Goblin was running. Sprinting. He had his hands between his legs, to add pressure, because he couldn’t cross his legs while he was running. The fabric under his hands was damp, but not soaked.
He’d almost wet the bed. As he’d woken, his bladder had released. But he’d acted fast, getting control of it quickly, and had instantly jumped out of bed and sprinted for the bathroom.
Or, rather, the small wooden shack behind the cabin that constituted as a bathroom.
The shack still looked so far away. He was seconds away from losing the sliver of control he had.
Please, he begged his bladder. Please don’t let go.
Goblin watched through Norman’s eyes as he drove the car up the long dirt road.
Goblin could feel a distress that he knew meant Norman needed a bathroom. The distress was strong and accompanied by waves of anxiety. Goblin had been feeling the distress get worse and worse for a very long time. Norman was drumming his fingers against the steering wheel now. Goblin could hear the cacophony of thoughts Norman was having about how badly he needed to go.
Finally, the small cabin came into view. Goblin heard Norman sigh and felt a small flash of relief. But he also felt a flash of disappointment.
“This is it?” Norman asked. His tone, along with the flash of disappointment, made Goblin believe he’d been expecting something larger.
“Yes,” Otto replied. He was sitting next to Norman. Goblin couldn’t discern his comfort level because Norman wasn’t looking at him. “I told you it would be small.”
“I hope it has a bathroom,” Norman commented. “I’ve needed to go for the past, like, three or four hours.”
Goblin didn’t know it had been that long. No wonder Norman was so distressed. Goblin could never have waited that long.
“Oh my God!” Otto exclaimed. Norman glanced at him briefly before looking back ahead. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“What was I going to do?” Norman asked. “There was nowhere to pull over. And I’m driving. It’s not like I could grab an empty bottle and fix it that way.”
“Well, we’re here now,” Otto said.
“Thank God,” Norman muttered.
Norman stopped the car and turned it off. He quickly undid his seatbelt and hopped out of the car. He slammed the door shut and walked quickly towards the cabin. He climbed the front steps, then reached out to open the door. The knob didn’t turn. Norman swore.
“How do we get in?” he yelled, looking over his shoulder. Goblin saw Otto walking towards the cabin.
“There’s a key in the flower pot to your right,” Otto yelled back. Norman instantly started searching in the flowerpot until he found the key Otto had mentioned. He tried to unlock the door, struggling and swearing for a second before finally getting it open. Goblin could feel desperation as Norman quickly slipped inside the cabin.
Norman walked around the cabin, looking in room after room. Each one was something different, but none of them were a bathroom.
Norman was becoming more and more desperate.
God, I have to piss so bad, Goblin heard him think. Goblin didn’t reply. Finally, Norman muttered, “Screw it,” and walked back out the front door. Otto was standing outside the door and Goblin saw him jump when Norman rushed out.
“No bathrooms,” was all Norman said before dashing into the woods around the cabin. Goblin faded from Norman’s sight, but not his hearing. He heard the crashing of twigs and leaves as Norman walked through the woods. After a few seconds, Goblin heard a zipper being undone, and after another second, there was a trickling sound and Norman sighed.
“Finally,” he breathed. Relief filled him. The trickling continued for what felt to Goblin like a long time. When it finally stopped, he heard the zipper sound again and then more crashing and snapping sounds as Norman walked back out of the woods. Goblin came back to his sight and finally spoke.
“How did you hold it that long?” he asked, genuinely astonished by the multiple-hour wait Norman had endured without peeing in his pants even a little.
“Luck,” Norman replied and laughed quietly. Goblin didn’t laugh. He’d been genuinely curious, but Norman seemed to think it had been a joke. Norman stopped laughing, and after a few seconds of silence, he said,
“Wait, I just realized you were probably asking a genuine question. Sorry. I thought it was a joke. I just…tried really hard, I guess. I have to admit, by the time we’d almost gotten here, I was barely holding on. I’m glad we got here when we did.”
“So, were you able to wait that long because you’ve had practice?” Goblin asked. “Because I could never wait that long. I can only wait an hour, hour and a half tops.”
“I guess so,” Norman said. He’d gotten back to the cabin and was now entering it again.
