When we sat down, I immediately knew something was awry. There was this faint odor in the air. I couldn’t quite place it at the time, but I was thinking something along the lines of a dirty dishrag, or perhaps some B.O. leftover from the booth’s previous occupant. I didn’t really pay the notion too much mind; we were in a Waffle House, so, in all fairness, I was expecting a little filth with my meal.

So there we were. I had the inside seat and next to me was my main man and hetero-life compatriot, Chris Tharp. Seated across the table were Jay and Millissa, two girls we barely knew. Apparently that’s the reason the only thing we could come up with for us to do was to have a substandard breakfast at 1:00 am.

Our waitress seemed to have been beaten senseless recently, as she was unable to complete a full sentence or form a coherent thought while she was trying to take our orders. After the mental struggle she had dealing with Chris’ vegetarian diet (“Whatchu mean, no bacon? You want sausage instead?”), I thought she was going to have a stroke, but she somehow managed to get the order to the the cook, who probably thought Chris was gay. Keep in mind that the smell had somewhat abated by this time. That or – and looking back now, I’m almost ashamed to say it - we had just gotten used to it.

It happened when we had finished eating and were just about to slide out of the booth. That was when I saw Jay’s eyes literally bug out of her head.

She looked directly at me. “I hate you.”

Needless to say, I was stunned. Sure the meal hadn’t been that great and it had been my idea to go to Waffle House, but that was no cause for -

“I just stepped in shit.”

And of course, that was when I smelled it.

We scrambled out of the booth and sure enough, Jay had her foot, sandal and all, smashed into one big bastard of a turd. The rest of us began frantically checking ourselves for traces of feces, but it seemed that we three had somehow managed to escape Jay’s fate.

I’m going to pause the narrative here for just a minute because I know what you’re all thinking: “How the hell could a piece of shit be sitting under your table and you didn’t immediately place the smell? I mean, it’s shit! Only an idiot could shrug off something that palpable. What are you an idiot? Do you like the smell of shit, idiot?”

Of course not. I’d like to remind all of you about something. There’s an aspect to shit that a lot of people don’t seem to know about and that is the odor seal. You see, when a good-sized chunk of shit sits for a while (and in this case, I believe this particular chunk had been there for quite some time), it hardens and the odor becomes less intense. In fact, you may not smell it at all, depending on the length of time that it sits. Sure, a fresh shitball is going to bowl you right over the second it hits your nostrils, but one that’s been sitting for a few hours really doesn’t have that same affect. It has a very faint scent, if it has one at all, and that is due to the outer layer hardening into the odor seal.

And that’s how said ball of shit stays, until something or someone comes along and breaks that seal by say - stepping on it.

I’m a bit foggy on what happened next. Looking back, it just seems like a chaotic blur. I know I was dry-heaving and I believe Chris was screaming. Jay had passed out and Millissa was holding back a stream of vomit. And thank God for her discretion on that front because we didn’t want that spraying out and going all over the place. Shit was bad enough. But shit and vomit? Mixed with the inbred funk of a Waffle House I think that formula might have been enough to kill everyone in the diner and level the entire block.

Our waitress came over to our table with a mop and bucket. She didn’t even look surprised, which of course still boggles my mind to this day. It was then that she actually began mopping Jay’s foot. Just mopping away, slopping dirty water all over the top of a foot that had shit on the bottom of it. At that point I ran outside screaming. I know Chris fell down and – I’m ashamed to say – I left him behind. I know. It’s not something I’m proud of. And it’s forever damaged our friendship. But this is shit we’re talking about here.

When Jay regained consciousness, she ran screaming for the bathroom. The waitress followed her and obliged her request for a “fuckload of bleach” which Jay proceeded to dump all over the lower half of her body.

Surely all this was enough. An incident like this is more than an adequate problem for the senses to deal with on even the best of days. But like they say, when it rains, yes, sometimes it does pour. And what happened next was so incredible, I’m almost hesitant to speak about it.

I was standing outside, trying not to sick up my breakfast into the bushes, when a Jeep crammed with about seven people roared up and parked right out front. An obviously drunk girl staggered out, wearing a large puffy white jacket. She went inside the Waffle House and headed for the bathroom.

It was then that I saw through the window, Jay coming out of the bathroom, a look of intense weariness on her face, holding her shit-sandal out in front of her, obscuring any view she had of the oncoming puffy jacket girl.

“My God,” I thought. “That drunk bimbo is going to walk right into her.”

And she did. But what is so surprising to me is that even after the turd was transferred from Jay’s sandal to the sleeve of the girl’s white jacket… the girl didn’t even notice. She just kept right on trucking. Straight into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her.

Jay came outside with a look of absolute shock and awe on her face.

“I just… got shit -”

“- all over her jacket, I know!” I finished.

By this time, Millissa had regained most of her composure and stopped Chris’ sobbing. She pulled him from the floor of the diner and they both came outside. They hadn’t seen what had just taken place and when I told them, it was Chris who passed out. Poor bastard. It was just too much for him.

The girl came out of the bathroom a few minutes later, walked right past us, and got back into the Jeep. The Jeep had at least seven people in it. And I personally saw that shitstain rub off on at least two of them.

They just drove off. I’d say more, but I don’t have that much control over the English language. If I could find the proper words and somehow bend them into a coherent sentence that could even begin to describe the type of cosmic forces that must be at work here; forces that can actually gave life to a Waffle House turd and allow it to travel via jacket sleeve out into the world… well, I wouldn’t be writing a blog, now would I? I’d be in another dimension with Lovecraft and Poe playing horseshoes, or cricket, or some shit.

Of course, there was nothing left for us to do then but get into our respective cars and go our seperate ways. Jay adamantly refused to say anything to the management of the Waffle House, something I can only chalk up to shock. I still think there’s a lawsuit in it, but because she blamed me for the whole thing, she wouldn’t listen.

Ever since that day, I’ve been plagued by the obvious question: just how in the hell can a piece of shit get into a restaurant and under a table? And then how can it just sit there unnoticed? It wasn’t just a smear. It was a fucking log. Could it have come from an animal? A dog, perhaps? Even though it’s a Waffle House, I don’t think they actually allow pets to accompany their owners inside. Considering the conditions, I don’t think it would be safe for any type of domesticated animal in there. We’re talking about low grade meat here. What if you and Spot come in for some breakfast and they’ve run out of sausage? Would you like to know what the caliber of the average Waffle House employee is? Watch Deliverance. Do you think someone like that would have any scruples about tossing old Spot into the frier?

Which of course then begs the question: was it a person? Could it actually be that a human being went in there for a plateful of waffles and just decided to drop trough and pinch one off right there in the booth? Or maybe - and God help us all if this is the case - he or she brought the turd inside with them, perhaps concealed in a newspaper or pocketbook, and planted it there for the next unsuspecting customer?

It’s thoughts like these that keep me up at night.