The Poop That Lived...in a Sauna

Ma's Birthday

It was noon and Dan had a black eye, no present, and was trying desperately to find his way out of the mall.

"Why didn't we just go out the way we came in?" Horace moaned from under Dan's shoe. Dan was consulting yet another map, the light from its screen boring directly into his brain. For some reason, there was more than one red "you are here" arrow, all of which were positioned on different floors. Dan leaned over a ledge near the escalator, trying to count the floors below and above him. They seemed to continue endlessly. He took a quick survey of the nearby stores and saw three identical pretzel shops and seven huts selling sunglasses.

"I tried that, Ace," Dan said hopelessly, consulting the map again. Losing his pink polo clad attacker had been the main concern for the past twenty minutes, but in accomplishing this task he now feared they'd never make it out of here for Ma's 60th, let alone for her 70th.

"You fellas need a hand?" A voice rumbled behind Dan. A voice deep and reassuring, as if wielded by someone with a thick beard and spacious diaphragm. Dan turned to confront his savior and met the eyes of a slender dark-skinned woman with a buzz cut, strong forearms, and several neck tattoos. She was wearing a red flannel shirt and had an enormous axe slung across her back. Dan stared at her. "This place is nuts, I've been trying to get out for days," the woman continued. "Walked in, expected to hit up Home Depot and leave, I decide to grab a pretzel for the road, step out and I'm surrounded by identical pretzel places and have no idea where the Home Depot or parking lot are." She heaved a deep sigh and flicked her eyes at the map Dan was in front of. "Those things are fucking useless."

"What do you mean—days?" Dan asked, gaping. The woman clapped him on the shoulder, a firm, comforting grip.

"Look, it's going to be ok. I've got the swing of things a little better now. I think the key is to find anything that doesn't sell pretzels or sunglasses—we just need to snap ourselves out of it. Just release the panic, release the rationality. Just allow yourself to be. Allow yourself to have an experience free from sunglasses and pretzels." the woman closed her eyes, her hand still on Dan's shoulder. He reluctantly copied her, shutting out his visual link to reality. "Take deep breaths. Just feel yourself drift. You are not in this mall, you are not even you," Dan inhaled, filling up his stomach with air. He pictured the swell of energy as a concentration of light at his solar plexus. Then he felt the gentle brush of cloth against his face and shoulders. He opened his eyes and saw nothing but a dark green knit, definitely polyester blend, a sheen of light beaming faintly from the other side.

Confused, Dan raised his hands to pull at the fabric, but someone grabbed his hands. Dan cried out, tried to fight off the restraining hands, but he felt sharp pain and saw stars.

Dan awoke to the disorienting feel of grass against his forearms and the back of his neck. He blinked several times at an unrelenting cloudless sky. Dan sat up, peering about, and realized, with a start, that he recognized his surroundings. He was in the front lawn of his childhood home—there was the pale yellow mailbox with the paint peeling off, a faded Batman sticker he'd placed there when he was 10 years old improbably still pasted to one end. Pops loved hydrangeas, which she grew in abundance on either side of the front door. Oddly, though Dan had remembered them as pink throughout his childhood, the blossoms he looked at now were quite blue. Rubbing the lump on the back of his head for a moment, Dan pressed his palms into the earth and rose, walking to the front door. He rang the bell and then, with a jolt, remembered Horace. Dan carefully lifted up the sole of his right shoe to check on the homunculus. The shoe was clean. Dan stared. He replaced that foot and checked his left shoe instead. Also clean. Dan squatted down, yanking off the sneaker and examining it completely. Not a trace of Horace remained. Even with a hearty sniff, there was no evidence that a homunculus had previously occupied the tread.