Toothpaste

BANG!
The toilet door.
“Open up!” Father’s voice.
Jean stood at the corner, as far away from the door as she could possibly be, behind the bathtub, her chest heaving. Breathing had become a chore. Her hair, neck, chest and clothes were drenched in sweat, while her cheeks were drenched in tears.
In her hands, she held a tube full of toothpaste.
“Open up!” screamed her father’s voice. “Open up now, you little shit!”
Jean was amazed at how exactly it sounded like her father’s voice. She could almost believe it.
Almost.
Because she knew that her father was dead. Though the man with the mask and knife may not know it, she saw. She saw the man pull her father’s head by the hair and slam it into the wall and then slice his throat and then stab his eye. Though the man with the mask and the knife may not know,
Jean saw everything.
She knew.
The man outside the toilet was not her father.
With trembling hands, she opened the tube of toothpaste, the constant pounding on the door never faltering, squeezed a handful into her palm, and
licked it clean
A moan escaped her throat as the taste filled every corner of he mouth. It almost instantly became easier to breathe, her shoulders, which she had no idea were tensed, relaxed. Her chin lifted, her head tipped back.
And a grin appeared from out of thin air.
The pounding on the door, the furious screams of the man in the mask with the knife, the sweat, the tears, the blood, they all faded away…
And then came the music. Soft, at first, then louder.
Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
Her father’s favourite. He had loved it ever since he was a child, he had once said.
As the song smoothly transitioned into a ballad, with a piano, Jean dropped the toothpaste, shifted her leg forward. A hand went up to sweep the sticky hair from her face, the grin still there. She brought her hand forward, fingers curved outward, like a ballerina. Then, as the music swelled, she took a stride forward and spun to the middle of the toilet, in front of the basin, one hand arched above her head, the other in front of her, the way ballerinas held their hands when they spun.
When she stopped, she stood in front of the mirror. Her hair was a complication of threads. Her face was splattered with blood like a Jackson Pollock masterpiece. Her clothes were stuck to her body, and her shirt was so drenched she could see her own bra through the fabric.
The music began to swell some more, crescendo, and it smoothly entered a guitar solo.
She continued to dance. Spinning in circles, looking up, looking down. Sometimes striding, sometimes standing. Hands moving around freely and without direction.
Then something dropped. It made a heavy, skittering sound as it hit the tile floor.
Both she and the music came to an abrupt stop, and she stared at the object that had fallen from her pocket.
Jean blinked.
It was a pistol.
She blinked again.
The pounding and shouting suddenly continued.
“Open up, you little piece of shit!”
Jean picked the pistol from the floor and, tucking it back into her pocket, she backed into the corner, as far away from the door as possible.
Along the way, she stepped on the tube of toothpaste she had dropped. All its contents spat out onto the wall and floor. She turned to see the mess she’d made and
gasped.
All the toothpaste.
Her eyes widened in horror.
ALL THE TOOTHPASTE.
A L L T H E T O O T H P A S T E !
“Open up, you little piece of shit!” Jean still could not believe how much he sounded like her father. Of course, he couldn’t be her father. She knew that the man with the mask and the gun shoot him square in the face, and all the blood that had splattered out behind. “Open up, you little piece of shit!”
The pounding got louder and faster, the shouting more intense, angry.
“Open up, you little PIECE OF SHIT!”
Jean stared helplessly at the toothpaste on the floor.
It’s okay, she told herself. Maybe I can still eat it…
She knelt down and collected some toothpaste with her finger, which she stuck into her mouth and sucked.
She winced.
Salty.
No. Not nice. Not good. Not good. Not good.
She rushed over to the sink and rinsed her mouth.
She gargled,
and spat.
She looked at the patch of wasted toothpaste on the floor, and the empty tube next to it.
no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no
The pounding on the door worsened to the point where
“Open up you little piece of shit!”
every one seemed like it would break the feeble wooden door.
And every time it didn’t Jean’s chest grew tighter.
She needed toothpaste.
She ran a hand through her hair.
She
needed
NEEDED
toothpaste.
B A N G !
Jean jumped, gasped.
B A N G !
Jumped, gasped, again.
B A N G !
TOOTHPASTE! TOOTHPASTE! TOOTHPASTE!
She began pacing back and forth.
B A N G !
This one felt like it could have killed her. Maybe she would have preferred that. She crumbled to her knees, crying like the way she would every time her father locked her up in that terrible, terrible room.
“Stop…” she whispered.
B A N G !
“Please stop…”
B A N G !
“Stop!!!”
B A N G !
“I SAID STOP!”
She stood up, spun around, pulled the pistol from her pocket, and fired at the door
three times.
Three loud pops, and then
silence.
Jean heard only her own breathing,
the dry click of her throat as she swallowed,
and the subtle buzz of the florescent light overhead.
She walked to the door, raised a trembling hand to the knob, and hesitated.
The man with the mask and the gun, the who had killed her father, was outside this very moment, either dead or alive.
Dead, she told herself, must be dead, for the pounding had stopped.
With a confident click, the door chittered open.
Outside was the living room and dinning area. Lit only by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. Three chairs surrounded a round table. And behind it, Jean saw a pair of legs over a pool of dark red blood.
She raised her pistol, and took a cautious step forward.
Then instant her foot touched the wooden floor, she spun to her left, gun pointed forwards.
In front of her was a dark corridor, where there were the bedrooms, the storeroom, and, right at the end, that terrible, terrible room. Though it was dark, she was sure no one was there, so she turned to the right, expecting to see the man with the mask and the knife, but instead seeing
no one.
With newfound haste, she walked into the living room, past the kitchen door, and around the dinning table. There, she was greeted with the most poetic sight of all time.
Her father’s body.
Leaning against the wall, eyes wide open, he looked like one of those dolls Jean used to have as a little child. Except that there was a deep red hole in the centre of his temple where the man with the mask and the gun had shot him, and on the wall behind…
The wall looked like a Jackson Pollock masterpiece. Incomprehensible, yet beautiful.
Simultaneously, her heart sank and her lips curved upwards. On one hand, her father was dead; on the other, she was free.
The pleasant word echoed in her mind.
free…
free…
free…
She chuckled a little. No one to scold her and beat her with the Belt and lock her in that terrible, terrible room now.
free…
She chuckled some more. No one to scold her mother and beat her mother with the Belt and lock her mother in that terrible, terrible room now.
Now she was laughing.
No one to say don’t eat toothpaste don’t be a stupid girl you’re a stupid girl stupid stupid stupid…
She was laughing so hard, she couldn’t control herself. Her knees buckled. She gripped the corner one of the chairs nearby for support but her weight took it down with her. The next thing she knew, she was lying on the floor, her cheeks and stomach burning like hellfire, saliva leaking from corner her mouth.
Eventually, she managed to cool herself down. But when she looked back up at her father, she cracked up again.
This went on for minutes. She could barely contain herself. Not that she necessarily wanted to.
When she finally stopped, lying sideways on the stiff wooden floor, she looked up at her father’s face with a new air of seriousness.
He was dead. Perhaps only now that fact began to sink in.
And then she
(woke up from this terrible dream)
began to cry. The tears spilled down the side of her face like a river, and then dripped onto the wooden floor silently.
Then came the whining.
Her face drew into a wince.
Then she cracked up.
Then came the sobs.
Then came the toothpaste.

