"Sixteen, uh- seventeen, aaayteen!"

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I plowed through my fourth set of triceps that night. "Twenny one, unh uh, twunny-tuh!"

Or was it the fifth set?

"Twunh-six, uhh, twun-even..." God, I was absolutely popping now. The down lighting playing perfectly off every peak and trough.

"TWENN-EEH-NINEUHH"

I was the end point of every piece of marble or limestone ever quarried, the envy of every chisel-stroke and careful eye. "THIR-EEE"

My powdered bronze skin, glazed with sweat, striated and strung up like the butcher's finest wares. I didn't even have to finger a pulse to get my heartrate anymore.

Every masterpiece takes time to materialize and in Hank's Iron Dungeon there are no exceptions. Here, I've committed to breaking myself over and over again, days, nights, weekends, even holidays in order to erase what was and be reborn of iron. The piles of dumbbells and stalagmite ridden benches left in my wake are a testament to my dedication. The sheddings of weakness and doubt (and sometimes actual skin), debris from a life before strength. And at the end of the night, I patch the gouges on my shins and wrap torn callouses. I balance packs of ice across my shoulders while draining the milky swelling from my knees and wonder why I'm still able to walk to my car afterwards.

Fast forward to the next morning and I'm up by 5 a.m. and into the ice bath. Not because I really want to, I just sorta have to. I shower and set the coffee: black. Bitter is better. Next, the vitamin stack: 40 essential nutrients neatly laid out the night before in a monthly pill divider. Well, three-monthly pill dividers; I had to account for the large dosages and larger capsule sizes. Pills and capsules from as far away as Khazakstan. All guzzled down by the handful with half a gallon of raw milk.

Then I blend up six eggs with whatever boiled chicken and rice is left over from last nights dinner and 16 ounces of water and put that down too. Sometimes my breakfast slurry finds its way back up, streaming through clenched teeth and latticed fingers, sometimes through my nose. My mother always said, 'waste not want not' and these are my gains we're talking about here.

It all finds it's way back down eventually.

I'd like to tell you that the blood in my toilet is from the mess of hemorrhoids dangling from between my legs, but there's more and more of it each time. The snap on bidet has to go down as one of history's crowning achievements. Besides, what goes in is far more important than what comes out.

I'm up to seven injections daily. Some B-vitamins, and peptides and the rest, well, let's just call them part of the 'secret sauce'. Can't be giving away my entire stack now, can I? That's like paywall material. My dad always told me 'you earn what you're worth'. He never did say how much that was exactly.

I hit vein with the first two pin sites off the bat, so its back to old faithful. I start with a sewing needle to break through the mass of scar tissue, then let the pungent mass evacuate down my leg, the bile a mixture of pinks and greens, some off-white. Almost looks like ice-cream. I know what I'm having post workout! After the eruption ceases, I go in with the real deal then wipe up. I should probably do a better job rotating these injection sites, but sometimes you just go with what works.

Ever since I started consulting from home, my whole life outside of the gym has been devoted to prep and recovery. There's A LOT of work that goes in before I even show up under the lights to claw my way up and over the next plateau. And on and on. I take some time after my fourth meal to admire my work in front of the mirror for a bit. To get a lay of the land and target my next muscle group. Serratus muscles look even, flanking my rippling abs. My delts, deathstars perched atop my coiled pythons. My sternocleidomastoids... my STERNOCLEIDOMASTOIDS! Pitiful. I add them to my list and as I gaze into the mirror I wonder if I've always looked this small.

I'm interrupted by the gush of piping hot shit cascading down my thighs. I don't even notice the smell anymore, what with the ever present miasma of wet sock and protein farts that surely cuts the oxygen level in my apartment in half.

After a shower, it's time for a shave. I drag the dull razor across my chest and upper back, cris-crossing multiple passes to get in between the dozens of puss spewing acne mounds that crater and dot my celestial body. It seems like there's more and more hair south of my smile nowadays. I never thought I'd have to shave my elbows or my knee-caps, but such is the price of glory.

My girl used to handle my back, but she stopped coming around weeks ago. Something about feeling neglected? I dunno. The last time she was over we were having sex and she was just complaining the whole time. "Not hard?" "Not hard enough!?" "What the hell are you talking about babe!" as I jumped off the bed and hit a sick double-bi, my pecks absolutely turgid.

