Emetophobe: The Apocalypse

NOTE: TW for those with emetephobia (fear of vomiting). This is story might be uncomfortable to certain readers.

The doom comes first; that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when your partner tells you that they’re sick. It’s imprisonment by love. There is now an inevitability.

Lynne was sick a day and a half ago, headfirst in the toilet. In situations like this, people like me do their best to support from a distance. I set chilled liquids, saltines, fresh clothes, towels, bedding and her computer outside the bathroom door. For the next thirty-six hours, the upstairs bathroom was hers and I had that long, potentially less, to step up my cleaning skills.

By the time I had scoured every used dish, disinfected every countertop and surface, and double washed potentially contaminated fabrics, the evening had rolled around. I wasn’t hungry, losing my appetite when Lynne had come out of the bathroom ghost white and shivering. She’s an angel but here on Earth, even angels have sick days. Only when my blood sugar dropped and my hands began to shake did I allow myself to eat.

Lynne rallied quickly. Within two days, she was moving with the zeal of a ten-year-old at recess. She was lighter, too; less bloated, renewed by that feeling you only get once your body has expelled everything it has to purge. I was almost happy for her receiving this newfound energy but forgot all about my sentiments when the second day, this afternoon, the ache in my stomach never waned.

When the evening came and my appetite again withdrew, a chilly omen of anxiety settled into my subconscious. Being sick with a bug is something I’d avoided for so long. I’ve been near violently ill coworkers and family members before and haven’t inherited anything malicious. Why now, after such a hot streak of good fortune?

Regardless of the logic, it takes a couple of somersaults in my stomach for me to realize there is no salvation tonight. I dismount the couch and start up the stairs.

“Bear?” Lynne asks from the couch. We lock eyes as I give a silent nod. She gives me a melancholic look. “Please let me know if you need me, okay?”

“Mhmm,” I mumble. I can’t speak for fear of opening my mouth. My lips are drying. She understands what this means for someone like me.

I don a set of loose clothing; sweats and a green long sleeve. Yanking my pillow and favorite blanket off the bed, I throw them upon the floor outside the bathroom.

“Love you, Lynne,” I muster from the top of the stairs before shutting the bathroom door.

“Love you too, Bear.” Lynne’s voice is a melody amidst the cacophony of panicky thoughts swirling in my head. As much as I desire her help, she cannot save me. This is a war I must fight alone.

I sit with my back against the wall, toilet on my left. By now, my hands are cold and clammy. A sour taste permeates the back of my throat. I’m comforted by looking at the ceiling, tracing the patters of plaster above.

How did it come to this? I think, wringing my hands together. Is it karmic justice? Has my number been called? What didn’t I wash? If there is a God, good Lord, please let me expel from the other end only.

Now, I can’t speak for everyone else, but this is how it usually goes for me. Like taking a hallucinogenic, my brain becomes a radio frequency flooded with noise. It’s a scramble of senseless chatter, recent memories, things I’ve watched today. My brain is trying to distract me, making me lose track of myself so I can’t intervene when the floodgates open. I’m shaking here on the floor, breaking out in cold sweat. You could say I’m not of sound mind when I lurch and dip my head into the toilet bowl.

It’s not pleasant; it never is, right? Acid burns my throat, streaks out of my nostrils as I cough the first round out of my lungs. I barely get a moment to breathe clean air before the second flush comes rushing up. The splash of liquid upon liquid adds to the clusterfuck of sound in my head. Every noise within my skull is white hot and singing at the highest octave, deafening everything around me until the coughing stops.

The silence that follows is as cold and isolating as the porcelain bowl I lean my head against. There’s no logic in having emetophobia. I guess that applies to lots of fears, but most days, emetophobia has me almost doing deals with the devil, wishing I could have been deathly afraid of spiders instead.

Growing up with a fear such as mine pours a foundation for a few social setbacks. I’ve never been attracted to foreign substances like alcohol due to the possibility of it making me sick. In turn, I’ve felt a step behind on the fun some of my friends experience because I refuse to become inebriated.

Learning a child in my vicinity was recently sick is enough for me to vacate the premises. Don’t get me wrong, I love my nephews, but kids are plagues with legs. Lynne has always wanted kids. To an extent, so do I, but this little phobia of mine reminds me that our future children will make me ill.

It’s been a decade since I’ve last thrown up. Ten years of careful dodging and prevention now expunged and swirling in the toilet water a couple of inches away. Without looking, I raise a hand to press the lever when I hear something. It’s faint but unmistakable… a voice.

“help,” I hear it say. “help!”

Groaning, I peek into the toilet bowl, expecting an amalgam of half-digested food and bile. Instead, I’m greeted to the sight of a small-scale city floating in the water.

“What?” I squeak out. My throat’s already irritated. “Hello?”

“Help us!” the voice says, clearer. “Someone save us!”

