"When you say the beginning of the end," I asked from my slimy nest on the wall, "does that mean this thing is gonna wrap up soon? Cause I gotta be honest, here, I gotta urinate and I don't wanna do it in my pants. I am still wearin pants, right?"
"Yes," confirmed the slug, "you are still wearing pants."
"Well, I guess that's a good thing, you know, compared to the rest of all this that's goin on."
He appeared to think about this for a time. "Yes, I would say that's good for the both of us."
"Look, sir," I tried explainin, "the pants ain't the point. The point is I gotta pee here, and I don't wanna do it all over myself. So, either this story ends with me gettin unhooked from this here wall, or that happens now and I promise to come back and finish this story."
"Is there a third option?" he asked.
I pondered for a bit. "I guess the only third option would be me stayin here and peein myself."
"Um...yeah..." he nodded his eye stalks, "why don't you go ahead and do that one?"
"What?" I was, needless to say, a bit surprised. Now, like I says, I had myself a number of youthful indiscretions, and I may have, once or twice, been too tired or too moonshiney to get up and find myself a proper toilet. And I may have, in my corn liquor haze, relieved myself in a sink or two. And I might have, one time, accidentally peed on Douggy's bed. And it could be that Douggy was occupying said bed with a young lady. And it very well might be the case that that particular young lady had been makin googly eyes at Douggy all night and he was on leave from the marines and had had a crush on this young lady since we was all in 7th grade and this was his one chance to show her how he felt before he went off to who knows where for who knows how long. And, you know, theoretically speakin, she just might have been allergic to urine and broken out with hives all over and had to go to the hospital. But the whole story coulda had a happy endin when they were brought closer together by this tragedy and they eventually got married. On a side note, for any of y'all expectin to be best man at a weddin, if you need some advice on your speech, here's some: it's best you don't begin your toast with, "These two prolly woulda never got together if I hadn't peed on 'em." In my experience, at least, that doesn't set too well with the parents. Point bein, it's not like I hadn't wet myself once or twice in the past, but now didn't seem like the time. For one, I didn't know if this slime was water soluble or if I'd just be swimmin in my own pool. For two, it seemed like this story still had legs to it and I might be in for a long haul. And for three, There was all sortsa people around there; Douggy, Sheriff Tom, Aliastair, not to mention 3 of them giant slugs. The only way I could get myself to go with that many people and/or genetic mutants around would be if we was at a game or a concert and we was all lined up against the trough. This was sorta the opposite of that situation.
"No, I ain't peein myself here," I hollered, "so you might as well cut me down so I don't fill up with pee and shoot it out my nose at you. And hurry up, there, my back teeth are floatin."
He looked sheepish. If he were a person, he woulda leaned his head forward and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. As it was, he leaned one eye stalk down and rubbed the back of it with the other stalk. I wondered what the world looked like when he did that, but then I stopped because I got dizzy. "That's the thing..." he began, "we don't know how to get you down."
"Whaddya mean you don't know how to get me down?" I barked. "Is this your first time trapping someone with slime or somethin?"
"Well, no..." he trailed off.
"So then it ain't your first time gettin someone outta this." I was proud of my reasoning. "Just do what you did to get them others down."
"That's where we hit the problem..." he was lookin as uncomfortable as a butcher's kid about to tell his dad he's vegetarian. "Keep in mind that we've been hopped up on meth this whole time. Not by choice, mind you, but I was just getting to that. But, you see..." he looked around.
"Oh, just get to it, would you?" My bladder hurt and I wanted out.
"Well..." then he mumbled something.
"What was that?" I asked.
"We ate them all." The secret was finally out. "It's not like we'd really planned to. We were all hopped up, like I said, and under the mind control of McClawenstein. It was the only way we knew to deal with intruders. But now, well, we don't want to eat you. We want to set you free, but we don't know how."
Right then, it became too much. I got to that point where you've been clenching your muscles too long and they relax for just one second and you really hope not too much escaped because you think you can make it that extra minute it would normally take to do the run to the bathroom and you know that if someone's in there already, you're gonna kick that durned door in and pee on them. But in this case, I didn't have nowhere to run and I didn't know how long I'd have to hold it. then I heard this bubbling, sizzling sound. I looked down and there was a pinhole burned through the slime casing. Alistair and the slug noticed, too.
"Whatever you did, do it again," said Alistair.
"No!" I was maybe more defensive than was warranted.
"Come on, Pat," he cajoled, "just do it again."
"No!" I yelled again. "Absolutely not!"
"It's the only way," said Alistair.
The slug looked me in the eye and told me, bluntly, "If you prefer, I could just eat you."
"Oh, fine!" I gave up. But one of y'all is gonna have to get me some extra pants.
"There are some out there," Alistair pointed to the door.
"Nu-uh," I shook my head, "I ain't wearin no 99 cent store pants, the pockets on them things is full of lies and deceit. Get someone to go over to the dollar store to get me some pants. Over there, the pockets are filled with integrity."
"Fine," said Alistair. He called some squimonk together. They put on their person costume and went across the street to get me some pants. That costume ain't very convincin, but the people at the dollar store tend not to ask many questions.
Once that was settled, I told the slug, "You! Turn your eyes away, I don't want you watchin this!"
Surprisingly, he obeyed without another word. Now that I was in semi-privacy, I was ready. Weird thing is, it's hard to pee your pants, even when you try. I guess it's been so worked in that you don't urinate when you're clothed that it's hard to get around. I tried closin my eyes and imaginin I was at the toilet. When that didn't work, I imagined that I was writin my name in the snow. Finally, I tried thinkin I was on a high cliff, whizzin into the river below. I covered all the classifications of peein' in my mind; that's in, on and off. You see, that's one of the joys of peein standin up, you get to pee in things and make music while you're doin it, or you get to pee on things and feel like you're markin your territory, and you get to pee off of things like cliffs and couches, watchin your stream arc through the air like a coffee scented rainbow. I finally had to pull out the big guns and imagine I was peein at angel falls and I could see my whole stream at once. That did it. I let go in a flood of warm relief and shame. The bubblin and sizzlin told me that it was workin and soon I came crashin to the ground. Fortunately, the squimonk came back with their newly purchased dollar pants, which I carried with me to the bathroom and donned as soon as I'd washed up.
I come outta that restroom feelin like all the blood in my body had rushed to my face. This wasn't one of them situations where I could just tie a sweater around my waist and hide what I did. Everyone there knew and I knew that they knew and they knew I knew they knew. We just stared each other down like a group of gunfighters, no one sure who was gonna break the silence. In the end, it was Douggy wakin up that did it.
"Hey!" he yelled, groggily, "what the heck is goin on here? Get me down!" He started thrashin about.
"Douggy," I put my hands on his shoulders, "it's gonna be alright. You're gonna get down from there, but you're gonna have to get yourself down."
"How?"
"Well," I explained, "you ain't gonna like this, but..."