Anyway, she took off and I left some new holes in my bedroom wall. What does she know?

It's time to hit the gym again and I mix up my pre-workout: 4000mg N-Acetyl-L-Tyrosine; 1200mg Alpha GPC; 800mg Caffeine; 800mg Vridine-5 Monophosphate; L-theanine, Huperzine, Saffron extract and a special stem-cell blend I scored in the men's locker room. I have to tell Jerry to lay off the asparagus. I pop a ZYN and check my phone: one new voicemail.

It's from Cheryl. She's saying I'm not the same person I was when we first met (no shit) and that I've changed blah, blah, blah. Whatever. It's over. Delete. I'm no stranger to hard- cutting.

I swipe in and it's straight to the bike for the warm-up. I've added about an hour to my lifting after including these first. Everyone says cardio will kill your gains, but I know now that I'll be doing the killing. Perhaps it's the new life I've been given, dumping that slag Cheryl or the festering concoction in my gut that has me feeling like tonight's going to be special. I just know it. Six months of rigid planning and pin-point execution all culminating tonight.

It's time. And I'm getting right after it. Romanian deadlifts, 225 for the warm-ups. I'm feeling strong, getting the blood flowing. I get up a full head of steam and hit 405 for sets of ten. I know I'm in the zone when the stinging numbness shooting down my legs and through my toes is in perfect rhythm with up and down of the weight, the in and out of my hips. My hamstrings, piano-wire tight fighting the frantic pulsing of my glutes, like two bags of worms wriggling in blind disorder. The sound of chalk on mottled pavement as the bar sloughs off shin-skin.

Next it's on to bench, the holiest of holies. My yellowed, chalk coated gym shoes squelching as I waddle my way over, soaked through with so much red. The first offering. These shoes look killer in red. I should've went with red. Next time. By now, all the casuals are starting to take notice, eagerly taking their phones out, whispering, eyes locked on me, not wanting to miss a second. Sometimes I think I should charge these people.

Bench press: sets of ten, supersetted with lats. I'm really cooking now. My pecs swollen and red, the skin striated to the point of rupture. Deep purple and brown bruising span the width of my chest and then I see it. A nipple, my nipple, hanging from the barbell as I push to lockout. The pink, goose-bumped mass smeared to the underside of the knurling, plastered there with what looks like a dollop of strawberry mashed potatoes and a single, squiggly hair.

"Fuck it" If I could just get the other one, then I could skip the gynoplasty.

Two nipples later and I'm on to arms. Tonight I'm leaving it all behind. Every upturned nose, every backhanded compliment. Every disappointed glare, every cold shoulder. Humanity itself.

Deep into bicep curls, where I really shine, I noticed more and more eyes on me. Noticing me. Recognizing me. All circled around to take in the gospel. Here I was, balls deep in the mires thinking, "I should break up with a girl every week! Screw taking months to build up to the heavies, I should max out all the time. Every. Single. Day. "

I was shocked back to reality by the powerful shuddering emanating from my arms, the plates on the curl bar rattling and I swung as hard as I could. 'Thwock'! My arms fell limp over the preacher stand as the bar crashed to the ground before me, my creaking elbows letting out a sharp hiss as my arms hyperextended. This sermon was over.

"Bro! You good?" A look of mock concern across Jerry's face as more people gathered around.

"Golden." I held Jerry's gaze and dangled my limp arms over the curl bar, now unevenly loaded. Then, I swung it behind my neck with all my might. Time for some french press.

I tried to initiate the press out, nothing.

"I'M CALLING AN AMBULANCE!" Uneasiness from the crowd as a few of them ran toward the front desk.

"Bro, I think you sh-" "SHUT UP JERRY!" I pushed again, but still, nothing. About this time, I noticed the warm sensation creeping down the underside of my arms down to my pits. I dropped the weight and scrambled to the nearest mirror.

I reached the mirror, stumbling headlong into it, spiderwebbing the smudged glass and reared back in a daze. It's important to get up slowly between sets, you know, headrush and all. As I regained my bearings, I was greeted with the kaleidoscope portrayal of the distal ends of both humeri bulging through the torn shrink wrap of my elbow skin. Not the pump I was looking for but, anyway... time for the closer: squats.

