Written for the game Snap Shot–Writing Prompt #3

 

The bright white of their tops glare in the summer sun. You can see them from a mile away, abandoned on the side of the main road into town.

They look like three, expectant children waiting for their mama’s to come get them.

Three months, and not a word’s been said about when they’ll be picked up again. Da says they’re an eyesore–a mark of humanity in a long stretch of road where there’s always been nothing. “Who the hell wants three porta-potties starin’ at them on their way to work every morning? Somebody should do somethin’.”

Jamie from across the road says he took a piss in one once. I dunno whether or not to believe him. He has the guts, yeah, but it must’ve took some commitment to hike out two miles just to pee in a yellow box.

“Which one,” I asked, though–too curious to stay quiet.

His grey eyes twinkled under his shock of ginger hair. “The middle un,” he said.

Da says it was an accident–man who drives em around got mixed up and put them there instead of the county fairground, ten miles east of here. He set them down and never came back to pick them up.

Jamie says they got left because the truck driver died–truck flipped over and the potties spiraled through the air to land perfectly intact, right-way up. When they cleaned the truck away they just forgot the potties.

However they got there, they look real fancy. Not just any old plastic porta potty–they look metal, the kind that actually have little sinks inside. So you can wash your hands after, instead of walking around feeling like your fingers smell.

I wonder if they’ll ever get taken away, or if they’ll just sit there, marking the half-way point to town, until the rain makes them bleed rust and they fall apart into nothing.