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HAHA HORROR
Ghost in the Latrine
Nothing good happens in a campground bathroom
Ghost stories around the fire were the absolute best part of camping. But Ryan’s tale about Nellie, the girl who’d murdered her parents by suffocating them with a plunger for insisting the toilet paper unroll over, scared the hell out of his kids. He told them she had escaped the nearby psych ward and hidden out in this very campground. That when they tracked her down, she killed herself in the outhouse rather than be dragged back to the institution. Oh yeah, and that her ghost waited for the unsuspecting to go in there alone at night, where she would plunge them to death. “From the nuthouse to the outhouse,” he’d laughed.
Now the kids wouldn’t use the outhouse, and his wife was furious with him. So, despairing that his offspring were such whiny babies, he’d come in here — alone — to show them there was nothing to worry about.
The plan was to lean against the sink for five minutes scrolling Twitter, then exit pumping his hands over his head like a winning prizefighter. But, what the hell, when in Rome…
He chose an end stall and sat down, hoping the jalapeño poppers from that joint down the road didn’t prove to be a mistake. But if you couldn’t trust Dusty Dan’s Decent Diner, who could you trust?
He chuckled, which was a mistake, because it made him open his mouth. Gah. Now the stench of this place was on his tongue. The air freshener on the wall looked like it had spritzed its last spritz during the Seinfeld premiere. Damn, he didn’t blame Nellie for offing herself here. If the stink was one stale fart worse, he’d consider it, too.
He looked at the dented metal wall to his left, and was heartened to see — even in the dim, flickering light — graffiti from a kindred spirit:
Nuthouse Nellie
Back from Hell, she
Ki
C’mon, man. Okay, it reeked in here, but finish your work, for God’s sake. He took the stubby pencil from the morning’s mini-golf round from his pocket. One of the shack’s two 60-watt bulbs went out — gave up the ghost, ha! — but he could still see what he was doing if he squinted.
