Her huge shadow fell across the floor as she sat down with a heavy, unembarrassed finality. The earth seemed to groan beneath him. The porcelain next to him creaked faintly. The toilet seat bore her weight with a soft plastic groan. There was a moment of still and silence, and then the grim reality of what followed. Daniel shuddered. He stared at the grout, trying to lose himself in its rough geometry, but the reality was inescapable. The sound, the smell and the way the air changed slightly, thicker and warmer.

The sound was crude, intimate, and obscene in its banality. It started with a wet and curdling fart. The kind a woman would only emit in her own presence. Then he heard the cascading sound of urine striking the toilet pan. He curled into himself, trying not to breathe. It seemed to go on forever. Then he caught the smell. It made him want to choke again. He gagged and shoved his fist into his mouth. Why was he being subjected to this horror? 

He caught a flash of her arm in motion above him, he instinctively ducked and assumed she had seen him. But the giant hand with pink painted fingernails reached out to the dangling toilet paper. 

Then the paper tore with a violent rip that made him jump. 

This was followed by the noisy scratching sound of paper rubbing across her pussy and pubic hair. There was nothing perverse in the act, and yet it felt more violating than anything else he had witnessed. He was not meant to be here. Not meant to see or hear. Not meant to know. She wiped herself with a methodical process. He caught a brief, unwilling glimpse of motion, her wrist twisting, fingers angled. There was no shame. Why would there be?

Daniel felt a deep nausea build inside him, not only physical but psychological. He was not meant to witness this. Not this… this private process was made ever more monstrous by his scale and vulnerability. She had no idea she was being observed. The horror occurred to him of suddenly being found by her at this moment. He wasn’t just out of place. He was a shrunken naked man. She might think he was a mouse and crush him… or… she might recognise him and do worse. 

Finally, and mercifully, it was over.

The colossal hands descended again to collect the fabric. He stared at her huge trunk sized fingers as she grabbed hold of the fabric. She stepped back into her knickers, the elastic snapped against her hips, like a line of troops stamping to attention. The nightdress was drawn down, enveloping her once more in cotton sanctity. 

She moved to the sink, with thumping fleshy footsteps, and the basin gushed with water. He watched the way her arms moved, great shadows cast by her elbows, and he saw her face in profile, tired, indifferent and unreadable.

She never once glanced downward. Thank goodness! 

Her footfalls retreated and the light snapped off.

Darkness enveloped him once more. He remained frozen behind the toilet, breath shallow, eyes wide in the oppressive black, waiting for his eyesight to return. His heart drummed in his ribs.

His thoughts remained vividly illuminated. He crouched there, paralysed, as if even the darkness could not permit him to move. The memory of her skin, the shadow of her thigh, the lips of her pussy, her buttocks, the scent of her presence, the stink of her urine and her panties, they all lingered on him like a stain.

He also felt shame. A deep, unsettling shame. Not because he had wanted to see, he hadn’t. But because he had. He had been present in a moment of profound vulnerability, not hers, but his. Powerless, invaded by proximity, burdened with sights and sounds too vast for his mind to safely process.

He did not feel like Daniel anymore. Not the Daniel who had walked these halls in full stature. He felt stripped, undone.

He pressed a hand to his mouth and stared into the dark, afraid of what else the night might hold. 

He was alone again, but by no means safe.