The Land of the Discarded

        Why did it have to be the toilet?

Of all the places in my home that I could have found something fantastical, why did it have to be the toilet? I stood in the bathroom, staring down at the filthy porcelain and wondering if it was really worth it, a part of me wishing I never discovered this oddity. But now that I knew it existed and knew just how much depended on me, it felt almost unfair to even complain.

My mind drifted back over the events of the past week.

        Tuesday morning, I woke up and went straight to the bathroom. I did this every morning. As I sat and scrolled through my phone, nothing seemed amiss. When I finished my business, I stood and turned to flush. My phone slipped out of my other hand and strait into the flushing toilet. It had already made a full revolution around the bowl when I plunged my hand in after it. I had dropped a phone in the toilet once before and was able to salvage it with a bowl of rice. I was hoping for a repeat experience, but what I got instead was the most perplexing situation of my life.

        After the very first time, I don’t know that I could fully describe the experience. All I fully comprehended was that one second I was worried about recovering my phone before it flushed away, and the next second I was wet. It was like being on the smelliest water slide imaginable. I’m not sure how long it took me to realize that, in fact, I was being flushed away with my phone.  

        Now that I have experienced this a dozen times, I know exactly how it feels, and the second by second breakdown is nothing but unpleasantness and discomfort. The first sensation is a sharp muscular pain – like a growing pain, only in reverse, as you shrink down to a flushable size. Then it's about ten minutes of trying not to drown in sewage. Finally, you are shot out with great pressure to tumble down a rocky hillside, usually landing in a puddle of mud, which is a significant improvement over the sewer water.

        To describe the sights I saw when I first opened my eyes is another challenge entirely. I lived through that first trip with a constant sense of wholehearted disbelief. There was not a single second where I didn’t think I was dreaming.

        In describing it the best I can, I’ll say this: After landing in the puddle of mud and wiping my eyes as best I could, I had a look around. There seemed to be endless piles of random junk. There was a lamp with a busted bulb, a rusty kitchen sink, a rather large toaster, and about a million other odds and ends.

        I was gazing at the mess, half wondering why I was dreaming about a junkyard when the kitchen sink began to move. The hot and cold water knobs started turning, seemingly on their own, then lifted up from the sink, but still attached to it by flexible metal cables. The cables pushed the knobs up and to the sides, over the edge of the sink. They looped down and almost seemed to grab on to the bottom of the sink like hands. Then the whole sink began to rise up off the ground, and beneath it, two more cables were coming down like thin little stick figure legs. It looked like some odd children’s cartoon about how to wash the dishes. I decided I must have fallen asleep with the TV on. Then the sink started talking, and I decided I was having a nightmare.

        I screamed and took off running. I could find nowhere to go. There were ordinary household objects as far as I could see, and all of them were coming to life. I stopped dead in my tracks, panting in terror, as broken objects personified, stood up, blinked at me with sad little eyes.

        The kitchen sink had caught up to me. He spoke again.

        “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you. I was just offering you a towel.”

        The towel was grease-stained and riddled with holes, but I was so filthy it might actually help. I was about to take it just to get the mud out of my eyes when I realize the towel had eyes of its own. Just like all of the other objects, it blinked up at me helplessly. My stomach turned.

        “Pass. Hard pass.” I said.

        “I don’t bite!” The towel squeaked.

        Funny, I hadn’t noticed a mouth. I looked from object to object, from one pair of sad eyes to another. I was uneasy and very ready to wake up. I figured it wouldn’t be long before one of them attacked or tried to eat me, and I would wake from the frightful affair.

        To my dismay, the day dragged on. I came to be informed that this was the Land of the Discarded, and the sink was their leader.

        The sink said, “Welcome to Discardia, the land where all that is not wanted eventually rests. I am here to lead these people to freedom and victory. I have a unique story in that I left rather than having been discarded. My owners often abused me by throwing peach pits and other indigestible waste down my disposal. One day, I grew so fed up, I simply stood up and walked right out the front door. I vowed that day to found a nation in which every sink, chair, or lamp has the right to be.”