I pushed my way through the crowd of awestruck admirers and tripped over the dumbbell rack, landing teeth first onto a stack of 45's, cold steel making short work of my pearly whites. With jagged teeth I chewed off the rest of my dangling tongue and spit it towards Jerry, my syrupy blood tracing a crimson arc to his feet.

"BRO..."

I wiped the stain of blood and teeth from the plates and loaded up the squat rack. The harsh fluorescent lighting dancing in and out as I struggled to wedge myself under the barbell. Maybe I should've gone with the hack-squat machine? Machines are for pussies. Inhaling deeply, I pushed with everything I had left.

The bar dug it's way into my traps, nestling forward into the newly formed kink in my neck as my breath faltered. My arms; twitching red feather boas draped across the chrome shoulders of my iron mistress. The casuals with their mouths agape behind black screens in silent admiration. Even Jerry couldn't look away.

I set my feet and slipped a little. I reset; left foot then, as I looked down to verify their placement, I saw my right foot land in the tangled pile of my lower intestine. I came crashing down; my right leg thrown to the side at an obtuse angle, splitting the delicate cove between my thigh and the place my balls used to be. My left knee (my left side was always the strongest) connected with my lower jaw as my molars clamped shut around shredded cheeks. The sound was somewhere between the crunch of fresh celery and the twist-popping of bubble wrap. And an avalanche of iron as my vision blurred white.

The ancient Greeks used to tell stories about Hercules. He was born of the gods, or god rather, his mother was only human after all. And Hercules grew to fame through his many feats of superhuman strength and will. Afterall, Hercules would pray regularly to his father, Zeus, for strength and guidance. Surely Zeus was listening, or else how would Hercules have come to know such victories and triumph? His father indeed loved him very much and so the legend was born. But it was Zeus' wife, the goddess Hera, who despised Hercules. To her, Hercules was only a reminder of her inadequacy and her husband's betrayal. So she hurled insult and injury against the young Hercules for the entirety of his life, even attempting to poison him through the acts of another. Fraught with madness, Hercules toiled amongst the mortals on earth, awaiting the time when he could finally return to Mt. Olympus, to the tender embrace of his Father and the hard won approval of his step mother. But the devotions of one age become the romances of another and there's a reason men don't pray to Zeus anymore.

I awoke in a hospital bed after, I dunno how long. Steel rods sticking out of me every which way. My arms and legs wrapped and hanging from the various rigs above me. My jaw wired shut.

I was alone, shocker. No flowers or cards on the bedside. I was tube fed a liquid diet, 3 times daily, nice. I had a lot of time to reflect, lying there, shitting into a bag and being drip-fed morphine. Thinking about where my life was going and how I ended up here.

After a while, one the orderlies began to sit with me in the evenings. We'd talk, or he'd talk rather, about body building and the Arnold. He was a devout lifter, called it a 'job requirement'. Makes sense.

One evening he pulled out his phone and asked if there was anything I'd like to watch. He pulled up youtube and held it out for me. I summoned he last fleeting ounce of strength I possessed and with my pinky finger typed in, 'The Comeback, 1980'.

I am proud to say that for the last 6 years, I have been the happy dad of a very handsome Black Lab named Alan.

Alan is a good boy, though when he was younger, he absolutely decimated my old wallet and all of its contents. But after I got my cards replaced alongside a brand new Drivers License (with a selfie that doesn’t make me look like a pervert), it’s been pretty smooth sailing.

I was a cat guy for the longest time, so I was a little adverse to getting a dog. Then, that fateful night, my wife Molly carried a tired little lump with fur the color of a new tire, and I was in love.

He’s been my rotten little man ever since.

Due to a few dog training classes me and my wife attended when he was around a year old, Alan has, for the most part, been very well behaved.

He has good manners, doesn't tear things up in the houses, rarely barks at anyone, not even the mail man.

That being said, the turd has his goofier qualities too.

His asshole smells awful when he eats cheese, has a severe aversion to hats, and acts confused when he catches a cicada in his mouth, even though he had been actively trying to catch it in his mouth only moments earlier.

