Comedy Open Mic Round #25: The Fist of God

I apologize in advance, but the funniest stories in my life revolve around excrement. If stories about awful things happening to people due to poop don't butter up your imagination, click the 'Back' button now, before it's too late. Otherwise the reason you're getting the following brain-bleachable tale is @blewitt, who thought it would be a great idea, just really fine and fancy, to nominate me for an Open Mic comedy challenge.

Challenge accepted, Chris. Anytime somebody gives me an excuse to use this GIF, it's happening. I can think of no better introduction to the story than the marvelous Jeff Goldblum delivering the most-quotable line from Jurassic Park:

Source: ReactionGIFs.us

Ready, internet? Let's do this.

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Everything I'm about to say sounds like I'm making a run at my own version of "The Aristocrats", but I have witnesses who will attest not one single line of this story has been embellished, exaggerated, or made up. Multiple people saw this affront to humanity, including my wife, to whom I had to explain why she received, with no warning, a random picture of something so vile texted to her from a number she didn't recognize.

You'll understand shortly.

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Here's the deal: if you work in retail, at some point your day is going to involve poop, and it's almost always going to be someone else's. Having a bathroom in your store is no guarantee customers will confine their bowel movements to that location, but in this particular instance I am thankful the restroom was open. I shudder to think of encountering the hazmat suit people again.

Far back in the halcyon days of 2003, I was employed at a bookstore the name of which I shall not use because it is not important. What is important is that this bookstore contained two newly-remodeled bathrooms, one of which a sociopath chose to desecrate in the most indescribably awful manner imaginable. This man left the titular "Fist of God" in the bowl.

I call it "The Fist of God", but this abomination had as many nicknames as it had post-hoc observers. Some referred to it as "Godzilla's Claw", others as "The Devil's Croissant", still others as "Turd-a-saurus Rex". The name doesn't matter: this thing was large and obscene enough to deserve every last moniker heaped upon it. For reference, I am six feet tall and weigh roughly 200 pounds. This Lovecraftian colonic manifestation was, I kid you not, the size, length, and thickness of my forearm. Not only did it possess a girth wider than the hole at the bottom of the bowl, but it was also nearly large enough to encompass the bowl itself.

One's first reaction upon reading the description of this anal atrocity would be to assume it was some kind of prank. I assure you, one whiff of the air held captive in that stall would disabuse a man of that notion in seconds. The individual responsible for that day's #1 'number two' had not only managed to avoid dying during the passing of this Ass Mammoth, but also to evacuate such a portentous heap without leaving any blood behind. Whoever did this simultaneously raised the act of shitting to an art form and ruined the night for a half dozen bookstore employees. I don't know what the going rate is for biohazard cleanup, but I assure you, we did not earn it when dealing with this scandalous stool.

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So how does one clean up after being toilet-punched by The Fist of God? Flushing, clearly, is right out unless your intention is to flood the area and cause further misery. The unit was equipped with a power flush, but even a suction-based airline chemical toilet would fail to get this titanic turd through that hole.

After a few minutes of deliberation, it was decided our only recourse would be to break the Fist into smaller pieces (fingers?). This, however, posed another dilemma: with no toilet brush and no plunger (we'd ordered new ones for the remodel, and they hadn't been delivered yet), how were we going to achieve this? There weren't enough nitrile gloves in the world for anyone to risk handling Turdzilla directly. Finally it was decided the old reliable metal dustpan, which had served the store well lo these last eleven years since it opened, would take one for the team.

Toney, my co-worker, used the dustpan like the world's most-abused bread knife, and separated the forced-out feculence into two smaller pieces, each of which he scooped into a giant black trash bag, held open by yours truly. The dustpan followed the second half, and all present bowed their heads for a moment of silence, vowing the gallant cleaning implement's sacrifice would never be forgotten.

Now we had another problem though: what to do with the bag. There was a large dustpan with sharp metal edges in there with the Fist. Carrying it around might result in an inadvertent spilling of the contents. Toney told me to get one of our dairy pack boxes, and I knew where this was headed. I taped up the bottom, Toney gently laid the enormous bag of shit to rest in its cardboard coffin, then closed the lid and used up several yards of tape securing the box so it could not possibly come open during the journey down the alley. The box was carried to the dumpster, dropped in, and it was assumed this was the last anyone would see of it.

If that was where the story ended, it would be amusing enough. But we can't have nice things, so of course there's more to this tale of misery and woe.

The next morning, I came in for an early shift and my assigned pre-opening duty was to empty the trash from the night before. I grabbed the key to the back door and wheeled the two trash cans down the alley. I reached the dumpster and did a double-take.

The box, which I knew for a fact we had taped completely shut and thrown into that dumpster, was now sitting on the ground beside the dumpster.

The seal had been cut.

The flaps had been lifted.

The bag had been torn open.

Thankfully, both turd and dustpan were still present. They, and the box, were returned to the dumpster where they were carted away a short time later by the trash collectors who (hopefully) knew nothing of what they picked up that morning.

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Somewhere out there is an individual who learned, in the hardest way possible, why dumpster diving is a bad idea. Somewhere out there is an individual who has told a story to all of his (or god forbid her) friends about what they witnessed upon digging an otherwise-ordinary box out of a trash can and making the worst mistake of his entire life. This person was laughed at and called a liar by his peers. I'm here to tell all of you: if you meet this person, if they relate to you a horror story about a night they went dumpster diving behind an Indianapolis bookstore in search of treasure, and found only an epic helping of cast-off ass scag, I want you to do two things.

First: try to contain your laughter. You will fail, but try anyway. And second?

Believe them.

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I love you all, I'm sorry about the mess, and I'll see myself out.

Thanks to @blewitt for tagging me in on this, @ComedyOpenMic for their attempts to disrupt the blockchain with unending laughter, and especially the poor judges who had to endure this nightmare to assess my worthiness.

Oh yeah, I get to nominate two other would-be participants for this falls-count-anywhere humor marathon! @deadspace and @retro-room, go read the rules then get your butts up on stage, take the mic, and show me how it's done.

Remember: if you laughed, you owe me an upvote. ;)