I rub my eyes to get a better look. The city is scaled like New York; skyscrapers with air liners coasting a few inches above, drifting under the rim of the toilet seat. Boats coast around the harbor. Why are there cries for help. Seems like a sunny day on the coast to me.

That’s when the flames come. A column of fire spews forth, engulfing several buildings, shattering glass and steely infrastructures. Fragments tumble down toward the streets below. Then the screams, bloodcurdling cries for salvation as another blast of fire streaks down a crowded avenue, igniting rows of fleeing civilians. Black smoke rises into the open air of the toilet bowl, causing a collision between two miniature planes. They spark, spiral toward the pukey ocean below.

I see it now. From the plume of acrid smoke stomps a kaiju, a six-armed creature with two heads, a clubbed tail, and enough height to clear the skyline. Its roar reverberates off the concavity of the toilet bowl. More screams, more fire. The beast tears a plane from the sky, tosses it into the cityscape below. Anything fueled by gasoline explodes. As it advances, the beast’s right head turns upward for another plane before making eye contact with me.

It turns and with haste marches through buildings, making a hasty approach. Taken aback, I sit up straighter. The kaiju continues to wade through murky water, reaching gangly arms skyward toward the inner edge of the toilet seat. It may be tall for this city, but it’s not enough to breach the bowl.

There’s a chunk of something acidic in my throat. Hacking it into my mouth, I load it on the backside of my lips and spit into the toilet. The clump splashes the creature in the face, sending it reeling backward. Blind and imbalanced, it stumbles back into the city before it topples over a traffic backup. I hit the lever and flush the toilet. Floosh!

Screams from both bystanders and the kaiju, as they enter a dark yellow maelstrom. In ten seconds they’re gone, a small pool of clear water refilling the bottom of the bowl.

Sitting back, I run my hand through my hair. I try ruminating on what I’ve just witnessed, but the fatigue and shivers are quick to set in. Opening the door, I drag my blanket and pillow into the bathroom.

“Everything okay, Bear?” Lynne calls from downstairs.

“Uh…” I look back at the toilet bowl. “Yeah. I think so.”

“Need anything?”

“No. Thank you, hon,” I say.

“You got this,” Lynne affirms me.

“Love you,” I say before closing the door and curling up on the bathmat with my blanket, shuddering as I close my eyes.

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The second wave comes less than half an hour later. I’m once again coughing as hot acid courses out of my mouth. I’ve got an iron grip on the porcelain. There’s the scent of stale urine, a small splash- likely mine- that didn’t get sanitized when I cleaned yesterday. It’s enough to gag me one more time before the heaving subsides.

There’s nothing spectacular in the bowl; just bits of lunch. We play a silent game of chess, the toilet and I, until I receive an epiphany; several thousand thoughts flooded my brain before I had thrown up the first time. As an author, my imagination is my livelihood. It’s not absurd to assume my mind was cranking overtime in all of the panic.

Before the rationality can set in, I catch a glimpse of movement; ripples in the mess below. Another city, smaller but populated to the nines, emerges from the murky lake. Summer shines upon this city; dogs are being walked, frisbees thrown in a park. Do I smell barbecue? I choke down a heave, clearing my throat.

There’s a heat; an actual sensation permeating from the bowl. It’s gentle, the kiss of July sunshine peeking out from behind clouds. It’s serene. Pleasurable. Okay. My heart’s stopped racing.

The city begins to shrink, receding from view. It goes so fast I can only catch a glimpse of its surroundings; neighboring towns, forests, oceans, before I’m face to face with a small planet levitating in my toilet. It’s not Earth, but close to it; several continents, oceans, white arctic caps.

It begins to float skyward, breaching to border of the toilet seat and passing the tank. A frail curtain of mist enshrouds the planet. Mini-Earth climbs higher, as if to touch the ceiling, when my stomach lurches again. Wincing, I lean forward and begin to cough. There’s no liquid, but the suffocating feeling of something lodged in my throat. I dig a thumbnail into my palm and cough hard.

What comes out, besides a small trickle of spit, is a hard lump maybe an inch wide on all sides. Coated in a slimy sheen, it plummets toward the water, only to jerk upward and zip into the open air. It clears Mini-Earth, does a couple of loop-de-loops, then streaks to the bathroom door. Before it can collide with the wood, it turns hard and comes to a hovering stop above the highest door hinge. It’s almost staring at Mini-Earth from where it idles; a pointed little rock.

Two seconds go by as it begins to violently shake, before erupting into hot blue flame.

“Shit,” I whisper as the Micro-Meteor launches forward and collides with Mini-Earth’s eastern hemisphere. Every semblance of colder temperature vaporizes in the air as a colossal wave ripples outward from the point of collision. What ensues is nothing sort of cataclysmic as a white-hot light engulfs the planet.

