"Toliet Paper and Tears"

This story was the result of a prompt (which I can't tell you because it would ruin the ending) that I thought was really quite brilliant. But I wanted to make it clear that the basis of the story is a prompt, not my own mind....so I'm not really as deep and witty as I seem. Enjoy!

"Toliet Paper and Tears"

"I never meant for it to end like this, Lottie. You can't believe how much I've suffered for you -- and with you! -- until today. I never thought you'd be gone so soon...but I...I don't regret it, not one minute, not one word, not a single action I've taken since we met."

The man's rough hands raised the shovel, slick from the oozing rain, and finished digging the hole -- three feet wide, three feet deep. Lifting the damp and crumbling shoebox, he kissed it lightly, lovingly, before setting it in the hole and beginning to cover it with dirt. His hands, arms, shoulders, eyes, head all ached, desperate for consolation as he looked up at the statue of Mary he had buried the box beneath.

There was a cloud of hot breath as he spoke into the cold air. "Holy Mary, Mother of God, take this, one of Your Children, to Your busom; protect and comfort her in the next Life as she did for me in this one." A tear slid down his cheek. With shaking fingers he fashioned a cross out of sticks and twine and jammed it into the soft, overturned earth above her grave. "Be at peace," he whispered forlornly, staring at the brown patch with weary, reddened eyes.

Funny -- you could take the man out of the priesthood, but you couldn't take the priesthood out of the man. Had he given up too much for their short time together?

As he walked back into his new apartment -- passing the painting of Lottie that hung near the door -- he found himself glancing into the bathroom, staring at the strange new roll of toliet paper hanging on the holder. How long would it take before the sting of her loss faded, and what felt new and unsettling became old and familiar?

Stuart crossed the small living room and curled up in his favorite chair, staring blankly at the darkened television set as he listened to the rain *ping* against the windowpanes. His eyes soon took on the hazy, distant quality of someone lost in past events, and indeed he was.

Father Stuart McEvans had always been a good man, and an exemplary Irish Catholic priest. He spoke out loudly for the rights of the poor and downtrodden, and worked hard to be a voice for his parish. He was a jolly soul, happy with his lot (or so it seemed), and no one could have ever imagined what would happen next.

One day while using the rectory lavatory, Father Stuart suddenly found himself questioning everything he thought had made him happy all these years. And why this crisis of faith? All for the love of a woman, the love of his life. Now what, you may ask, was a woman doing in the mens' room in a church rectory? Well, this was no ordinary woman of flesh and blood -- this was a woman of tissue and cardboard. Yes, Father Stuart had fallen in love with a roll of toliet paper.

Imagine, if you will, a devout congregation of Catholics who are suddenly thrust into an awkward situation like this one: their pastor of 12 years suddenly develops a fervid passion for an inanimate object, and that inanimate object just happens to be, of all things, a roll of toliet paper! Of course, Father Stuart was forced to make a choice: abandon his life's calling, or abandon his life's love. Whispers of his bizarre and scandalous behavior were already rippling through his flock, making his choice a rapidly-approaching inevitability.

Everyone was sure the choice was easy. They were all completely confident he'd abandon his foolish infatuation -- so sure, in fact, that they were even ready to forgive and forget it as a pitiful plea for love and attention.

And then, like a lightening bolt out of the blue, he declared it -- that he was leaving the clergy to be married to the thing.

After that, things moved so quickly even his memories seemed blurry. He and Lottie -- the beautiful roll of Charmin who had captured his heart -- left the rectory and got an apartment. They decorated it with a "tissue" theme, all shades of pastel and white. For a long time it seemed a charmed life, and four months went by before Stuart could even blink.

Until "The Day".

"The Day" of grief, "The Day" that would live in infamy. Stuart, in a reconciliatory gesture, invited his parents, his four siblings, their spouses and children to dinner to meet Lottie. Little did he know that they planned to bring his beautiful dream crashing down.

They secretly agreed to use the bathroom, covertly but frequently, until Lottie's last ply had been flushed away...and then with demonic precision they executed their plan. Stripping her cardboard core bare, they left her carcass on the bathroom floor for Stuart to find, her murder decimating what little was left of his sanity and leaving him alone and lost in what suddenly felt like a momentuously large world.

Back in the white armchair whose fabric reminded him of Lottie's ply, Stuart ran his shaking hands back and forth over the material, hoping desperately it would bring her back. And, finally, long-pent-up tears -- of guilt, remorse, sorrow, loss -- flowed freely down his pale skinned face.

"How could you have done this to me?" he asked, of God, of no one. "When I served you so faithfully?" And, as his hands ran over the arms of the chair for what seemed like the hundreth time, God or no one finally opened his eyes.

He had been nestled in the arms of his protector, the answer to his prayer, all along.

"Oh, Julie," he whispered as he sank into sleep, face pressed against her soft, pillowed back, "You're so good to me...I love you...."