and Other Short Stories

Harold Nance and the Strange Obstruction

This is the story of a strange little man, and that man's name was Harold Nance. I suppose it still is Harold Nance in a way, but it was then too. Harold Nance lived a simple life; he didn't have any friends, he seldom left home, never spoke to anyone, and he wouldn't have had it any differently. Harold Nance was happy bumbling about on his own, reading this or that, catching a snip of television. Harold was the only Nance left that he knew of, he had no family and certainly no children to carry on his name. None of this particularly matters much, because the root of the story is this:

One morning Harold awoke as he always did, to the charming HACK HACK HACK of his alarm clock. After blindly fumbling to shut it off, he reached about for his small round copper spectacles that a child in the supermarket once remarked made him look like "the man with the thunder kite" and stood from his bed. Walking to his bathroom he noticed a strange feeling in his lower abdomen. Shaking it off as possible constipation, he continued with his morning routine as normal. With a loose hand angling from a thin frail wrist, he reached and started the small shower perched in the deepest side of a cramped bathroom. He noticed the feeling again, yet tried to ignore it still. Stepping from the shower he dried himself with a frayed white towel and his bladder kindly alerted him that he had to pee. Harold Nance took a short step from the landing strip of rug placed before the shower, and positioned himself, perched for firing, above the dingy toilet bowl. He pushed as one does to start a stream but with no reward but a strange tugging pressure of sorts. The pressure of his lower abdomen had sunk and he felt it strongly. A slight panic set into Harold's mind. Cancer. Tumor. Enlarged prostate. All the lovelies dancing in his head, for good measure he gave it another go. No result, just another odd tugging. But, upon inspection of his manhood, Harold spotted something odd slightly protruding from himself, it looked as though a corner of a piece of plastic had somehow become lodged. With a panicked breath Harold absentmindedly grabbed the small corner and pulled, revealing more of the plastic. Harold Nance's mental faculties were not equipped to process what he was witnessing. It seemed a plastic tarp of some sort was protruding from his genitals. He continued to pull with the forefinger and thumb of his left hand, pushing internally as he did. More and more plastic sheet came forth, he felt the pressure within himself moving and a painful stretch outward as it did. More and more, pulling, stopping to breathe; reminiscent of a mother in birth. The plastic was translucent blue and squeaky sheer. He could feel a hollow where the plastic being pulled was leaving from within him. His mind curled about itself trying to understand what was happening, and determining if pulling was the best course of action. He felt as though it was almost all out, so he continued. After some moments of strain Harold Nance stood with his sore penis in one hand and what Harold recognized by the thin eyelets at one side, a cheap blue shower curtain in the other. Setting the curtain down, Harold leaned his head forth into the toilet and vomited. His glasses slipped from his head and landed smoothly into the orange chunk vomit splattered in the bowl with a schloop. After doing so he stopped for a moment, glanced to the mess of blue curtain, and vomited again, disregarding his glasses entirely. As he wretched he could feel the strange cavernous hollow within him, the void that was being replaced by fear and chaotic anxiety. Harold Nance could never give explanation for what happened, why, or who the curtain belonged to or came from, nor would he ever have to. Harold Nance lived for 3 years after this morning, before one day hanging himself in a closet at age 38, only to be found months later after a neighbor noticed neighborhood strays batting around the windows of Harold's small gray home, having noticed the smell. Here's to you Harold Nance.