Here is your only warning. This post is not for the weak of stomach, nor for those inhibited by the quality called “good taste”.

There are, of course, many horrors seen in the course of life. It was my fate to encounter one such awful abomination: the dreaded office toilet gone wrong. One that has been desecrated by filth beyond all reasonable expectations, even for a toilet used anonymously by the assorted miscreants, malcontents, and scatological comedians commonly found in every office.

Normally, the existence of such atrocities against God, Man, and Plumbing, occuring in otherwise pristine examples of modern porcelain and chrome, are presaged by the foul odors one normally associates with the turbid contents of an unflushed bowl.

Not this time. In fact, it was rather different. This time, there was no smell, but visual evidence of one man’s titanic struggle could not be ignored.

Upon entering the largest stall (the one that I previously had thought fondly of as the “executive suite”), I noticed two things immediately. The first was the seat liner (known in some highly-cultured circles as an “ass gasket”), torn, and still clinging, barely, to the seat. The rest of it was immersed in the water, slowly sinking, dragging the dry portion with it, as it continued its inexorable descent into its watery grave. This was not particularly notable, in and of itself, but the marked shredding of the interior of the ring gave me pause. Had the forces released been so violent as to shatter the edges of the brittle paper?

Further cautious examination suggested that this had, in fact, been the case. Instead of finding the expected quasi-colloidal soup, the water was quite clear. Adhering to the back of the bowl and the rim, however, was what can only be described as a dark material that had obviously been blasted onto the formerly white surface with some considerable degree of vigor. To a large degree, it resembled the hardened, tenacious, adobe-like substance one finds on the undersides of cars, flung onto the metal by tires speeding down the freeway, only a much darker color.

The next thing I noticed was the toilet paper. Small bits of it were scattered throughout the stall, like a one-man ticker-tape parade had been recently held. The roll itself was in tatters, as if a small, toothy, and savage animal had attacked it. I half expected to find a broken claw or fang embedded in it somewhere. The whole place raised my hackles. It was eerily quiet -even the ventilation fans seemed still- and was someplace I suddenly just didn’t want to be, like it would be if, say, one found a severed foot in an otherwise serene forest clearing while hiking out in the hills.

I carefully retraced my steps to the stall door. As I did so, I noticed droplets of a clear, watery fluid that led from the middle of the stall to the sink, in an irregular pattern, not unlike that which would be made by a staggering, broken man on his last legs. Was it drool from some poor soul reduced to gibbering idiocy by the stress of mortal combat with his own movements? Tears from a man pushed to his limits, and ultimately broken by physical pain? Or had he simply dropped his phone into the toilet, and brought it to the sink to wash the filth off of it? Such terrors chill the soul to even contemplate.

I shall never know the true story. Nobody is likely to ever come forward with his harrowing tale of woe. After all, the unwritten code of the restroom mirrors that said of Las Vegas- what goes on in there, stays in there. But I couldn’t stay there, knowing what I knew. I bowed my head in a silent acknowlegement of an unknown coworkers’ anguish, then made good my departure.

Through wincing eyes, I salute your martyrdom, O brave colleague, whoever you were.