IT ALL STARTED ON Saturday. Biff had gotten a taco from a shit-faced weasel of a man —I think his name was Tim. Tim was greasy and dirty and smelled like ass, but Biff had been on the streets for some time himself so he wasn’t one to care. Anyway, Biff ran into this so-called Tim at the bus station where all the drifters looked out for each other, so the encounter seemed harmless enough at the time. Biff had been panhandling on the strip and all he had to show for it was $5.32, mostly in a spread of pennies from some cackling cocksucker who threw them to the wind so he could get off on watching Biff fuck himself to chase after them. Biff was hungry, and Tim was offering, and he wasn’t going to turn down a free meal —and a taco at that.

The taco made Biff’s day despite the existing log jam in his bowels. Constipation can be an ironic convenience when you’re homeless, especially given Biff’s living arrangements, an alternating rotation between bus station bathrooms and the dumpster out back. That morning behind the dumpster, he had groaned to squeeze one out, so he kinda hoped the taco would give him a good case of the shits, you know, to clean out the works. He’d gobbled it down eagerly, hardly stopping to chew, with a smug, “Thanks, man, you’re a lifesaver.” But Biff didn’t get the enema he wanted. Instead, he was bound up like he’d been ass-fucked by a wad of clay.

Anyway, that hard-won Saturday-morning turd was the last decent shit Biff would see in a while. By the afternoon, his gut was a tangle of knots and he spent most of the day sleeping behind the dumpster. No one checks back there until Thursday trash pickup, so he figured he had the place to himself.

Whatever was churning around in Biff overnight hit him with full force the next morning. Hell, let’s be real —what Biff felt roiling inside him Sunday morning was like a Mack truck hauling a ton of bricks through his large intestine, destined for his asshole, although Biff didn’t exactly describe it that way himself. He woke up howling and holding his belly, then took off for the bathroom.

He slammed through the door and beelined for the stairs leading to the basement of the cheap fare terminal. There, he wouldn’t be bothered by the security guards, whose concern for the so-called “safety” of the population reflected the respective means of those traveling, with the well-to-do being more secure and the unhoused being out of sight, out of mind, unless actively challenged. The men’s room was set far back in the lower level with one flickering fluorescent that was sometimes lit, sometimes not. It constantly reeked of piss, and the janitor barely popped his head in once every three days to run a broom over the floor and maybe empty the trash, and never on the weekend.

A bloody used condom greeted Biff as he dashed to the middle stall. He made a halfhearted attempt to close the door, which hung crooked on one hinge, then dropped his stained, crusty-ass jeans around his ankles, sat on the toilet, and stretched and strained.

Nothing would come.

Not even bothering to pull up his pants, Biff stood and pushed through the cockeyed stall door, which groaned on its single hinge. He migrated to the wheelchair-accessible stall, muttering something about how the commode height might help. This time, he left the door open, having abandoned any concern for privacy. He grabbed the bar for leverage as he prepared for a religious experience of a dump. And…bupkis. He even wormed his middle finger up his ass crack as far as he could, pressing it into the start of a bad fist fuck, but the finger came out clean despite smelling like taco shit.

After half an hour of red-faced hard labor, he gave up and shuffled out of the stall, defeated.

The day went on, and Biff hardly felt like eating, which wasn’t entirely unlucky seeing that he still only had $5.32 to his name. The day-old half-eaten bagel he’d found discarded on a bench held no appeal, despite its pristine condition —well, after he picked off the tissue stuck to what was left of the yellowed, hardening crust of cream cheese. The half cup of cold coffee he found with the bagel was also no help, though at least he had a new cup for the effort. Biff filled the cup at the neglected, sticky-buttoned water fountain and gulped down as much as he could hold. And though he pissed like a racehorse that held the Guinness World Record for pissing —a championship title for which Biff never wanted to compete —the hydration did nothing to loosen his bowels.

Come Monday, Biff knew he had to do something. So, he spent his only $5.32 on a half gallon of prune juice and as many cheap laxatives as he could afford, which turned out to be exactly ten pills. This purchase left him only twenty-nine cents to his name, all in fucking pennies. Biff returned to the men’s room below the bus terminal, swallowed five of the small pink pills at once, forced down a little over half the prune juice, did fifty squats, and parked himself in the wheelchair-accessible stall, where he burped up the most disgusting, foul-tasting concoction you can imagine, not unlike koala pap, a black acrid prune juice sludge that formed a sugary acidic film over his tongue and teeth.