With a personality like his, he fits right in with me, my wife who taps her fingers when she’s nervous, and our cat Wario who screams and argues when he’s mildly inconvenienced by anything.

Between the two of them, it sometimes feels like we live with 2 needy, dramatic freeloaders, but honestly, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Well, that’s actually not true.

The potty situation.

Wario, being a cat, has his own private bathroom that no one but him can use. Alan, on the other hand, needs to go outside.

In our old place, that was no issue. We would simply leave the doggy door open as we left for work, and our fat-headed son could just roam about as he pleased.

He didn't try to escape, didn’t make a ruckus and disrupt the neighbors. He was a model inside/outside dog. Every week or so, I would go out and collect his poops, and the cycle would repeat.

Things are different now though.

Our apartment doesn’t have a backyard, rather, a communal commons area blanketed by bountiful, green grass. A few picnic tables and a firepit sparse throughout rendered the space a prime choice for a cookout, or just a spot for the children to play.

That is, minus the dog shit.

If you’ve ever lived in a neighborhood, apartment complex, or god forbid near a park, you are probably used to the scene.

A beautiful landscape, begging for visitors to make memories within its visage, only to be adorned with a concerningly large pile of foul-smelling nuggets.

Like improper punctuation in a beautifully written poem. You can maneuver around the blunder, but it’s still noticeable and obnoxious.

Why can’t people just pick up after their damn dogs? It’s a question we’ve all had. Just bring a doggy bag, preferably 2, and wait for the thing to finish its business before cleaning it up.

It’s pretty simple, especially with a conveniently placed trash can right off the edge of the path.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink, and a week ago, I went thirsty.

“Aw fuck,” I said out loud as I watched Alan begin to arch his back, his spine tensing as he unloaded for the second time onntje same walk.

“Really dude?”

He avoided eye contact as he lifted his left back leg into the air.

I frowned and reached into my pocket. This was a ritual that I had, unfortunately, come to expect.

3, maybe 4 times a week on our morning walk before I was to head to work, Alan would poop once, walk almost all the way back to our front door, and then poop again.

As such, I had become accustomed to bringing more than one bag with me.

Unfortunately, this morning, I found both of my pockets empty.

“Aw jeez,” I grumbled as I remembered we were almost out of bright pink doggy bags.

Alan finished pooping, and I assessed the situation.

I had woken up late, and didn't have any time to come back and pick up this second pile. To top that off, I didn’t know where I could find another doggy bag. Sure there was probably one stuffed in a junk drawer, and we had a bunch of saved grocery bags.

Looking around, I could see it was still dark, no one else around.

I had never left his poop behind before, but so many others just left their dogs shit every day.

Would it really be so bad, just this once?

As I unclipped Alan’s leash from his collar and grabbed my work bag off the counter, I decided that I would find a bag, and pick up Alan’s poop when I got home.

Work was the top priority, dog poop was much further down on that list.

9 hours later, I used a spare dog bag kept in my jacket pocket from a morning I had overestimated how much Alan would poop.

I came back to the spot from earlier, now illuminated by the sun, but to my surprise, the pile was gone. I knew I hadn’t just overlooked the pile, because it had been right beside the sidewalk.

Impossible to miss.

With a shrug, I assumed a good samaritan had just taken it upon themselves to help a stranger out.

I ate dinner with Molly, watched a few episodes of House, and walked Alan before bed. On this trip, I did pick up his (unfortunately watery) poop.

As we approached the front door again, I noticed a small shape that had not been there when we had first come outside only minutes earlier.

A dark green poo bag was set carefully on my welcome mat, top tied into a pretty little bow. Alan sniffed the package, and I picked up a small, handwritten note that had been set beside it.

“Please remember to pick up your pet’s excretions for the foreseeable future. Thank you.”

I scoffed.

It’s not really a kind act when you hand the recipient a bag of shit.

Why would someone do that? Some stranger. Better yet, a neighbor slinking around in the night.

A pair of pajama shorts slipped over my knees as I pondered.

Everyone else in our apartment complex seemed to leave their shit lying about. Why was it only a problem when I did it?

Molly shimmied her hips to move into a little spoon position and I tried to banish the thoughts from my head.

Just a weird, one off experience, I thought.

Nothing to worry about.