B A N G !

The toilet door.
“Open up!” Her father’s voice. It sounded so much like her father’s voice.
Identical
Jean shrunk back into the corner, as far away from the door as possible.

B A N G !

She jumped. With trembling hands, she struggled to squeeze the remainder of the toothpaste onto her hand. Then she gave up, and shoot it directly into her mouth. However, when it touched her tongue, the taste was not what she expected. Not what she wanted.
It tasted horrible.
Horrible!
She

B A N G !

rushed to the sink to spit it all away.
Then the door exploded.
It was loudest thing Jean had ever heard. Little chunks and splinters of wood flew inward into the toilet. Some of it struck her. Pain, like a dormant volcano reactivating, erupted in places where she had never felt pain in a long while. Dust (either from the wood or the floor, Jean had no way of telling) rose, and from it, she saw through the mirror, the man emerged. The man with the mask and the knife. The mask was like a piece of black cloth with two holes for the eyes. And those eyes, the eyes that belonged to the face that was behind the mask, those eyes were brown. The man’s shirt was black, and long sleeved. He wore gloves. Black gloves. And in his right hand, he held his knife. As he, the man with the mask and the knife, approached, he raised his hand, where he held his knife.
No. His gun. He raised his hand, where he held his gun. He was the man with the mask and the gun. He raised the gun, released the safety lock, and—
strode forward, aiming to stab Jean in the neck.
Jean spun around, pistol in her hand, ready to shoot the man with the mask and the knife.
But the man wasn’t wearing a mask, and his face, Jean noticed with horror,
was her father’s.
The Belt came down.