The Social Shitwork

Brice couldn’t believe what he was seeing on his phone. This certainly wasn’t the first corn-based shitpic he’d ever seen, but Skylar had knocked it out of the park. This resembled the contents of an entire can of whole kernel corn held together with only the slightest noticeable amount of feces. If it wasn’t sitting in Skylar’s toilet right now he wouldn’t believe it. But he recognized the tissue dispenser sitting on the tank. Totes jelly.

This had been the third shock Brice had suffered this week. First his cousin in Amsterdam Vined himself taking a herring and beer shit which was already up to a hundred and seventy thousand hits. Then Django’s little cousin had autotuned her shit after eating Brussels sprouts and cheese; a cacophony of gas followed by just a few pebbles of hard, dark shit. It was hilarious. And now this cornucopia.

Brice’s mind reeled at how to top it. It seemed like everyone else was doing so many more exciting things with their shit. Glamorous things on a bigger scale. He felt he was falling behind and that his only true accomplishment to date – a smooth, fibrous turd at least two feet long that had coiled upon itself – was now old news and long forgotten.

Going downstairs he saw Crispin uninterestedly picking at a bowl of tuna and cheese while Kidz Bop played silently on the set. Crispin was lost in his new “Limoncello Piss” yellow Beats headphones. Even if he weren’t listening to Brokencyde he wouldn’t be much help. They’d been trying to top each other’s shit for years.

His iPhone 7, 12G LTE buzzed and to his horror he saw that Bianca from Home Ec. had just posted a picture of shit she left on the couch after eating some bad pizza. It already had ten likes. His heart sank as he clipped his phone back to its carabiner. It was unfathomable how this could be happening. Crispin chuckled hollowly from the table. Suely he’d just seen Bianca’s upload.

Going through the pantry Brice scrambled to find something, anything that he could work with. His shit from this morning had been unimpressive. He posted as they all did to keep up with shit, but it had only received several courtesy likes. He found a can of quinoa and some fiber powder which would be a good start, but not nearly enough. Some refried beans made with lard and jalapeno would help and he snatched those.

From there he moved on to the fridge. His phone buzzed again and within seconds his brother laughed. Brice wasn’t going to look. This is the kind of popularity contest that leads to school shootings and teen suicide. He had to keep his eye on the prize. Old Chinese food, good. Some finely shredded cheddar cheese. A bowl full of grease-filmed ground round. In the crisper he found kale, asparagus and onions. He took them all.

His brother looked at him and picked the crotch of his pants before pushing his bowl away and leaving the room. Brice placed all the items on the counter and started to figure a plan. The phone buzzed again and he couldn’t resist. Devon holding up her Great Dane’s shit in a napkin, Chadwick in Rio Instagramming a sweet pic of a public bathroom. Shit smeared all over the walls and floor. “Wish you were here.” The likes were instant.

More and more shit popped up in myriad forms, all of it incredible. What was going on? It was three in the afternoon. How did people have all this shit to post? Didn’t anyone study or work or sleep? He put his phone back and got out the blender and put everything in. At this point it would be a chunky paste that would take too long to consume. He needed something to add viscosity and settled for garlic-infused olive oil and two-percent milk.

Starting slow, Brice pulsed the concoction to break it up and then slowly upped the speed (adding fluids accordingly) until the blender whirred in easy indifference. After several minutes it looked like he was finished. He poured his creation into his old sixty four ounce Yo Gabba Gabba  Travelchug to shield it from prying eyes and poured in several squirts of Sriracha for good measure before moving to the couch.

He placed his phone on silent but still checked it constantly as he drank, each post further steeling his resolve. The goop went down well enough, oily and spicy and cool. A few chunks hadn’t broken down completely and he chewed these thoughtfully as he liked Raymundo’s ghost shit, evidenced only by faintest brown-orange smear at the bottom of the bowl.

By the time That’s So Raven came on he was done. The fear gripped him as he felt nothing. Nothing at all, nothing brewing, no gas no anything. He couldn’t let his Wednesday end like this. Come Monday they would be back in school and only the best shit would be talked about and there was a dance coming up and if he didn’t have anything… he was beside himself.

Ten minutes turned to twenty, turned to thirty. The day was dragging at a snail’s pace. How long would he have to wait? What if nothing happened? He got up off the couch and went back upstairs to play XBOX Palladium.  When he got to the top of the stairs, a grumble. Then another. He felt a hot jet soil his shorts and smiled.

Brice ran to the bathroom as the cramps grew acute and came at regular intervals. But what’s this? Locked! Crispin was probably in there jerking off again. More gas and shit started leaking out as he ran to his parent’s room. At last! He set up his iPhone on its built-in tripod and peeled off his jeans, hot shit flowing everywhere.

Shit sprayed on the shower door and seeped into the carpet. Shit got ankle deep and shit flecked up and soaked his shirt. The smell was wretched and he desperately wished he had the technology to share that. He took his phone and panned the room as the shit kept coming. It was massive and positively the most exciting thing he’d ever seen. This was the kind of shit that would get Lisle to go to the dance with him.

The unblinking eye of the phone caught it all and stored it safely in the cloud. Soon the bathroom looked as if someone had exploded an IED of shit in it. Not a square inch lay bereft of Brice’s glory. The stream had slowed down and he sat dizzily at the edge of the toilet. His head hurt and the shit seemed redder than it should have been.

As the bathroom bowed and shrank before his eyes he fumbled to post the video and peppered Facebook with some stills for good measure. The likes started coming in and he smiled as he stood and tripped over a length of lumpy red rope on the floor. He pulled it with his foot and felt it deep in his gut. His eyes widened and he took another step and fell forward into the doorknob lodging it into his right orbit.

It was uncertain how long it took his parents to get back from the farmer’s market and find Brice, but authorities calculate he lay dead in his shit for at least twelve hours before his body was discovered. The video received six billion hits, which means that roughly eighty six percent of the world saw what Brice had accomplished.

Back at school he was the talk of the town. People wore parachute pants filled with Jello pudding; the memes went into the hundreds of thousands. Dozens of blogs were created in his honor. “What Would Brice Poo” bracelets became de rigueur across the developed world. Brice’s glory radiated across the land for almost an entire week. Until a boy named Siegfried Carbuncle was taped launching his shit through not one, but three flaming hoops he’d set up in his grandmother’s back yard.