“I guess there’s no indoor plumbing,” he said when he found Otto.
“I guess not,” Otto replied.
“Is there, like, an outhouse or something?” Norman asked.
“I don’t know,” Otto said. “I’m just going to go outside for now, like you did, and after we’ve unpacked the car, we’ll explore this place a little more. Looks really old.”
“Yeah,” Norman agreed. Goblin saw the cabin more clearly as Norman looked around. The walls and ceiling were made of dark wood. The floor and stairs were made of a lighter-colored wood. Goblin noted this to Norman.
“They might have been recent additions,” Norman replied. “Or the place was partially renovated.”
“What does ‘renovated’ mean?” Goblin asked.
“It means they fixed parts of the house that were old and falling apart. Made it safer to live in and look nicer.”
Goblin hummed.
Norman and Otto had found the small shack shortly after that. It was a far ways away from the house, nestled among a few trees. Goblin wondered why someone would put the bathroom so far away from the rest of the house.
“God help whoever needs to piss at night,” Norman remarked in a jovial tone. He and Otto both laughed and Goblin laughed with them.
Goblin wasn’t laughing now.
The shack had looked so far away from the back door that Goblin was sure he wasn’t going to make it. Now, reaching out to open the door to the shack, he still wasn’t sure if he would make it or not. Not to mention that it was pitch black outside and he could barely see his own hands. He hadn’t had the time to grab a flashlight as he’d left the house. It was a miracle he hadn’t tripped over a branch or rock or something and hurt himself.
He rushed inside the shack and closed the door. He tried to fasten the old, rusty locking mechanism with one hand, still applying pressure with the other and dancing in place.
While he’d gotten better at using the bathroom during the day, he was still struggling with wetting the bed. Usually, it happened as he faded out of sleep and into wakefulness, when he was conscious enough to notice that his bladder was full but not conscious enough to stop it from letting go.
Thankfully, that night, he’d been able to catch it before it went too far.
He could not get the latch fastened with one hand. Tears filled his eyes. He needed to go. Really, really bad. He increased the pressure and danced more frantically.
“I am not going pee in there,” Goblin said, referring to the small, wooden shack far off in the distance. It was before bedtime, and he needed to go. He’d remembered the shack from earlier but refused to use it. It looked unclean. He didn’t even know how anyone could fit a toilet inside of it.
“There aren’t any bathrooms in here,” Otto said. “It’s either go in there or go in the woods.”
Goblin groaned.
“I don’t want to do either,” he whined. “I just want to go to bed!”
“Please don’t whine,” Otto said. “It’s not going to help you.”
“Can’t I just go in a bucket in a closet?” Goblin asked. Otto sighed loudly.
“I don’t want to argue about this,” he said. “You’ve done pretty good at using the toilet during the trip here. I’d hate for you not to go before bed and pee in the bed while you’re asleep.”
Despite being annoyed by Otto’s answer, Goblin couldn’t help but smile a little when he thought about how well he’d done during the drive to the cabin. When Norman and Otto had mentioned they were going on a vacation, Goblin had asked if he could join. They’d been hesitant because he was still having some trouble with using the toilet, but he’d insisted that he’d be okay during the trip.
For the most part, he had done well. He couldn’t wait as long as Norman or Otto could, but he’d tried his best.
He’d only had one instance where he didn’t make it to the toilet. It happened the day their drive started. He’d drunk a soda with the lunch he’d eaten, and when he’d needed to go, they were driving through a long stretch with no rest stops, gas stations, or restaurants.
For the first hour or so, he’d been able to convince himself that he would make it. But as time went on, he felt less and less sure about it. Eventually, nothing he did — no amount of movement, no change of posture, no amount of distraction — was helping. By the time Otto finally pulled into a rest stop, Goblin was close to tears.
He’d tried. He’d run as fast as he could. He’d made it into the rest stop building, but as he ran towards the men’s bathroom, he started to lose control. He’d almost gotten into the men’s room. But when he’d slowed down to push the door open, his bladder had released completely and he’d frozen, one hand outstretched, ready to push the door open, but peeing in his pants instead.