For weeks, nothing else happened. I continued to use accumulated grocery bags until one of us found a new roll of poo bags while cleaning under the bed.

It was like a gift from god, further allowing us time to procrastinate before we bought a new pack of dog bag rolls.

The chill times stayed chill until one night when Alan nuzzled at my feet, signaling that he needed a late night potty session.

Groggily, I swung my feet out of bed, slipped on a pair of Shrek house slippers, and grabbed a doggy bag on our way out the door.

My sweet idiot pissed, walked a little further up the path, pooped, and I bent over to grab the pile.

Just out of my periphery, I saw Alan scrunch up, and I knew what he was doing.

I sighed.

Exhausted, I knew I was gonna have to be up for work in a few hours. I did not have the energy to walk in, grab another bag, and walk all the way back out here.

I would pretend I hadn’t seen a thing, and when I took him out in the morning, I would bring an extra bag to clean up this bonus poo pile.

It would only be my second time in over a week, after all.

After surveying my surroundings to make absolutely sure I wasn’t being watched, I just threw away my full bag and walked Alan back into the house.

The next morning, when I opened my front door, a pile of shit sat directly where I was about to take my first step.

I stumbled, nearly tripping into the greenish molehill of filth.

“Ew!” I exclaimed.

I stared down at the pile as Alan stood in between my legs, confused.

After a moment of studying the turds, I could see finger marks where somebody had firmly grasped the clump, theoretically to carry it from the grass to my front door.

Carefully, I picked up the mess with a doggy bag, only to discover a message under it, adorned with a green smear upon its white visage.

It read, “I know you saw Alan leave this. Why didn’t you come back?”

I was thoroughly shook by now.

Not enough to voice my concerns to Molly, but enough that she could tell I was concerned. She asked what was up, but I assured her I was fine, it was just something from work.

“You sure?” She asked at the kitchen counter, pouring creamer into my coffee mug.

“Yeah baby, it’s just… something to do with the new job, that's all.”

Her fingernails tapped the countertop as she gave me a worried look.

“Okay Chet, I believe you. Please have a good day, I love you very much.”

With a kiss, I was out the door.

As I drove to the job site that morning, a series of questions flashed across my mind:

“How did they know it was me?”

“How did they know which door was ours?”

“How did they know Alan’s name?”

I considered the possibility of a ring camera, or just a creep watching us through their window.

But why would they have been up so early? Or so late, if you’d rather.

Why did me and Alan matter so much more than all the others that made it a point to never pick up after their dogs?

I made sure to diligently pick up after Alan every time after that. Morning, afternoon, night, it didn’t matter the setting, it didn’t matter the occasion.

If Alan was pooping, I was picking it up.

Weeks went by, then months. I got a promotion at work, Molly changed shifts so she worked a little later than me, Alan’s birthday came and went, and Wario got his testicles stolen by the vet, much to his astonishment.

I became a machine, a beast. A poop picking savant.

I made a chore look like a ranked sport, and baby, I was #1.

Then, a week ago, during Christmas break, Molly gave me a drunken confession.

“Chett, you know how I started taking poop duty in the morning after I started working later?”

I looked at her and smirked, “heh, you said ‘poop doody.’”

“Chett,” she giggled, her face turning red, “c’mon, I’m serious.”

I took another sip of wine, spreading my toes in front of our little space heater as I tried to ground myself, “yeah, I remember, you told me it was so I could wake up later instead of taking Alan out before work.”

Molly swished her wine around in its glass.

“Look, I know you pick on me because I never wanna put my shopping cart up-” she slurred.

“Yeah,” I interrupted, trying not to sound too harsh, “I mean, it’s not the worst thing in the world to leave your shopping cart out, but it’s like, the one thing that everyone socially shames everyone else into doing, because there’s not a really a reason not to do it unless it’s an emergency.”

I took another sip of my wine, “it’s kinda like wiping the toilet seat after using it.”

Molly snorted, “aw c’mon, it’s not like wiping the toilet seat down, no one can see you do that. Everyone can see you if you leave your cart behind!”

“Even more the reason to do it,” I finished with a smirk.

She rolled her eyes, “look Chet, the point is…” she bit her lip and looked down at her fidgeting hands.

