Husk by Corey Redekop Page A

somehow finagled a whole two seats to himself on a crowded bus driving the impulse to knock the kid on his ass. His head and torso had contorted themselves into a precarious loop, his face pressed into the scratchy weave of the chair’s back, the bulk of his torso balanced on the seat’s outward edge. To prevent the upper-half from toppling to the floor (a scenario that appeared likely given the driver’s penchant for targeting every pothole), the lower half was positioned as a counter-weight across the aisle. The feet were propped atop the armrest of the seat across, imprinting against the slack bicep of the octogenarian who sat there, also asleep. The whole effect was that of a mouth-breathing horizontal question mark.
    I grabbed the luggage rails that lined the sides of the bus and hoisted myself feet-first over the denim vault, sticking the landing with no small amount of difficulty. Stabilizing myself, I glanced back, slightly impressed that my athletic prowess had managed to overcome the obstacle without awakening the teen.
    I then placed my foot against his thigh and shoved with all my might.
    I reached the lavatory before he could regain his senses and figure out what happened, pulling the door quickly shut behind me. I slid the locking mechanism over to turn the main light on, a light that wholly eclipsed the stand-by light by a good twenty watts. In the dim I could make out the seat of the toilet, spattered with liquid. The wall behind it was layered with shiny polished steel rather than mirror, preventing the likelihood of breakage, a likelihood all the more probable judging from the number of impressive dents that marred its surface. I could just discern my face in the murk, distorted to funhouse freakishness through the metallic depressions, hidden altogether in spots by magic marker graffiti advising that I should consider fucking both myself and my mother, should I be so inclined. The artist apparently hoped I was, although I presumed he would change his mind should he ever meet said matriarch. The self-fucking would have to suffice.
    Taking a hold of the grab bar affixed to the wall for balance, I stood on my left foot and toed the seat open with my right, thanking whatever immortal being in charge of bodily functions that all I had to do was piss. The toilet was a square brick of identical metal, rising from the corrugated floor to just below my knees. A bottomless pit was placed in its middle, a smooth hole with walls that descended twelve inches into the belly of the bus. Beyond that, a roiling mixture of used toilet paper, cigarette butts, formless chunks of fecal matter, and an indigo chemical mixture sloshed about, propelled by the natural centrifugal force of the moving bus to rise up the sides of the well and daintily mist the rim. Holding fast to the bar with my left hand, I unzipped my trousers with the right, fumbled with the button until it finally slipped free, and slid my pants down, propping my legs wide and bending slightly at the knees to prevent the pants from slipping and coming into contact with the goodly amount of moisture which, I now saw, coated the entire floor. This accomplished, I slid my underpants down just enough to allow access to my understudy. Freed from the confines of its cotton prison, it flopped and shivered about as the wheels of the bus rumbled over the shoulder of the road. I took hold and aimed, using my fingers to push down the elastic of the boxer-briefs and my thumb to steady the shaft for release. Two streams of urine arched in the air, one splashing against the rim of the hole before hitting the liquid below, the other going rogue and spattering the wall. “Fuck,” I shouted, instinctively letting go of the bar to allow both hands to reposition my fabric/penis arrangement and compensate for the errant flow. My right pulled my underwear down farther; my left pushed the head so that the streams hit alternating sides of the hole, but the angle was