Otto had tried to comfort him. But Goblin had been too mad and upset. Otto had helped him clean up and change. He’d said that it would be okay. That he was not upset.
He had relayed the incident to Norman, and to Goblin’s relief, Norman had been sympathetic. He hadn’t lectured Goblin about not drinking a lot on road trips, and he hadn’t blamed Goblin for what happened. He’d said accidents happen and it’s okay. He’d tried to make Goblin feel better by remarking that at least he’d been outside the car when he peed himself, but Goblin was still upset that it had happened at all.
Norman and Otto both said that he shouldn’t be too hard on himself. They’d said that they wouldn’t bring it up again. That they’d try to forget that it ever happened.
But Goblin could not forget the incident for the rest of the trip. He never drank too much, asked for a bathroom the minute he felt like he might need to go, and tried to go every time they stopped, even if he didn’t feel the need to. Goblin hadn’t had any other incidents for the rest of the trip.
Now, his smile faded again. He shuffled from one foot to the other. He did not want to go to the shack to pee. He thought about asking Norman to take control and go for him, but then he remembered that Norman had fallen asleep and gone dormant quickly after giving him control.
“Do I have to?” he asked.
“I would like you to,” Otto replied.
Goblin sighed loudly. He slipped on his shoes and walked out the back door.
Goblin looked down at the “toilet,” which was really just a wooden bench with a hole in the middle. He didn’t want to sit on it again — it had been extremely uncomfortable the first time. He wished he could wait until Norman took control in the morning, so he wouldn’t have to use the “toilet” again.
But he couldn’t hold in the pee anymore. He was about to lose control and he couldn’t let that happen. So, after pushing his pajama pants and underwear down, he stepped up onto the bench, straddled the hole, and squatted down. He held his pants and underwear back so he wouldn’t accidentally get pee on them. Then he finally let go.
He sighed with relief, like Norman had that morning after his four-hour wait for a bathroom. Goblin knew his situation hadn’t been as severe as that, but it still felt severe. And now he felt relieved.
When his bladder was empty, he stayed crouched over the hole for a little while longer. He was about to finally climb off the bench, pull his pants back up, and leave the shack, when he felt a sharp cramp in his stomach.
He groaned, stepped off the bench, turned around, and reluctantly sat down.
Goblin lied awake in his bed. He couldn’t sleep, and he didn’t know why. He could hear the nature sounds outside and listened to them for a while. When he still couldn’t sleep, he sighed and got out of bed.
He wanted to wake Otto and tell him that he couldn’t sleep, but he knew that would just annoy Otto, so he didn’t. Instead, he went downstairs.
The stairs creaked as he walked down them, and he tried his best to stay quiet. When he got to the bottom, he walked into the sitting area and paced there.
He thought about the night before. They’d stopped at a motel since it was getting late and they still had a long way to go. The motel room was small and dirty. The floor was stained, the walls were peeling, he didn’t even want to think about the bathroom again.
Norman had been in control when they’d gotten there. He’d needed to pee, but when he looked into the bathroom, he gagged and said that he could hold it. Otto asked him if he could hold it all night. Goblin heard Otto mention him. Norman had finally relented and gone, for the sake of lowering the possibility of Goblin wetting the bed.
Still, when Goblin took control for the night, he didn’t want to use the bathroom, either. Norman could pee while standing. Goblin only knew how to sit. And he was not sitting on that toilet.
So, he’d gone to bed that night without peeing first, praying that he’d be able to make it the whole night, and that Norman would wake up in the morning and not him.
But alas, his prayers were not answered.
Around two in the morning, Goblin had awoken to find that he needed to pee. He wished he’d peed before bed, because now, it was almost unbearable. Remarkably, he’d been able to hold it and keep from wetting the bed.
After he was out of bed, however, he was struggling to hold his bladder. He lost control for spans of a second, releasing small increments of pee into his pants. He knew he needed to go immediately, but still, he refused to sit on the filthy toilet.
He looked down. The carpet was full of stains. He felt bad about the idea he had, but he didn’t know what else to do. If he waited any longer, he would release so much pee into his pants that it wouldn’t be worth trying not to soil them.
