The Toilet Man

• Ella Mansfield, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2013

Siblings, whether you love them or hate them, one thing that everyone can agree on is that siblings are the best source of entertainment. Myself being an older sister one of the greatest joys that I have is pranking my little sister and one of the greatest pranks that I pulled on my sister is one that I call “The Toilet Man”.

At the time I was eight years old and my sister was four, it was a Saturday and my friend had come over, we were happily playing together but my sister would not leave us alone! She ignored our complaints and followed us around like a lost puppy.
My friend and I grew tired of my sisters constant interrupting so we planned a prank that we hoped would make her leave us alone. Little did we know just what a powerful effect this prank would have.

We started off by telling my sister to wait in the lounge while we went off to the toilet, telling her that we’d be right back we ran off and waited for a couple of minutes before flushing the toilet then after checking the coast was clear of any pesky siblings we dashed into the study across the hallway.
The plan was to hide from my sister until she got bored of looking for us then run up to her saying that a man in the toilet had grabbed us and taken us down into his world through the toilet though luckily we had just managed to escape with our lives and get back home, but she should not go to the toilet alone in case he grabbed her. To us this seemed like the perfect revenge.

Once in the study we proceeded to hide in the back of my mothers sewing cupboard, covering ourselves in a variety of colored materials and nick-knacks that were stored there so that we would be hidden from view should anyone open the door. It had been about five minutes and we could here my sister calling out for us when I noticed a pot of red ink next to my hand, a plan began to formulate in my mind; instead of just waiting for my sister to get bored of looking for us we should send her a note telling her that we had been taken by a man in the toilet and could not escape.
We found some paper and on it we wrote to my sister telling her that under no circumstances whatsoever was she to go to the toilet because if she did a man would come out of the toilet and grab her, just like he had done to us. We wrote the note in the red ink, using our fingers to make it look like blood smears and opened the cupboard door a crack and threw the note on the floor.

Sure enough my sister came into the room in her search for us and found the note on the floor, she went to my father who begrudgingly read out the note to her, my friend and I giggled as we heard my sister become more and more panicked as she called out our names. We waited for another five minutes before we decided it was getting too hot and squishy in the cupboard so we climbed out and sat on the floor coughing loudly until my sister burst into the room, she was angry at first still not fully believing out story until we showed her the “blood stains” on our fingers then she began crying. My friend and I congratulated our selves on a successful prank and when she left I told my sister the truth, she was angry but I expected that to be the end of it. I was wrong.

My sisters overactive four year old mind was now so convinced that there was a man in the toilet out to get her that even when I told her it was untrue she would not go to the toilet alone, either my mother, father or myself had to be present with her at all times when she went to the toilet. This phase in my sister’s life did not last only a couple of weeks as expected, but instead lasted three years. For those three years nearly every time my sister went to the toilet someone had to be there with her. What had started out as a harmless prank had turned into three years of torture for my whole family.
Needless to say I was not popular with my family for those three years.