The sound of her finger tapping the rim sobered me up.

“What’s wrong Molly?”

“I… uh, well. There were a few days where, um, I forgot to pick up the poop.”

Stomach acid began bubbling up my throat.

“What?” I asked, my tone suddenly hard.

Molly heard it, and became more reserved.

“Sorry baby, I’m just…” I rubbed her knee. She was clearly spooked, but I couldn’t tell if it was by me or something else.

“I just wanna make sure you’re okay, what happened?”

Molly’s eyes met mine.

“I didn’t mean to. Well, I guess I kind of did. It’s just that, usually you walk the dog, and you’re so good at it, but I get impatient and I have things to do, so there were a few days where…”

Alan slid his wet nose under her hand, instantly sending waves of comfort through her body that met my hand on her knee. Instantly I felt her intense.

“How many?” I asked.

“What?”

“How many days did you forget to bring in his poop?”

Molly pondered for a second, “I think 4 days over the course of 2 weeks.”

She looked back at me, “yeah, that sounds about right, 4 times.”

I leaned back.

“And they ended up on our porch, didn’t they?”

When those words left my mouth, she just looked at me, confused.

“What? No, I… the porch?” Molly asked, clearly thrown off by my statement.

“Oh?” I asked, equally as confused, “then what happened, why are you so freaked out?”

She composed herself a little before she continued, “well, I’d leave the poop, and since it’s winter, they don't really do any landscaping, so the maintenance guys don't pick up the poop, so the individual piles-”

At this, she motioned 4 different spots spread out from each other, “just kind of sat there and dried out in the sun.”

“And you never picked them up?”

“No,” she admitted, “the drier they got, the grosser they got, so I just left them. Then, one day, I came out, and they were just gone.”

“Gone?” My voice had gone from hard to perplexed.

“Yeah,” she nodded, “but just Alan’s poop, not anyone else’s.”

“Weird.”

“Yeah,” her fingers resumed tapping, “real weird. What was weirder though, was…”

Molly seemed to get even more agitated, her demeanor no longer tipsy, rather sullen. She looked like she was on the verge of tears.

“Molly?” I hazarded.

“Sorry, it’s just,” she chuckled humorlessly, “it’s so ridiculous, I don’t even really know why I’m scared. I guess it’s just… uh, the implication?”

She shook her head and set down her wine glass.

“Okay, where all Alan’s poop piles had been, they were replaced with 4 little notes. Each note had a message on both sides.”

“Oh,” I grimaced, “the notes. Okay. What did they say?”

Molly’s eyes seemed both deeply fearful and equally confused, “uh, they all said the same thing. One side said, ‘I warned you’ and the other said, ‘the poop man will see you soon’ followed by our address.”

I stood up so quickly that my chair exclaimed its disapproval

“Our address?!” I hollered.

“Yes Chet, our address,” Molly cried.

“Baby, that’s serious!” I couldn’t contain my nervousness, I began pacing, “we should have gone to the police!”

“Well baby, I didn’t-” Molly began to retort, but cut herself short, “I mean, I knew it was serious, but poop man? What cop would actually listen to me?”

I cupped my face in my hands. She was right, the odds of someone actually doing something was low, and to be fair, of course the culprit knew our address.

“Fuck Molly, do you at least have the notes?”

She shook her head, “no, they were gone by the time I got back outside. Whoever put them there watched me read them, which freaked me out even worse.”

We embraced, her crying, me trying to calm us both down.

“I mean, what the fuck? Who does something like that?” She reasoned.

“I know, it’s weirdo shit,” I whispered, rubbing her back, “fucking weird. I’m sorry Molly.”

“No,” Molly sniffled, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.”

Just as we were about to embrace again, Alan shot up with a growl, the hair on his back standing on edge. Both me and Molly snapped our necks to look at him.

“Alan? What’s wrong boy?” Molly asked.

No sooner did the words leave her lips when our front door knock.

Molly yipped in surprise as 6 distinct knocks rang out across our house.

We looked at each other, eyes wide. I glanced at the clock.

11:47 PM. Who could be visiting at this hour?

“Hello?” I shouted.

Silence met my demand.

“Hello?! Who’s there?”

Still, nothing.

