There aren’t any cameras here. Nobody’s really looking.

A figure wearing a jacket and white skin hurriedly strides towards the doors to privacy. They seem worn and slightly frightened, giving the appearance that they have been recently used. A cough builds in their throat, which hesitantly escapes as they pass two imposing and rather sizeable gentlemen, whose names were recently memorised. For a few moments too many, they see the lack of a soul in the jacketed person’s eyes.

The elder of the security guards has been considering the thoughts of his newer (darker-skinned) partner. He imagines the day when a fresh, blank face will stand in his own place, covering worries of job security with a vacant stare as he once did, and as his partner does now.

After the jacketed person enters the otherwise empty room, hand on belly, they instinctively take a moment to check their reflection in an unspotted mirror, and this brings forth hazy memories of younger years and coloured hair. Veins lightly pulse under coatings of make-up, creating a steady rhythm of unintended facial movement. For the most part, this has been caused by the consummate shambles of a meeting that has just taken place with the [redacted].

This person is sixty, and they look sixty, too. Various people have ended up with gratifying, long-lasting careers with the sole purpose of ensuring that this fact remains the case at any moment when someone may be looking at the person (that is to say, almost all moments). Nevertheless, this person’s temple, feet, and armpit hairs are currently adorned with a rather soupy sweat. One droplet from the upper forehead hits the sterile tiles below, which have recently undergone a rushed cleansing that was followed by a bin-emptying. The room itself has various gold-coloured trimmings on the corners and bottoms of the walls in the shape of indistinct flowers, and there is a counter in front of the sink that has an ornate and overly complicated tap. These decorations go unnoticed, and they will likely never receive appreciation.

The jacketed person thinks about the talks with the [redacted], and [redacted]’s ability to be both incessantly vague and insufferably specific. In the past, this ability has had its uses, and it has manufactured several successful outcomes. Yet, as of now, the duff appearance it gives will probably lead to him heading off soon. It’s best to let [redacted] smooth the whole thing over, and for everyone else to keep a thick skin. There’s been a lucky streak recently, and the jacketed person has no intention of giving anyone else any footing for at least a year. The days of leaders taking time between these constant affairs for a refreshing extramarital fuck are over. Eat your arse out, Mr President.

It goes without saying that this jacketed person is a prime minister. Not that that had been a planned thing, of course, but any job is a step up from being home secretary. Nevertheless, these moments in bathrooms are a small break in a schedule that had almost-become-but-never-quite-managed-to-be habitual. No longer did the jacketed person spend these five minutes or so falling back into youthful times of comprehensive and dormitory joy, of casual racism and hilarious sexism and simple private time to think. Sometimes in these flashbacks, certain dangerous images would crop up, before being hurriedly forgotten. Consideration of whether these events are from memories or dreams is rather inapposite. Stories like that from the past just aren’t very suitable for history.

Another door opens, and the prime minister walks into the cubicle. Later that day, they would all be visiting one of the marginals for appearance’s sake, bringing along some pork barrels and the usual set, stable phrases. Throwing a few hand-crafted puns wouldn’t hurt, either. This had become the prime minister’s pre-ordained structure of speech, one that would never end until either death or dementia. But, for now, smiling at the crowds and the bigots can be enjoyable, if you hold the proper mindset. Sure, there will always be a few people cocking a snook at the back. It’s almost like being back in the village, but now the affairs are a bit more colourful. Afterwards, a quick call with [redacted] should be arranged. It’s never a misstep to keep him buttered up.

Next, the prime minister carefully arranges some white paper onto the white seat, in such a way that resembles a spider weaving its webs. Everything is in a perfect order, as it should be. The paper is laid out in a U-formation, clothing the seat in a comfortable, thin, white veneer. The action necessitates a distracted mind, and so the figure uses the time to remember how they had recently scheduled a walk in the Downs that will take place in about six weeks time. Lovely.

With their mind protected deep within this thought, the jacketed person bends their legs to ease their body onto the covered throne, getting into the prime position. Many others would take this moment to check a personal phone, but that’s not really this minister’s thing. Instead, as their mind moves to another thought, considering legacy, and how people would think of this whole thing in a decade or ten, the first inkling of a shit inches its way out of the prime minister’s rectum. It trickles out of the wrinkly cavity like a lump possessed. It falls, and with a high Reynolds number, the coronet of the splash creates a kiss that a slobbering, overenthusiastic grandmother would envy.

As the process continues, slowly but surely, it quickly becomes evident that this particular shit will be much larger than most shits. From a dispassionate, mature and critical perspective, one could even say that its shape at this point in time bears a remarkable resemblance to [redacted]’s hairstyle, an easy yet previously unnoticed point of observation that some journalist will latch onto one day, passing it round until [redacted]’s name is lifted into an uproar of cackling giggles before being relegated to rarely read textbooks.

And so, the dark, stinking mixture of partially dehydrated but wholly indigestible waste continues to seep out and fall in a continuous stream, creating coils upon coils at the bottom of the toilet. The mound proceeds to gain mass until it’s strong and stable, inching up the sides of the toilet and rising above the skin of the water. Soon enough, the brown substance has almost completely filled the previously pristine brim of the bowl.

The prime minister is pulled away from their comfy thoughts to consider the constantly embiggening and increasingly immeasurable discharge, and this draws them to remember a particular tidbit of information that they had been given as a child, detailing how each sniff of a shit is, in truth, the inhalation of smaller shit particles in the air. This memory comes and goes in an instant, and in the time it took for this thought to be completed, the accumulation has reached its origin point. The bowl has begun to overflow, wholly unable to hold the amount of shit that the prime minister is producing. It grows, and grows, and grows, and grows, with only one end in sight. This is adult life, filled with casual betrayal and constant treason.

The figure is steadily lifted off of the throne, and the toilet paper is pushed off of the sides of the seat. It all falls to the floor, slowly becoming stained with brown until no white remains. At the same moment, the country unites to think a single collective thought: “the prime minister’s destroyed our soul”.

Words by: Dholl Puri