missing in action… without all the action

(originally posted 10/16/2021)

Perhaps it was because in his youth he had numerous times paid a lot of money for hallucinogens that mimic certain aspects of dementia that he didn’t freak out the first time it happened.

Maybe he just didn’t believe it was entirely related to aging.

Whatever the case, a few weeks ago, while peeing, he noticed a glow start to emanate from the toilet. The bowl seemed to have light shining up at him as he peed. When he stopped, so did the glow.

And every time he went to the bathroom since that peculiar event the glow got brighter.

Now as soon as the urine hit the water light would stream up and fill the room. In fact, now the water itself seemed to shine. Rainbows swirled around him and his face was bathed in a golden hue.

The Shady Glen condos sat somewhere between a retirement community and a nursing home. He was not the oldest resident, but he was far from the youngest. He wasn’t as much scared of dying as he was of getting any older in the drab hallways and dining rooms that smelled of antiseptic. Just the name Shady Glen caused him some agita. Shady means shady after all and glen is just another word for abyss.

At least in his books.

Try as he might though, he couldn’t recall anything in their brochures mentioning what was taking place in the bathroom.

Finally, after the light coming from the toilet became so bright and inviting that he actually, for reasons that were not completely clear to him at the time, placed his slipper-clad foot in the bowl. He found it did not touch the porcelain when it should have and his foot continued down well past his thigh and would have continued even further had it not been for the fact that his hips could not fit through the seat.

Even for a young man the trick of lowering yourself into a toilet while at the same time continuing your stream of urine would have been incredibly challenging, but at his advanced age it became too much and he was lucky to have his leg out of the john before his peeing dried up completely.

A slipper-clad foot, a knee and a thigh that he noted were all completely dry.

After he flushed he couldn’t help but kneel down and place his hand into the until-recently-illuminated toilet. The sides and bottom were there, intact and prohibiting his hand from going further down.

A hand that, after he removed it, as you might suspect, was dripping wet.

“How peculiar” he thought to himself. Had he been younger you would have seen the gears turning inside his head, but he was old enough where he had perfected the blank stare.

The Shady Glen condos sat on twenty acres of beautiful rolling hills and pristine woods. The kind of scenery he could never afford when he was a homeowner and still mobile enough to go on hikes. Now he was forced to just look out his window and imagine how the sunlight would delicately make its way through the canopy in shafts of flaxen-colored light.

The same color of light that now greeted him every time he took a piss.

So one morning, before most of the residence had awakened for the day, he walked out the front door and made his way to the big fountain that sat outside the entrance. Then he took out his member and began to pee.

Hours later security would watch the footage of him leaving the building and then review every inch of footage of every camera trained on every possible exit from the grounds of Shady Glen. All without seeing him depart. Every square inch of the grounds were searched that day. Twice. It seemed impossible that they couldn’t find him, but they couldn’t.

They had no answers for his family or friends.

He was never seen again.