The walls were a drab puddle-brown color, black mold speckling towards the ceiling around the rattling heating vent. It is boiling in here. What am I waiting for? “You know, ma’am, I-”

“YOU AREN’T GOING ANYWHERE,” the hag belched, green bile splattering the foggy glass window she was sitting behind. It started to steam and melt through the glass, dripping down and bubbling up into beautiful emerald-tinted glass castles. “I’m not going to say it again, you are a very lousy boy, a dimwit to consider leaving after I’ve told you no. I could make today VERY hard for you if I so choose.”

Jake looked nervous and sat down, sweat beading over his entire body. His boxers were soaked through, and he could see the outline of them drenching through his pants. Why am I here? He looked around the room again. Rotten vines hung from one of the walls, but other than that, there were no decorations. Not even a clock. He was far too terrified to ask the hag what time it was.

He spotted a magazine and reached for it very slowly, as he couldn’t imagine being yelled at by the hag again. Hmm. His eyes scanned the cover, and it wasn’t like anything he’d ever seen before. The image on the front was a photograph of a fox sitting in a chair, but its eyes were dark yellow and human. The language on the magazine wasn’t a scrawl he recognized, but his eyes stung when he tried to read the horrible carvings, so he just avoided the text. He flipped through the pages, but immediately his stomach turned rot-sour and he tossed the magazine away as if it was physically attacking him. The hag didn’t bat an eye.

After a few weeks, Jake wondered why he hadn’t eaten, slept, or used the restroom since he came to the waiting room. He still had no idea why he was waiting, or what for, or how much longer it was going to be. The hag hadn’t moved a centimeter since she yelled at him a few weeks ago. Hard to tell how long, because there were no windows, clocks, calendars, or any other people coming or going from the room.

“THE PHONE IS FOR YOU!” The hag shrieked, the sound so jagged, sudden, and horrible that Jake felt a sharp dizziness set over his mind.

“There isn’t a pho-”

“PHONE IS FOR YOU!”

Jake wasn’t sure what to do. He looked around, there was no phone. He couldn’t hear any ringing. The dizziness was making him sick to his stomach. I have to answer. “Hello?” Jake said, like any person answering a phone would.

“Don’t forget why you are here,” uttered by something too horrible to be described.

Jake was horrified. It all came flooding back.

It had been a long night, and Jake had hardly slept a wink, nightmare after nightmare keeping him awake. His wife was sick of the screams, so she sent him to the leather couch. Can’t wait to peel myself off of that in the morning. When the sun finally rose, Jake realized he wouldn’t be getting any rest before work. He slurped down some coffee, skipped the shower, and stomped out to his car.

Jake was furious. Even on mornings when he left on time, he would still end up being late from his commute. This turned Jake into a road raging speed monger, always looking for a shortcut or way to ruin someone else’s day to make his marginally better for two seconds. Today, Jake was going 65mph in a neighborhood, and saw his favorite freeway onramp backed up with about 50 cars. A horrendous grin came upon his face.

He floored his gas pedal and raced past all of the cars in line, and at the very last second, carved his way into the lane and cut off a black sedan. That had to have saved him 15 minutes, give or take. Jake looked into his rear-view mirror to see the anger level of the person behind him, but all he saw was a calm gray head. Jake squinted his eyes and looked closer. The eyes were bloodshot with ripe anger, but the body language was calm. Jake’s eyes shifted and looked at the person’s mouth. He saw it say something, and immediately Jake grew weary and fell asleep.

Jake woke up in a weird, dingy waiting room. What am I doing here? Jake stood to leave, and then heard a voice from behind a glass partition. “Oh no, you aren’t getting off that easy, tough guy,” an old hag hissed.

…

After around twelve years, Jake started fantasizing about what it would be like to use the restroom again. He couldn’t act it out, because he’d had a few unpleasant encounters with the hag over the years. He really didn’t want to upset her in any way. He could barely remember his wife, but he would imagine himself kissing her forehead and excusing himself from their bedroom to the restroom. Then he’d see it. The gorgeous white porcelain bowl, shimmering from the morning light. Not any toilet, his toilet. The one he and his wife bought after they returned from their trip to Japan, they had loved the futuristic and technologically advanced toilets.

Jake couldn’t even smile when he was fantasizing about his bathroom. If that hag even had an inkling that he wasn’t suffering, she would straighten him out quickly. Now I’ll just take a quick seat on the toilet. That warm, perfectly heated seat. Oh it feels perfect, and now my brown eye is stretching as- “YOU FILTHY WARTHOG,” the hag squealed. She cranked down a lever on the wall.

Jake’s belly immediately felt sick, his migraine cranked up to 100%. He must have let it slip that he was imagining using the toilet again. The hag didn’t look like she enjoyed doling out the punishments at all, she looked just as miserable as always, smoke still steaming out of the pitch black dark circles under her eyes. Jake started feeling unimaginable pain in every orifice of his body, trillions of microscopic razorblades dipped in white hot poison scraping up and down the skin.

That is when it happened.

An elderly woman walked into the waiting room, eyes blank and mouth wide. She sat in a chair. The hag looked towards her, then back to Jake, and then towards the lever on the wall. She lifted it back up, and Jake’s pain went away. The hag then stood for the first time Jake had ever seen, and brought a clipboard to the old woman who just joined their multi-year soirée. Jake nervously peaked at the clipboard, and saw the same language from the magazine that still sat on the floor where he threw it all those years ago.

The elderly woman did not look at the clipboard, but continued to stare off into nothing with her mouth gaping. The hag looked towards Jake, and in another shocking turn, smiled at him. “Okay.” she whispered.

Jake felt his brown eye rumble, and then it began to flow. It was pure ecstasy. He was finally doing something other than sitting in this very hot room. The brown mess loudly dripped onto the floor, splashing up onto the wall and the elderly woman’s legs who sat close to Jake. Jake roared with pleasure as more feces spilled from him, two inches of the entire floor completely covered. It wouldn’t stop for another 50 years, but by that time, Jake would no longer remember the outside world. He was immortal, so he wouldn’t drown, but he’d be completely submerged in his own brown piles, along with the hag and the newcomer. Everything stung on their bodies forever.