Short Story // Category: Humour // Title: I Did Not Pick Up the Milk (& I want my Nipple Back)

 

“I lost half a nipple and gouged a chunk of labia today – so no; I didn’t pick up the damn milk!”

I used to be a fairly laid back person. But when my new flatmate; the messy, moody, moaner of a mortal moved in – nothing could prepare me for the daily trip over haphazardly abandoned shoes, half-drunk cans of cola that seemed to breed across our dwelling or a bathroom filled with enough deodorant cans that, had they contained the required chemicals, could have punched another hole into the Earth’s Atmosphere.

By month three I was developing a nervous tick. Even the therapeutic blasting of zombies on a games console couldn’t dull the transition into The Land of Uptight.

I woke up agitated (my new normal now) and decided to have a shower. The bathroom was not the harmonic soul soothing environment it once was. A warzone of Products, bastions of bubble baths and more sponges than what could be reasonably be attributed to two people. It all made me pause and narrow one eye with fake acceptance verbally released in a bitter sigh.

Yet soon enough water was rolling from the shower, steam was rising and my jaw unlocked from chewing on imaginary resentment provoked by mess-laced nightmares.

I focused on the sound of running water and heat. Any distractions were gently carried down a drain as my muscles reached a slumped hazy state of existence.

Finally relaxed, I washed my hair. Strawberry scented joy danced in the air. But as I turned around to rinse any bubbles from my face, I came in contact with a shower shelf. The chest height shelf was not the problem – the new unfamiliar pink razor on it was. With eyes shut to guard against bubbles, I felt a sharp and quite sting on my chest.

The blade caught on my nibble and as I tried to pull back, to avoid what was already a foregone conclusion, I tangle-twisted wrong and started to fall. As eyes flew open into the sting, I began a slow stupid fall.

A desperate yet poorly processed plan to stop the slip by getting one leg out of the bath and onto solid ground was misjudged. Having managed my acrobatic manoeuvre, one leg was steady but the other leg buckled in the death slide of strawberry-shampoo covered bath floor and I ended up falling onto the side of the bath and onto another bloody razor.

Who needs more than one razor at a time?!

In my short life I have been hit by a car, broken an arm, twisted an ankle, fallen off a waterfall, snowboarded into a tree and fallen through ice – so when I say that a razor cutting off a piece on my labia was the second most painful experience of my life; I mean it with every fibre of my experientially maimed soul.

Then it got worse.

There was blood everywhere. My dignity had evaporated faster than Vol-au-Vents at a party.

But I couldn’t think. How my body multi-tasked agony and breathing is still a mystery.

I panicked and searched for anything to help. I thought I was going to be sick. I grabbed, what I thought was a tube of Antiseptic Numbing Cream (my eyes still affected by bubbles) and basically squeezed half a tube onto the bloody gouged wound with residual hanging skin.

It was Gum Gel – mentholated salt choline salicylate with cetalkonium chloride. Menthol.

Menthol.

Mentholated.

Menthol + Open Wound.

Menthol.

This brings us the No. 1 Ranked most painful experience of my life.

My vision went white before I had even worked out my mistake. Then I woke up, sprawled on a misty floor covered in my own sick with a cat (not a euphemism) purring next to my ear.

My eyes and nose were running. I was a prone body that begged for a chalk outline. Of course; the phone started ringing. I wobble-crawled, accompanied by my feline buddy, at the crossroads between purgatory and Hell, to answer the phone.

I don’t clearly remember that conversation but it went something like this

“Are you due in the Office today?” it was my boss.

Plucked from the fog within my head – “Lost m’ nipple”

“Ok” my boss, a lovely dignified gentleman near retirement age “I think…”

“It was m’ favourite nipple!” interrupted with passion.

“I think I’ll call back later. You get some rest” with a hesitantly added “maybe call a doctor”.

“It had a name” with the hint of a sniffle “Rafferty Esmerelda the Third!” but the phone had gone dead.

I threw up, the cat left. I was still burning and ran a cold bath as fast as humanly possible – hoping for some sort of numbing effect.

Leaping in just as the front door was unlocked and that flatmate from Hell wandered in with a happy, cheerful, chirp of a “You taking a half day?” and not even bothering to wait for my strangled-in-rage reply “Did you buy any milk? We’re out”

“I lost half a nipple and gouged a chunk of labia today – so no; I didn’t pick up the damn milk!”