He ran into a corner of the room, quickly slid his pants and underwear off, and peed on the carpet.
Pacing around the sitting area, Goblin regretted what he’d done in that motel. He knew it was wrong. Inappropriate. He hadn’t told Otto or Norman about what he’d done. Even though the room was already filthy, he knew it was not the right way to solve his problem.
In the middle of pondering the events of the night before, he noticed that his mouth was dry. He knew he shouldn’t, but he walked into the kitchen and grabbed a water bottle sitting on the counter. He was so thirsty that he didn’t think about what he was doing as he drained the bottle in a few gulps.
With his thirst quenched, and the events of the night before pondered, Goblin went back upstairs. He laid down in bed and closed his eyes.
Finally, he fell asleep.
“I peed on the floor of the motel last night.”
Otto looked up at Goblin. When he’d returned, Goblin had walked into the house to find Otto awake. He’d told Otto that he'd gone to the toilet and asked him how he could wash his hands. Now he was rubbing a bar of soap between them.
“What?” Otto asked. Not in an accusatory or angry way. Like he was so shocked by the confession that he needed to hear it again to make sure he’d understood it correctly.
Goblin hadn’t planned on admitting what he did to Otto. But after pondering it in the sitting room a few hours ago, he’d decided it was best to.
“I woke up really needing to pee,” he explained, “Because I hadn’t gone before bed because I didn’t want to use the toilet because it looked disgusting. I didn’t wet the bed, but I couldn’t hold it. I still didn’t want to use the toilet and I didn’t want to pee in my pants, and since the carpet was already stained, I decided it couldn’t make it worse if I peed on it. So I went in a corner and did it.”
“Goblin,” Otto said. Now his voice has a scolding tone. “You know that wasn’t the appropriate thing to do. I know you know better than that.”
Goblin had expected that Otto wouldn’t be happy, but he’d hoped in the back of his mind that the situation had happened long enough ago that Otto would brush it off.
“I know,” Goblin said. “I felt bad about it all day today. I know I should have used the toilet. Or gone somewhere else. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Just because the place was already dirty, it doesn’t mean you can pee on the carpet,” Otto scolded. “That’s never appropriate, no matter where you are, no matter how clean or dirty the place was to begin with.”
“I know,” Goblin replied as guilt washed over him again. He set the bar of soap aside and Otto poured water over his hands. “I still feel bad about it. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
Otto didn’t say anything for a long time. Goblin waited patiently, not daring to say anything. Finally, Otto spoke again.
“I can’t just let you off with a warning, Gobby,” he said. “You knew better than that. You’re mature enough to know that that was wrong.”
“I know,” Goblin said. His voice was quieter now.
“I want you to spend the rest of the day today in your room,” Otto said. “I know it’s a childish punishment, and you don’t like to be treated like a child, but it’s the best I can come up with, and I cannot let you off easy.”
Goblin nodded but said nothing this time.
“You can leave to use the bathroom,” Otto said, “But otherwise you need to stay there.”
“Okay,” Goblin said. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you,” Otto said. “Now go back to bed. Since you just went to the bathroom I’m not worried about that. So just go lay down and go back to sleep. Norman should be the one waking up in the morning, and when it comes time for you to take control, I’ll tell Norman to go up to your room first.”
“Okay,” Goblin said.
Otto patted his shoulder.
“Good job tonight, though,” he said. “I noticed that your bed was a little damp but not a lot. And you peed and pooped in the toilet. I’m twice as proud of you as I would have been if you’d just peed. You’re getting better every day.” Otto paused briefly, then added, “Well, except for what you did last night. But overall, you’re doing great.”
Goblin smiled.
“I’m debating about whether I should reward you, though,” Otto said.
“I understand,” Goblin said. “If you don’t want to this time because of what happened last night, that’s okay.”
Otto leaned forward and whispered in his ear,
“If you use the toilet all day tomorrow, I’ll give you two treats instead of one. To make up for tonight, and because by then your punishment will be over.”
Goblin smiled.
“Now dry your hands off and get back to bed,” Otto said when he’d straightened again.
Goblin grabbed a towel, dried his hands, and ran back upstairs and into his bedroom.