She finished washing her hands and crouched down before the toilet so she was eye-to-eye with the head.
“You are …”
She hesitated. The head waited.
She grabbed the head, easily plucked it from the toilet, and wrapped it in a plastic bag. She threw the bag away in a trash can outside. Then, with a light heart, she went back to living her life.
The reprieve didn’t last long. She was in the bathroom with the child when it happened. The child was now old enough to get on the toilet by herself. Her daughter could pretty much handle the whole process if the woman reminded her of every step, from lowering her underwear, sitting on the toilet and doing her business, wiping her behind, putting on her clothes again, flushing, and washing her hands. However, her daughter wasn’t tall enough to reach the sink yet, so the woman had to hoist her up to the sink to soap her hands. One day, as the woman was doing so, a familiar yellow and gray thing appeared.
“Mother.”
The woman turned around and saw the head. Then, she finished rinsing off the suds from the child’s hands, dried them on a towel, and sent her daughter out the bathroom.
“Mother.”
“What’s the meaning of this? How are you back?”
The mouth of the head almost imperceptibly twisted into a sneer. “I begged the janitor who found me to flush me down the toilet.”
The woman said nothing as she flushed the toilet. The head swirled in the rushing of the water as it disappeared down the dark hole.
Outside the bathroom, the child was full of questions. She told her child, “That was what we call a ‘head.’ If you see it again, just flush.”
The head had the gall to appear before her and the child and call her “Mother.” She decided she had to get rid of it once and for all.
Plucking the head from the toilet again was easy. But just as she was about to wrap it in a plastic bag and throw it out with the garbage, she hesitated. The head could talk. If she threw it out like this, it could ask someone to flush it down the toilet like last time. She had to ensure that it couldn’t talk.
The woman shoved the head into a small container, which she put in a sunny spot on the veranda. She figured that without water or more defecation, the head would eventually mummify. She couldn’t think of any other way, nor did she care to expend further effort on the issue.
She cautioned her husband and child to not disturb the container. Her husband had no occasion to go out on the veranda, but her child was curious. Her daughter squirmed with the desire to poke and stare and talk to it. The woman gave the child a harsh scolding and hid the container with the head.
Her husband received some vacation time, and they went traveling for a few days. When they returned, the woman went to the bathroom. She was washing her hands when something appeared behind her. She turned around. She slammed down the lid of the toilet seat and flushed.
The woman scolded the child. “You did this, didn’t you! I told you over and over again not to touch it!”
The child began to cry. Her husband stepped in. “Oh, that thing in the container? It asked me to put it in the toilet, so I did. Why, did I do something wrong?”
She sighed and told him the whole story.
Her husband remained nonchalant. “Eh, that’s nothing. Just leave it alone. It’s not like it crawls out of there at night and lays eggs around the house.”
The woman dreamed she was in a white, tiled room. Suddenly, the head popped out from behind her. The woman turned around in surprise. Then, the head popped out from another direction. It began popping out from everywhere.
Next to her, her delighted daughter kept pointing at it. “Head! Head!”
The woman begged her husband for help. He was sitting on her other side reading a newspaper. “Eh, that’s nothing. Just leave it alone.”
His words bounced against the tiles and chorused off the walls. Leave it alone. That’s nothing. Leave it alone. That’s nothing.
The lever for the flush was near the ceiling. She reached it with some difficulty and just managed to pull it. Water swirled around her husband, her child, and the head. The woman got sucked into a dark hole along with her still delighted child and her still nonchalantly newspaper-reading husband. She grabbed her child and tried with all her might to escape the whirlpool. A familiar voice spoke in her ear.
“Mother?”
She looked down at her child. Upon her daughter’s little body and delicate neck sat the head.
The shock woke her. She stumbled into the bathroom. She sat in front of the toilet and stared into the pure, flawless white of the bowl, the clear water pooled inside, and the dark hole submerged within. Imagining the thing inside and where that hole led to.