Down the Toilet Hole (Lux Æterna)

by Andrew Novak


Hey, did you hear?

They found the singer of Led Zeppelin dead in a toilet bowl.

Yeah, his whole body, but probably not in the way you're thinking.

See, his body had been shrunk to the size of an action figure, but his head was still normal-sized, more or less.

Right, right.

So his body was down the toilet hole, but his head was resting in the bowl, facing upward in the water.

I know, right?

Yeah, they think it was a suicide.

They say he looked so peaceful when they found him.

Michael Jordan 1992

by Andrew Novak


Yeah, I was at that game, the one where he broke his collarbone.

I dunno, people say he was trying to somersault onto the court at the start of the game, like Willy Wonka.

Yeah, remember in the movie, when he first appears to greet everyone outside the chocolate factory?

Right.

So he was supposedly trying something like that, but he didn't quite pull it off, landed right on his collarbone. The crunch was sickening. Echoed across the whole arena. I heard it clear as day and I was up in the nosebleeds. And that shriek.

Jesus Christ.

He lay there screaming on the court for damn near a full minute before anyone came to help. I think people thought it was part of the act. I knew it wasn't though. I could tell by his scream. I could see his eyes from where I was too, pure white, wide as saucer plates.

Shit.

Yeah, sometimes I still get nightmares from the memory of it.

Like, I'll see his face, close up though, and hear that terrible scream. I usually wake up in a cold sweat with the sound still reverberating in my mind.