It Wasn't Mold

“Kid, you ever peed on a woman before?”

Gus, bus tub in hand, stared at the grizzled old man sitting on the bar stool. His mouth moved wordlessly.

“Jesus Christ, Ronald!” said Emmaline, the petite brunette goth, from behind the bar, “what the hell is wrong with you?’

Ronald shifted uneasily on his stool.

“Ah geez, sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” he said apologetically. “Have you ever peed on a woman or a man before?”

Gus shook his head slowly, then swept two empty bottles into his plastic tub. Oh my god, he mouthed to Emmaline.

He was about two weeks into his barback job at the local dive. It was a good gig that worked with his schedule, seeing as how if he didn’t finish college in exactly four years his grandfather would stop paying for school. He’d haul booze up and down the stairs, change the kegs, and help bus when things got too busy…or when things got slow and the bartenders didn’t feel like it.

“Hey Gustavo, can you do me a favor?” Emmaline said sweetly. She always phrased things as a request instead of an order, and she used his full name. He'd be indignant if he didn’t have such a crush on her. “Can you please clean out the ice machine? There might be some mold in there and…I don’t wanna.”

There was indeed something dark beneath the ice on the left side. Gus used an old screwdriver to chip away at the ice, swearing under his breath with every chunk that popped out. There was something about the stabbing motion he hated, a primal dislike as though he were a soldier in another life.  

Ronald had meant well, he thought. He was one of the few daytime regulars who would even acknowledge Gus as he scuttled about the bar. He seemed to be perpetually alone at his barstool, talking only to the bartenders or the doorman. Gus wondered what had led him here, what in his life left him so isolated.

The screwdriver sank down again, and a large segmented piece of ice clattered away. He stared because the dark spot was now revealed. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and blinked again. He wanted to call out to Emmaline, to make any sort of sound, but the noise caught in his throat as if Ronald had just asked him if he’d ever drawn a face on his own hand and fucked it.

Nestled within the remaining ice cave was a large series of petals, velvety dark purple in the shape of a flower bud. He reached out tentatively, his fingers shaking. It reminded him of the poinsettias his grandmother would surround their house with every Christmas.

The petals felt as velvety as they looked, and his hand traced the supple veins of the flower – was it a flower? What was it? Should he be touching it without gloves? Should he call someone? Should he tell Emmaline?

While he silently panicked, the flower began to bloom. The petals pulsed forward, as though it were puckering its lips, and then extended outwards, stretching and exposing the pinkish-magenta colors of the interior. Nestled in the center, quivering slightly, was an ice-blue sphere of…gelatin?

Gus stood stock still, his hand still extended, and gawped. He’d once seen a cow give birth on a field trip. The class gathered around, excited at the miracle of birth – they couldn’t believe their parents had let them see this! Gus, however, was mortified, the sounds and smells of that day carved deep into his mind like scars. This, he thought, was just as weird.

The thing in the center shivered a bit, like it had caught the chill of the surrounding ice, then began to stretch upward, turn, and appeared to look at Gus. As his brain spasmed, he thought it now looked like a child’s drawing of an octopus but made of blue-ish snot. Then, faster than a sneeze, it sprung out and attached itself to his face.

His arms pinwheeled as he stumbled backwards, knocking over kitchenware and utensils, slapping over towels and making his way clumsily toward the main room. He couldn’t call out – his mouth was full of snot octopus – but he could feel the noise bubbling in his throat. He also realized he could see through the thing, like fogged glass.

He heard Emmaline scream, and turned towards her.

The world opened up to him, and he saw the pages of her life turn and splay in front of him. He saw the few good things she had done, the men and women she took advantage of, and he saw her future self alone on the edge of a bridge. He focused on the past and saw her last boyfriend slumped over multiple puzzles on her kitchen table, unable to finish any because she would steal one piece from every puzzle for the sheer terrible joy of leaving him unsatisfied.

Ronald projectile vomited across the bar top, and Gus turned in his direction. Ronald’s life revealed itself across his vision like a deck of cards face up on a table: Ronald was a janitor, was a soldier, was a college dropout that kept his family together, was a lonely teenager, was a child stealing candy to make his sister happy.

Then there was a voice in his head, soft like a child’s, whispering nervously over the sounds of the memories whipping past his vision.

“I’m, um, apologize,” it said, “I’m steal your words, trying to decipher out your mind…usually my kind are thought thieves…but thing is smells fantastic and I want to some.

“Please will you take me – take us – over to beer? I want you to pee some on me.”  

Gus set his eyes to his feet and walked awkwardly – like a dazed Frankenstein’s monster – up next to the bar top. He could hear Emmaline cowering in the corner near the bar sink and crumpled empty beer boxes, sniffling quietly. He didn’t hear Ronald, which worried him, but he didn’t dare raise his gaze to check for fear of seeing Ronald’s or anyone else’s life flash before his eyes.

“MMMM, yes!” said the voice, losing all timidity in the face of its desired beverage, “Open beer and pee it right on mine head!”

Gus didn’t mean to laugh, he thought he was too freaked out to laugh, but he snorted hard; he hoped it would figure out English before it said anything else too suggestive. His hand slowly searched for the taps, each with an exaggerated goofy handle to signify a delightfully cooky craft brew, and gripped a large handle that felt like a plump mermaid.

“No please you, that beer is not the tasty I smell,” it said with concern, “go to your other…to your right? Yes, to your right, and grab the – what did you think? Yes! Handle! – big one shaped like a number two.”

Confused, Gus spoke up in a muffled voice, “A number two?”

“A, um, poop?”

It dawned on Gus that it meant the handle that was carved to look like a stream descended from a large brown mountaintop. Yeah, he thought, it kinda did look like a poop.

He reached down to grab a mug but felt the snot-octopus tense. Gus withdrew his hand – he knew what it wanted.

He bent down at the waist, used his hands to find the corresponding spout to the handle, and stuck his head underneath, face up. The thing was now vibrating with excitement.

Gus pulled the handle.

Beer poured down.

And his world went insane.

There were feelings big and small that pulsed through Gus, familiar feelings of warmth and comfort and peace, and then wave after wave of feelings he’d never felt before. He felt colors and he felt soundwaves and he felt the light and he felt a depth of emotion beyond any capacity that could ever exist on Earth. There were new feelings that coursed through his mind and body and heart and soul, feelings that didn’t exist on this side of the galaxy or in this dimension, but he felt that and he lost himself it in and it was so big and it encompassed everything everyone every soul and it connected him to it all and everything is connected and it –

It all stopped when the keg ran dry.

The snot-octopus belched and then Gus was back in the bar, aware of the last hiss of an empty tap. His body was sore, the achy sore that occurs when you are very active and forget to stretch, and all his senses seemed muted from the overload. Slowly (almost drunkenly) the creature oozed off of Gus’s face and onto the bar top. Gus trembled, and felt a giant hole in his chest that ached and ached.

“That was…much good,” it slurred into his brain, “Thank you for the pee. I go now to r-report the finding.”

It blurred and pixelated and disappeared into thin air. Gus felt his knees buckle, and he began to fall.

Instead of the filthy bar-mat covered floor, he tumbled into the soft warm embrace of Emmaline. Her arms moved around his midsection and tightened as she slowly eased him onto the floor. His head slumped onto her shoulder, and then into the deep line of her cleavage, and then he was resting on her lap as her tears dripped onto his face.

Not how he anticipated his shift going with her today, but he’d take it.