stalled

Rows of yellow fluorescents flicker to life, revealing a labyrinth of stalls stretching into the humid darkness. I stumble through, looking for a stall, pushing on each greasy door until one gives, but the toilet is filled to the brim with thick shit and pulpy wads of toilet paper dripping over the edges onto the tile floor. I try several others and am met with similar gruesome sights: every stall desecrated in a uniquely awful display of human waste. The walls, floor, toilets, doors smeared with bodily fluids of all kinds, colors, textures, viscosities. I did not realize people could excrete such variety. I move faster, desperation growing. For all its filth, there are few others in this smelly maze. I hear occasional evidence in the distance: doors slamming or unseen liquids gushing into unseen receptacles, enormous outbursts echoing in the expanse, juicy fart, phlegmy sneezes, rattling coughs. I imagine what this place must look like under a blacklight, and I shudder. The stalls grow more alien and warped, some missing doors, others are triangular or octagonal. There are clusters of stalls inside stalls inside stalls, and there are toilets without protection, placed at random. And there are rows of misshapen urinals lining the walls, many lacking drains, and others blasted with excrement, and another knocked to the floor while a fountain of brown water sprays from exposed pipe, mixing with syrupy fluid dripping from moldy ceiling tiles. I must make an impossible decision. Finally, I find a functioning toilet with only a sprinkling of amber urine around the seat and a small roll of wet toilet paper half-submerged in a puddle on the floor. So carefully I grab it with two fingers and wipe around the seat, which only spreads the urine evenly across its surface. No choice; I sit. As soon as I do, the stall door rattles violently. Occupied, I mutter. The banging continues, and I cannot relax. I stand angrily, pulling up my pants and opening the door, but there is no one. I circle the stall. All is quiet. Then a boy appears from nowhere, hunched forward, clutching his belly. Oh, man, I don't feel so good. A shocking stream of vomit arcs from his mouth and onto my pants, trickling into my shoes. Panic seizes me, and a desire to escape overwhelms my bodily urges. I flee, but there is no end to this place. Oh, god, I have to get to clean water quickly or else I will get infected, will become sick. I cannot be sick. I won't make it. No exit signs, nothing. What the hell is this place? Why is this happening? My foot slips, and I fall into a blinding puddle that soaks my hair and face and clothes with a warm concoction of chunky bodily fluids. I gag and lift myself and wipe at my face with my wet sleeve. Only a few feet away: a glowing red exit sign and a door. Something breaks, and there is a surrender, and I laugh and laugh until I lose my breat, and the whole dirty expanse of this place is filled with the echoes of my laughter, and a giddy lightheaded relief washes over me. My filth. No one else's. Not separate. Never was. I look down at my hands, and they are clean, and I am clean forever.