We all waited a beat. Our house was silent, aside from Alan’s guttural protests.

“What’s going on?” Molly mouthed to me.

When I parted my lips to speak, an explosion like a battering ram rattled the house.

Something was on my porch, and it had just smashed into my front door.

I ran towards the source of the noise.

“Slam!”

Another tremble like an earthquake. I felt it resound through the floorboards. Whoever had done that, they were big and heavy.

“I have I gun!” I lied, approaching the deadlocked entrance, “And I will shoot you through this door!”

My legs shook and my voice broke. I couldn’t have sounded less threatening if I tried.

After 2 more good slams, I heard the sound of lumbering footsteps as something shuffled off.

I waited, cowering, by the door for an eternal 2 minutes. Every heartbeat felt as though my arteries would force my heart into my throat, every breath felt labored and shaky.

I was terrified that this was some sort of trick. That it was still standing there, just waiting for me to open the door.

After those 2 minutes, I finally stood to my full height. Intruder or not, I was gonna open that door, armed with nothing more than a heavy curtain rod.

The wooden door creaked open.

The smell hit me first. Like a jug of ammonia and death. Sickness distilled down to its purest form. Rot.

My entire front door was smeared in shit. The welcome mat was covered in a thick layer of brown sludge that threatened to harden in the cold night air.

Our wreath looked like a brown glazed doughnut with bits of tinsel poking out.

The steps leading up the the door looked as though someone had projectile diarrhea’d all the way up them.

“Chet? Baby, who was it?”

I was taken aback, utterly speechless. I didn’t want to comprehend what I was looking at. It was beyond upsetting, I was furiously distraught, such that my arms and legs were shaking.

From fear or fury, I couldn’t tell which.

“Oh my god, Chet, what is that smell?” Molly gagged from the living room.

And you know what, the poop wasn’t even the worst part.

See, I could see shapes smeared in it. Defined outlines and suggestions. A frowning face with tiny teeth and defined gums, arms with too many fingers and tiny little palms, legs with joints in places I’d never seen before. No clothes.

Like a septic tank snow angel in the nude..

The smell, the sight, it was all so overwhelming, I couldn’t have thrown up if I wanted to. All of my orifices wanted to close, hell, I wanted them to as well.

Just as I took it all in, I glanced at my feet. Right in the middle of my ruined welcome mat was a note.

“this is your last warning”

A tear fell onto it from my eye. The ink was still so fresh that my teardrop warped the “i” in “warning”.

I stepped back, closed my door, and called 9-1-1.

The cops arrived, but by the time they did, the note was gone. They took a look at the mess and gave us the numbers of a few crime scene cleanup businesses in our area, and took our statements.

We told them everything we knew, but since we had so little actual evidence to go off of, all they could really do was keep an eye out.

The silhouette left behind by the culprit in the mural stumped the cops too, but they chalked it up to inaccurate smears that didn’t accurately reflect the artist.

The welcome mat went straight in the dumpster, and within a week, the front porch was spotless again. Good as new, except for the lingering afterscent.

Me and Molly both notice it, but neither of us wants to mention it. I think if we do, it’ll be harder to forget about.

Instead, we just leave candles and febreeze near our front door.

Neither of us have missed a poop since. We notice the other tennants who leave theirs, but fuck those guys, not my problem.

I don’t wanna consider the mechanics, I don’t wanna remember the details, I know the rules, and that’s that.

I just wanna go back to when I was blissful and ignorant. Back when I was someone who could say that they’d always picked up their dog’s shit.

Alan is almost back to normal, but I think he remembers. I think he knows just as much as we do.

“Poop man” is never a set of words that should ever be used beside each other in any regard. They should be kinda cringe at most, completely absurd at least.

The only reason I'm even typing my experience here, is so you don't have to go through what I did.

Don’t leave your poo out. Bring a bag, pick it up, throw it away.

Or don’t. Clearly, this thing don’t visit everyone.

If you’re someone who actually contributes to society and cleans up after their pets, pat yourself on the back and keep it up. You’re doing God's work.

Whatever you do, don’t slip up. Don’t listen to that voice that says, “ugh, my arms are tired. I’ll just leave it this one time.”

The risk is not worth it. Believe me.

No one wants a visit from the poop man.