Discharge

"You want to know something weird that Sally mentioned to me the other day?"

"What's that?" I said, taking another drink from my water-bottle.

"She said she's never seen you use the restroom. I mean, ever. She's your sister, you'd think she'd remember something like that, huh?"

My heart leapt up to my throat, the water I just drank snaked out of my mouth, turning it dry as kindling. It took me a couple seconds to regain my composure. "That's ridiculous," I said, licking my lips. "You've seen me go to the bathroom plenty of times. I go at least three times a day."

"Well, kind of," she said and right then I knew she had been keeping tabs on me. "You actually do go into the bathroom three times a day. But, I was curious after I talked with Sally and so I followed you yesterday. You didn't make any sounds whatsoever in there."

"I try to be discreet," I said, searching for a way out of this mess. "I don't like to make any noises if I don't have to."

"Maybe. I don't know, though. The funny thing is we've been married for about four years and I've never heard you relieve yourself. When you get home from work, you go into the bathroom, do something, then flush the toilet. Before we go to bed, you go back into the bathroom and then come out about five minutes later. Everytime I go in there after you, it smells exactly the same as before."

"My system equalizes things very efficiently. It always has, what can I say? Is it bad that I don't foul up the bathroom everytime I use it?"

"Well, no, but it would make sense if you did that one time in the past four years. So I've got a little test." Her eyes lit up at this mischeivously.

"A test?" I said, my anxiety building to a crescendo. I reached for another swig from my water-bottle, then noticed her eyes flicking to that as well. "Wait, what's the test?"

"Simple, we watch each other pee. I'll even go first."

"What?! I can't watch you pee! That's ... that's kind of disgusting, you know? I don't even think I could pee in a normal restroom with some random guy next to me."

"It's okay," she said, taking my hand and leading me to the bathroom. "You don't have to pee in front of me. I won't watch you as you pee, but I'd like to stand behind you. I just want to see you pee is all."

She sat down on the toilet seat, first making sure it was down, ready to shoot me a stare if it was up. I never put it up, since there was never a reason to do so. She began urinating, though the only way I could tell was by the tinkling sound beneath where she sat. There was apparently no qualms on her part doing this in front of me. The fact that the Discharge was only a couple days away only added to my nervousness.

"Okay," she said, "you can check to see if I peed."

"I don't need to check, I heard you pee."

"Hearing is not the same thing as seeing. Since I'm going to look, you're going to look, too," she said, pulling me forward to peer inside the toilet. Sure enough, the water was tinged with a golden color that, for all intents and purposes, was pee. Satisfied I knew what she was also seeing, she flushed the toilet. "Now, your turn."

"Honey, we should do this another time. I don't even feel like I gotta pee."

"Oh, you 'gotta pee' all right," she said. "You're lucky I'm just asking you to pee. There's other things that don't seem to happen when we're together."

I stepped up to the toilet, made as if I was going to pee. And just stood there. Nothing came out. Nothing would come out for another day or two. I sighed heavily, knowing my time of secrecy had come to an end. I turned around to face her, doing up my trousers first.

"I knew it," she said in a half-whisper, one hand to her mouth, the other steadying herself on the doorframe. "I thought it was stupid and silly when Sally mentioned it, but then it kind of made sense in other ways. You eat and drink like normal guys do, but you never have to excrete it or piss it away later on. You don't seem to ... ah, shoot anything when we have sex. Are there other things?"

I took her hand and led her over to the divan to sit down. "I never have to blow my nose. I don't get nosebleeds. I never get a stuffy or runny nose; there's never a scuppy hanging from my nostrils while swimming. I don't have any phlegm that I'm either coughing up or spitting out. My eyes don't have crusties when I wake up. My teeth are always whiter than an Eskimo's freezer because I don't have any plaque buildup. I don't sweat from extreme activities, nor do I cry even if it's to dislodge some particle in my eye, because I never get those either. My ears are clean since they're devoid of any earwax. And, yeah, I don't pee or poop."

My wife goggled her eyes at me like I was an alien. "How is that possible? It has to go somewhere, doesn't it? It can't just be processed and processed over and over again until it doesn't exist. Isn't that like one of the laws of physics or something? Matter can neither be created nor destroyed?"

"Yeah, I agree it's strange. But, the weird part is..." I didn't know if I could tell her the rest, it might make her not like me anymore.

"...Is what? I don't see how anything can be any weirder than this."

"If you really want to know, then I'll have to show you. You know that trip I make annually to the Cascades?"

"Yeah, you're set to go on Saturday, right?"

"Right," I said, thinking back on my past trips to the location. Always at a different spot so I didn't attract too much attention. The first part of the day was spent digging a 10 x 5 x 5 foot hole in the ground. The rest of the day was spent filling it in. "Well, why don't you come along for this trip? Just this once, okay?"

"Why? What's going to happen? Do you transform into anything strange or something?" She was starting to edge away from me little by little.

"If I don't show you, you'll always wonder. And it only happens to me once a year. But," I hesitated, conscious of the power I had that would be shown to her, conscious of what it could mean for us. "But you have to promise me that, no matter what, you'll stick out until the next day, okay?"

--

She decided to help me dig the hole this time around. It was much easier going with her along and I didn't feel so alone with my strange power now that I could share its ability with someone I really cared about. She was stoking the campfire we had built when I started passing gas loudly.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, alarmed. "What was that?"

"It's starting," I said, grimacing in pain at what was to come. "Okay, see that rope we tied around that branch above the pit?"

She nodded, looking wild-eyed in the dim light.

"We'll tie it around my waist, not so tight, though. Tight enough that it doesn't fall off, but not too tight that it pinches me if I get ... too big. I'll lie down in the center of the pit. Then It happens."

"How will I know when you or 'it' is done?"

"When you see me using the rope to crawl up out of the pit."

When she saw me and what I had to go through once a year, she started convulsing in terror, projectile-vomiting, wetting her pants and many other unsavory things. All the while I was watching her and going through my own Discharge, I couldn't help but feel like I was passing on my Superpower to her as well. All of the nastiness that a body can produce expelled in one momentous afternoon of disgusting evacuation. The true superheroes accept their fate and work towards a better cause because of it. Me? I was farting, pooping, pissing, coughing up phlegm, tartar, snot and blood and wondering in the back of my mind when toe jam would be included in my superpowers...