That’s my secret!

Guy’s small house party was going well. It was a small game night among his close friends. Guy’s new girlfriend, Mindy, was serving cheese and crackers while Lillian, Shelly, Fuschia, Maria, Srinivas, Eric, Gamila, Al, Chin, Sue, and Eileen played Trivial Pursuit in the living room. Fran, Ginny, Eric, and Bhavna played cards in the dining room. And Pierre entertained Corinne, Lucian, and Eithne in the kitchen playing his homemade portable air-powered keyboard gizmo.

Guy’s life-size plaster sculptures filled the small townhouse. Brightly painted plaster birds and animals stood in natural poses on tables and shelves in all the rooms. Lucian, Lakeisha, and Neha stood admiring Guy’s latest artistic creation: a life-sized nude girl, painstakingly painted in natural skin tones, sitting in a sultry pose on a black cube with her legs spread provocatively with her elbow resting on her knee and resting her chin in her hand.

Guy walked over to them, munching on a handful of Party Mix. “So, you like her?”

“She looks so real!” Lucian said.

“Yeah!” Lakeisha added. “She looks like your ex-girlfriend! What was her name?”

“Sherry. But shhh, don’t tell Mindy that, okay?”

“Okay” Lakeisha grinned. “But how did you get the proportions so perfect?”

Guy grinned at his friends and said, “That’s my secret!”

Mindy walked over and gave Guy a quick kiss. “Why don’t you show them your studio, love?”

“Sure,” Guy said. “It’s in the basement if you want to see.”

Guy led Lucian, Lakeisha, and Neha down to the basement. The basement room was filled with art supplies, a large potter’s wheel, and assorted animal sculptures in varuous stages of completion.

Guy said, “This is where my creativity flows…”

Lucian interrupted Guy, asking, “What’s that pipe? It looks like it’s coming from a garbage disposal mounted on the ceiling right under your downstairs bathroom floor.”

The pipe that Lucian pointed at continued from the bottom of the garbage disposal unit mounted on the ceiling directly under the toilet, and passed through a partially constructed false wall of fresh, new concrete blocks that formed a small room at the end of the basement. Within that secret room to be, the pipe entered the top of a large steel tank laid on its side on stilts high off the floor. Another pipe exited from the bottom of that tank and connected back to the main sewer line of the house. One end of the tank was open, with the end-cap leaning against the wall.

“Oh? Uhm.” Guy stammered. “That’s one of my, er, projects. It’s, uhm, a surprise for Mindy(*).” Guy clapped his hands. “So okay. Let’s all go back upstairs to join the party! Okay?”

Later that night, after the guests had left and Mindy put the last load of dishes in the dishwasher, she yawned and headed upstairs. “Joining me in bed soon, love?

“Just a second, sweet!” Guy called back.

Walking over to the statue of Sherry, he kneeled behind the statue and reached under the base to release a hidden catch. The door hissed open as he pulled it away from the seal. He checked a pair of air hoses and flicked a cobweb off the end. Then he removed a straw from a near-empty jar of strained peaches baby food and removed the jar from a holder on the side of the box, then replaced it with a full jar of strained carrots. He removed another straw from an empty jar, took the jar into the kitchen and filled it with fresh tap water, and replaced it too. Then he slid out a large pail full of odoriferous brown water. He dumped the waste down the lavatory toilet and replaced the empty pail in the statue’s base. Closing the little door, he tapped the hard plaster shell and whispered, “Goodnight, Sherry,” before heading upstairs to join his girlfriend waiting for him in bed.