White light bleeds to orange as fire engulfs the floating sphere. The planet begins descending as the inferno rages on. I watch what now looks like no more than a charred apple stop at my eye level before free falling into the bowl below.

Ploop! Tsss…

There is no hesitation; I hit the lever and don’t watch the contents vanish. Floosh!

I take a few small swigs of cold water, surprised I’m able to keep them down, before shrinking into the corner where the bathtub meets the wall.

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The next couple bouts of vomitus are as expected; apocalyptic fever dreams. The third includes the final resistance force of civilization doing their damnedest to fight back against an encroaching wave of undead. It’s to no avail. The water they wade in is soon stained red. Floosh!

Even more depressing is the fourth. When I fall back onto my heels, I wonder what kind of metaphorical meaning hides behind throwing up an alien invasion. They’re green men, but not so little. Towering several feet higher than the tallest the human race has to offer, the extraterrestrials wield plasma-based weaponry. Eventually, humans are eradicated and the spacemen turn on each other. A turf war unlike anything seen by man. It’s a premier of newfound savagery and I’m the privileged sole viewer. I flush them down after engaging in several minutes of bloodshed. Who would have thought that in vomiting your guts out, you’re gifted a sense of God-like power?

By the time the moon has begun shining through the bathroom window, I’ve witnessed an ice age, a flood, and a nuclear holocaust. Floosh, floosh, floosh!

When midnight rolls around, I’m worse for wear. I’m lighter than I’ve felt in so long. Fortunately, nothing that’s come out of the back has come to life. The fever has peaked, but I’m still shivering where I lay. My head throbs and my throat is raw. Is there an end to this? Will this pain truly stop?

I’m asking myself these questions when I feel nauseous again. There isn’t much left to give this time, but the heaving comes with unregulated force. I’ll pass out if this keeps going. When the tide recedes and the shores of my sanity are left sweating, I lean back against the tub. Too exhausted to fight it, I let the weight of my eyelids fall from my control and drift into a shallow sleep.

“How are you?” a voice asks me.

“Hrm?” I grumble. Nothing is clear through the fog of fatigue.

“You doing okay?” the voice asks. It’s somber, one whose tone holds genuine concern.

“I guess?” I say, sitting upright. Opening my left eye, I’m met with something different. An orb sits on the edge of the toilet seat. It’s the size of a stuffed animal and looks the part, too; it’s fuzzy, speckled with multiple colors of the rainbow. It beams at me with glossy artificial eyes and a smiling cartoon mouth.

“I don’t mean to startle you,” it says, sensing my disquiet. “Just wanted to talk. Bear, right?”

“Yes. And you are?”

“You can call me Noro,” the plushie says. I cock an eyebrow.

“Like… the Noro?” I ask.

“One and only. I’m sorry for the past few hours.” Noro stares at me for a moment. It’s infuriating how a germ like him can be so adorable.

“It was hard. Really hard,” I say.

“I know it was. Is it because you’re afraid of me?”

“I’m not afraid of you. I’m afraid of what you make me do.”

“It’s necessary.”

“For what?” I snap. “What’s so necessary about it?”

“You’re not letting go of what needs letting go.”

“But-” I begin before stopping myself. Already I know there’s a truth to what Noro is saying. In my petty little heart, I just feel like it’s unfair. “Why is it so uncomfortable? So… invasive and hard and constant?”

“Isn’t life?” Noro asks. His smile never falters.

“Yes, but it’s not like this.”

“Bear, that’s because this is an ugly job of mine. This whole world is full of scary things. I guess… I’m a decent reminder that it could be a whole lot worse.”

We’re staring at each other again before I feel something well in my chest. Not nausea, not dry heaves. Laughter. I chuckle before the intensity turns up. Noro’s laughing with me as I feel several tears roll down my face and into my blanketed lap.

“Bear,” Noro says, now upon the floor and sitting in front of me. He’s no bigger than a Beanie Babies toy. “You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for. You and your lot hold too many unnecessary things in your center. I’m helping you get unstuck. I’m here to help you declutter, remove, forget.”

“You’re not trying to hurt me?” I say, almost sobbing now. Noro shakes his little body, patting my leg with a mitten-like hand.

“I’m trying to save you.” I nod, choking out a relieved moan before wiping the tears from my face. “I’m really proud of you, Bear. You did a great job.” I dry my eyes as I watch Noro climb back onto the toilet seat.

“Hey, wait,” I say. Noro turns to face me again. "Why the apocalypse? Every time?”

“It felt like the end of the world, didn’t it?” Noro says with a smile. “What would you prefer for next time?” I wince at the thought of doing this again in the future but am relieved when I realize it’s truly over. Save for the ceiling fan, the bathroom is quiet.

“You didn’t show me robots,” I say. “How about an AI takeover?”

“I look forward to it,” Noro says with a wink as he plunges into the toilet.

I reach over the bowl without looking down and hit the lever.

Floosh!