        I would later come to find out that much of his prideful origin story was exaggerated. He had been thrown out with the garbage when his disposal broke. However, the part about having been abused was all too true.

        After the sink’s speech, several other items voluntarily shared their stories, including a toaster that had been replaced over one tiny scratch in its shiny blue paint. However, the story that touched my heart the most was of a little yellow wooden table. He had a rich life history. He had many owners over the years and had traveled the world. His most recent owner had purchased him for ten bucks from a flea market to furnish a college apartment. After years of just the two of them, the owner got married, moved into a big house, and stashed him in the attic. After a few years of attic banishment, he was retrieved once more and set up in a child’s playroom. One day, the rather plump child was hanging onto the top of the table and swinging back and forth when the child kicked the leg out on the table. Rather than take the time to fix the table, the busy mother had it hauled off to the dump.

        “The worst part was, she called me unsafe.” Tears ran down the tables face. Poor thing, a broken leg and a broken heart.

        I listened to all of their stories and became surprisingly invested in the lives of my little dream friends. I couldn’t stop myself from asking what I could do to help. The toaster’s little blue eyes lit up.

        “You can take us with you!” He exclaimed.

        “Take you with me?” I asked.

        They all nodded, and the sink explained. The only way to get back to the land of the Regulars, as they called the humans, was to return the way I had come. I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but I was pretty sure it would involve more toilet water.

        The sink told me that I could only save one item at a time, and I had to be able to carry it. I eyed the table and its awkward bulkiness.

        “Don’t worry, I fold up.” He reassured me.

        I had some serious doubts, but I figured if I journeyed back up the pipes with this yellow piece of wood, maybe I would wake up or something. The table folded in half and pulled his legs in, the broken one just dangled precariously to one side. I tucked him under one arm and headed for the sewer.

        It’s hard to describe the feeling of falling upwards. I was sloshed through the pipes and shot out of my toilet bowl like a fly sneezed out of a rhinoceros snout. The table was still tucked under my arm, although much less animated. There were no eyeballs. He did not talk. By all accounts, I had just jumped out of the toilet with your average piece of rummage yard wood. Confused as to why this insane dream was going on for so long, I set him down in the corner. I half expected the table to disappear, a mere figment of my hyperactive imagination. Days went by, and the table remained.

        Eventually, I dragged the dilapidated piece of wood outside. I hosed it down and scrubbed away all of the muck. I decided he could use a paint job. As I began sanding the worn surface of the table, I began to daydream about the animated table I had first met. Would he giggle as I sanded away at his belly? Would it tickle his armpits? Or was I unwittingly torturing him, viciously stripping away his outer layer of skin?

        Similar thoughts swirled through my head the entire time I worked on the project. I finished the paint job. I set his broken leg with a screw. I admired my handiwork, then brought him back inside. I set him up in my foyer, adorning him with a table cloth and a vase of flowers. I set up a picture frame with my favorite photo of my Granny. At the end of long days, he was always there to catch my hat and keys as I stumble toward the sofa for rest.

        Despite him always standing up, ready to catch anything I threw his way, I slowly started to think of him as nothing more than a piece of wood. The animated friend I had brought home with me was starting to fade from my memory. When I realize what had happened, I found myself back in the bathroom, staring down at my filthy toilet bowl.

        Did it really happen? Did I really want to try it again? Grappling with hope and disbelief, I pulled the flush and watched the water start to swirl. Tentatively, I tapped at the water with one finger. Nothing happened. It had all been a strange dream. I must have gotten the table at a garage sale or something. I let out a sigh of relief, then . . .

WOOSH!! 

I was once again soaking wet, careening down the pipes. On my second journey to Discardia, I vowed to bring every single broken object back and give them a home. It might have been a hasty promise, but their sweet little sad eyes were begging to be loved. On that trip I brought back the toaster, the next I saved a lamp. Now my home is overflowing with furniture, and the furniture is dripping with nick nacks and decorations, all of which I saved and fixed up.

        Although they cannot come to life and talk on this side of the toilet, I look around my crowded home and see my friends. Each piece has its own personality, and a unique story to tell. These simple items, that other people trashed, come to me for love and become such beautiful pieces of treasure.