keeping up pretty well, compared to the last time I saw him run on the beach when we were trying to get away from those college kids coming towards us. I dodge some guy’s boot walking above us and another shopping cart wheel. I can hear the song “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley playing as we’re running over the speaker above us as well too. We almost make it to the door and then a big gust of wind from a custodian sweeping right near us knock all three of us pretty high into the air, getting us as high as almost the cart handles, if I had to make a reference, I’m pretty freaked out because at our height this is like being as high as a building. The janitor moves out to a different direction and we land on the tight fitting blue collared shirt of a chubby latina woman in her late 20s or early thirties if I had to guess that was seemingly right behind him. We land around her upper stomach area. I notice we land with a bit of cushion, right on her shirt, not too far from her breasts. I notice she's a bit on the portly side, not exactly fat but a bit bigger than average I can tell, seemingly the static cling from all the movement once again seemingly making us stick to her.
She walks, and I can hear her stomach a little bit as well too as she walks, she seemingly had a big meal judging by all the gurgles and churns and the like behind us.
“Todavía no puedo creer que dejé mi cepillo de dientes en casa (I still can’t believe I left my toothbrush back at home)” I hear her say under her breath, although I don’t understand what she’s saying, but I can make out the word home out of Casa. My wife actually knows Spanish better than I did, she took it up in high school and retained most of the information years later surprisingly, something that she sometimes jokes about, saying that it’s one of the few things from high school that she remembers, saying those years were such a blur to her.
I internally think jokingly about asking the other two guys if anyone knows any Spanish, but I don’t wanna get caught.
She walks to the dental section of the store, and grabs a box of Colgate toothpaste and a toothbrush, the toothpaste reminding me of all the “Supreme” stuff the kids have been wearing these last few years, although I’m sure the toothpaste is where the brand got their logo from, or at least the inspiration. She walks toward the checkout and gets checked out by some seemingly unenthusiastic emo-looking 20 year old chick with a septum piercing and with her eyeliner on a little too heavy around the eyes. It seems like Vons has gotten rid of self-checkout seemingly since the last time I was in on, or at least this location does. I noticed that she and the cashier don’t exchange too many words, she pays for her stuff with her U.S. Bank Debit Card. I noticed her name is Martina from what I could see on the card when she handed it to the cashier. She grabs her stuff and her bag with the toothpaste in it, giving the cashier a heavy accented “Thank you” as she walks towards the door.
As she walks towards the door and out into the parking lot, seeing that it’s getting closer to sunset with the way the sun is out, seemingly sunset is on it’s away, it reminding me again that it’s been hours since I’ve seen my wife, and I know she’s probably scared and wondering why I’m not answering. As she walks out the door I can feel more commotion going on inside her stomach with all the growling and bubbling going on in there seemingly digestion if I had to get due to how content is seems, I feel some bubbling in her stomach again, seemingly a burp bubble, and she burps about 30 seconds later, and pretty loud too, it echoes in the shopping center’s parking lot. It’s pretty loud and bassy and had a lot of gas in it for sure. I can somewhat smell it too, it smelling like a mix of pepperoni and chocolate. She walks a bit more towards a newer looking Chevy Equinox in the parking lot, 2018 or 2019 if I had to guess the year and I see her take her keys out of her pocket, and unlocking the door with a button. She gets into her car and takes a seat and closes the door with a slight slam, it smells heavily of Pizza and new car smell, she’s got about five of those Little Trees of the new car scent around her rear view mirror. Her stomach makes a really loud groan and a squelchy churn and then a loud chain reaction of gurgles and I can feel it all happening a little bit below us were I wanna say right above her navel would be if I had to guess, and she puts her left hand on her chubby tummy, seemingly feeling a another burp coming on and she does burp, pretty loudly again, the pepperoni smell really intensified in this closed windowed car. And after she burps her stomach gurgles pretty loudly again, loud enough that she could definitely hear it. The pizza she ate, I’m assuming, isn’t having a funtime in her stomach for sure I can tell. Her stomach is really battling it there.
“Too Much Dominos…” Martina says in English, her accent is pretty heavy, and she hiccups.
She notices us as she shifts her eyes towards us, I think when she looks down at her tummy, her face looking ginormous to us, her hazel eyes and her caramel coffee brown skin and her jet black hair, I notice she looks a little bit more skinny in the face compared to her tummy. She moves her hand and brushes us off, and we land in the open Arrowhead water bottle in her cup holder, landing in a slight splashing, not enough that I think she would notice.
“It’s the same ol’ same ol’ Situation, Same Ol’ Ball and Chain” Tony says, referencing a old Hair metal song in light of the situation we’re in, seemingly trying to make some light out of it.
We bob around a little bit in the water, it somewhat smelling like pizza sauce, and I see little particles of chewed up crust and the like in the water, coming from what was being washed out from Martina’s mouth. We get a good view of her face, and she’s kinda cute if I had to say. I hear another loud gurgle come from her stomach, and she places her hand on her belly again and she does another pretty loud burp and it really echoing in her SUV. She must of ate a good amount of Pizza if her stomach’s that noisy.
She looks at the water bottle, and she reaches out her hand and grabs it, lifting us up.
“Same Ol’ Same Ol’ Situation” Tony says, singing it a bit more than just saying it, seemingly not even phased by this anymore, because judging by the last situation it doesn’t seem like we’re going to get digested along with whatever’s in her stomach.
As her mouth gets closer and closer and the warmth of her mouth mixed with the smell of Pizza Sauce gets closer to the bottle opening, I honestly feel nothing, and Dave seems to be nonchalant about the situation as well too.
“Same Ol’ Situation, Same Ol’ Ball and Chain” Tony says, as we all begin to go from the plastic bottle to her hot and damp tomato sauce smelling mouth.