He lowered his head into his hands in despair.

Then in one glorious moment, Biff’s stomach gurgled and whined, and out came a trombone blast of a taco fart that shook the stall and a sent a surge of pungent aroma through the whole of the bathroom, threatening to peel away what was left of the blood, piss, and shit stains on the walls and floor. But where hope had blossomed, it quickly faded when Biff realized that it was just gas and nothing more.

Thank God the morning commuter rush had come and gone and the station was empty. Getting from the downstairs bathroom to the upstairs for the 10:25 a.m. janitor changeover was a doing though, and Biff left a black fog in his wake. He returned after the lunch rush to find the bloody used condom swept into the corner at the end of a smeary, red streak, indicating the janitor had made his obligatory visit. Assured of having the bathroom to himself from that point onward, Biff holed up in his preferred stall, and waited.

Still nothing came.

By Tuesday, Biff could feel it —something was moving around in there, and not in a good way. More in that Alien-bursting-out-of-your-gut-oh-God-there’s-something-alive-inside-of-me-cut-it-out-right-the-fuck-now-dammit! kind of way. No way in Hell was he moving from that spot —he was committed to the bus station sub-bathroom no matter what. So, he sucked it up, took the remaining laxatives with what was left of the half gallon of prune juice, and prayed for a miracle.

As Biff sat with his stiff jeans and underpants around his ankles, all he could think of was how he’d be found dead like that, his ass exploded and taking the rest of him with it. He could see the janitor’s face, etched in horror… Holy Fuck, what the Hell happened here? This is why we can’t let vagrants hang out in the bus station. They don’t pay me enough to deal with this shit… and laughed a little under his breath at the thought of leaving such a mess behind. Biff hoped he’d be dead by the time the janitor found him though —otherwise the ambulance and subsequent ER visit were sure to cost him his yet-to-be-conceived firstborn child, and possibly even his second, between the bodily violation and the bill he’d never be able to pay.

Then it happened. The mass shifted downward into a birthing position and began to rumble. Something felt alive in there, like a spider egg sac about to burst forth with hundreds of thousands of tiny crawling terrors, waiting to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world. What had Biff gotten himself into? Maybe the ER was a better option, as opposed to being eaten alive inside out by a million maggots or whatnot. But there was no time. Whatever was coming, was coming.

He braced for impact and the massive load began to distend. What followed is no exaggeration, shit you not —no pun intended. The thing inside Biff didn’t just plop out like normal crap. Instead, it started pulling Biff into his own anus with an obscene force. Biff screamed and bellowed like a slaughterhouse pig as that creature sucked at the whole of his being and he…imploded. His arms and legs shrank into themselves as his overinflated gut burgeoned, and finally his head caved into the writhing mass. Skin strained taut over his bloated form, growing transparent as it stretched over a moving lump of red and brown and black and green viscous goo, blood and bile, and something more.

A single arm extended from the gaping anus, emerging from the oozing wreckage slumped upon the soiled seat. The hand grabbed hold of the metal bar and edged itself along its length, leaving a long brown and bloody streak as it pulled itself forth and began to extract the rest of its form. A chest heaved from the bloated bubble, spraying a vile jellified liquid in a huge ring around the whole of the toilet in what could only be described as a blowout from Hell. Two legs followed —first, the left kicked out from the debris, knocking what remained of Biff’s spleen across the mess of his putrefied body, and the right followed, stepping into the slippery remains of his liver.

After the legs, a head crashed through, matted hair and beard dripping with blood and shit. The eyes opened and blinked twice, and the face contorted into a wide smile, yellow and brown stained teeth arcing wide.

Finally, as the remains of Biff’s body collapsed in on itself, the other arm emerged, grasping the pulsing, partially digested remnants of the taco that started it all. The newcomer shook the taco to rid it of any remaining detritus, and it…restored itself into its formerly pristine condition. Perfect. Enticing. Damn good enough to eat, practically begging to be sucked down whole.

The newcomer spoke.

“Oh, hi there, I’m Tim. I’m sorry but the homeless man Biff whom you were following is gone. If you want, you can wait around in case he comes back. Hey, I’ve got an extra taco from lunch and you look like you could use a bite —it’s yours if you want it. One hundred percent beef with extra cheese and hot sauce. You look like you need a break, and c’mon, it’s free food.”

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