Story 4 From The Toilet Seat

Story 4 FROM THE TOILET SEAT.

The toilet seat is cold. That’s good. It means nobody has been reading and left behind papers or magazines to distract me from writing. My phone bleeps. I’m tempted to check it. Nothing important – not Facebook, I convince myself. It’ll be 02 with a stupid offer of some kind, I think. With determined resolve I settle down to write.

But my mind is still on the bleep.

I plod on writing faster than my brain can keep up. Never mind I’ll fix the spelling later, I think. The pull of the bleep is still there. Like a persistent child it nags at me.  And then the fear kicks in. Maybe it’s something important. Maybe there’s something wrong. “Oh for God sake, check the bloody thing. You know you want to!” I berate my reflection in the chrome toilet roll holder opposite.

I touch the screen and the phone wakes up and gives me a cheesy whistle. “Don’t know what you’re so happy about. You’re the cause of all this distraction,” I grumble. As if on cue its cheery whistle ends and a message tells me it’s searching for a network. “The sooner the mobile phones companies get an all Ireland network…”

The phone bleeps as if it agrees but it still doesn’t give me a signal. Now, I am getting really pissed off. I’ve lost the track of what I was writing and I still don’t know what the message was or who it was from. “I have to check it. I’ll get a better signal outside,” I mutter yanking at the door handle.

The toilet door, still swollen with the damp weather is stuck fast – again. I swear, apply a bit of pressure and I’m left holding the handle. “Shit! Frantically I try to hold on to the little black bar that is peeping out from the round hole where the handle should be.

“Shut up phone,” I growl as the  bleep comes again.

Phone message forgotten now, I shout out through the door. “Will somebody come and push the handle on the outside in so I can put the handle back on.” Nothing.

Not a sound. Thumping on the door proves useless. Where the hell is everybody? “If I’d been sitting in here deep in writing a poem or short story they’d be thumping on the friggin door,” I fumed.

Even the phone is silent. The phone! I could ring somebody.  Tell them I am locked in the toilet. Relieved, I touched the screen and nearly jumped out of my skin when it rang.

“Didn’t you get my message,” an annoyed voice demanded.

“What message? I didn’t get any message. The bloody phone wouldn’t give me a signal. And I’m locked in the toilet,” I thundered holding the phone in front of my mouth.

There was a beat of silence at the other end. “Is that you Tess?” a girl’s said in a breathy puzzled voice.

“No it bloody is not,” I raged

“Sorry, sorry wrong number.” The voice was beginning to fade.

“Wait!” I could hear the babble in my voice. “Where are you? Do you live near here? I’m locked in the…” It was too late;  my phone went back to its blank stare of indifference.

I slumped down the door and sat on the floor. The phone brightened. Suddenly I had a signal. Almost crying with relief I tapped the screen.

The phone rang and rang. “What?” a sleepy voice said. “You’re swearing,” Ned, my hubby yawned.

Incredulously, I held the phone away and looked down at it. “You’re in your bed!” I bawled.

“What’s wrong with that?”

For a minute I was rendered speechless.

“Didn’t you hear me shouting and banging the door?” No response – just another yawn, then a snuffling and finally a muffled reply.

“Is that what that noise was? – thought it was somebody selling tickets.” Another silence and then what sound like the pillow getting thumped into a more comfortable position. “Didn’t you get my text? Sent it before I lay down – told you not to let me sleep more than an hour?” He sounded aggrieved now

Expletives I didn’t even know I knew streamed from my throat.

“Is it time to get up already? Doesn’t seem like an h… Stop swearing. I’m coming,”

It took a while to unlock the toilet door. But after a few futile attempts and a few choice words that flowed back and forth, the door gave in.

I was free.

“Don’t get it why you have to write in the toilet, anyway.” Ned yawned.

“Shower room,” I said belligerently, flinging the aborted poem at the computer

desk.