Chester and the Travelling Toilet

Chester was mad. Not like the time he hadn’t made the school soccer team because the coach has missed his shot at goal to take a phone call, or like the time   His parents were making him move. 

His mum had gotten a new job, so she made the entire family move from one side of the country to the other. He had to leave his friends, his school, leave everything he had ever known in his whole life and go somewhere he had never been. He knew it was going to suck. They weren’t even moving into a proper house. Chester’s mum was a history professor and had gotten a job at a high profile university, so they would be living on campus. That meant no park across the road like his old house, no school just around the corner. While the removalists were packing away their house, he sulked around, hiding from his family if he saw them coming. He didn’t want to talk to any of them. 

They caught a plane across the country, but their stuff all had to come by road, which made him even madder. He didn’t even have his stuff to take his mind off all the things he missed. A car picked them up from the airport and drove them out to the university. Chester frowned at everyone and everything out of the window. He did NOT want to be here.

The car pulled up in front of a modern-looking house in the late afternoon. A big gumtree grew out the front with a rope swing.

“Look, Ches, I reckon that would be fun,” his dad pointed to the swing. Chester ignored him. It did look interesting, but he didn’t want his dad knowing he thought that. They unpacked their bags from the car and hauled them up the front steps. 

Inside, the house looked weird. It was a smart house, which meant it had all the latest technology built into it. You could control all of the lights, air conditioners, and TV from one little pad in the kitchen. The alarm could be controlled by your phone. It had a house-wide sound system; even the coffee machine could be operated without being in the kitchen.

“Pretty cool, don’t you think?” his mum asked on her way to the lounge room. Chester shrugged. He did think it was kind of cool, but he didn’t want her to know that.

They ordered pizza for dinner, and then Chester headed upstairs to set up his camp bed. A camp bed! What were his parents thinking, really? As he tried to get comfortable, Chester punched his pillow. As he fell asleep, he thought to himself,

“I hate this house and everything in it.”

It was still dark when Chester woke up. For a minute, he couldn’t work out where he was, and then he remembered—the new house. Chester lay in bed for a moment and then realised he needed to get up. He had to go to the toilet. Grabbing his torch from under his bed, Chester slipped out of his room. He got a fright when a little light on the floor came on the second he stepped outside his door. He stepped back inside, and it went off, then out again, and it came back on.

“Hhmm,” grunted Chester, “Motion-activated night lights. That is kind of cool.” He stuffed his torch into his pyjama pocket and made his way silently along the hallway, the tiny lights popping on and off as he moved past them. 

When he got to the toilet, he quietly opened the door, then closed it behind him. He turned to find the weirdest looking toilet he had ever seen. It was square, all in stainless steel, with a touchpad next to it.

“That’s not very hygienic,” he grumbled as he sat down. When he finished, he tried to work out how to flush. He checked the back of the toilet but couldn’t find a button. There was no little pulley thing on the side or the top either. He looked over at the touchpad. There were lots of little pictures glowing on it. The two at the top looked like little swirls, like how they show a cyclone on the weather updates. He thought they were probably to flush, so he pushed one, and sure enough, he heard the toilet flush.

“So what are all the other buttons for?” he wondered. He pushed one that looked like a musical note, and the toilet started playing classical music. Chester giggled. He pushed the button again, and the toilet fell silent. He saw one that looked like a little flame, but he didn’t think anything happened when he pushed it. Then he noticed little red LED lights had come on at the bottom of the seat, and when he reached out his hand, he realised that the seat felt warm.

“Well, that’ll come in handy when it’s cold,” Chester thought. He turned it off again and found buttons for a light, and four little jets of water sprouted up in the bowl. At the very bottom of the panel were three more, slightly smaller buttons. One had a book on it, one had an aeroplane, and the last one had a planet that looked like Saturn. Shrugging to himself, he pushed the last button. For a moment, nothing happened.

Suddenly, he heard a loud WHOOSH and a ROOOAAARRR of what sounded like a giant engine. He stumbled back against the door, which flew open with a bang. Chester grabbed the side of the doorway and gasped. His house had disappeared! He was flying in the sky! Quicker and quicker, the toilet hurtled through the clouds and up away into the night. He tried to shut the door but couldn’t, so he pulled his way to the toilet and sat down, staring. Earth got smaller and smaller. He felt pretty sure he flew through space now. 

Sure enough, a second later, Chester saw the moon pass by his toilet door, slowly getting smaller as he flew further into space. All Chester could do was sit there and watch. He had no idea where he was going or how he would ever get back home.

Eventually, Chester felt the toilet slowing down. He stood up and peered out the door. The toilet was landing on a planet, a huge red planet with high mountains. He gripped the toilet tightly as it bumped to the ground. Slowly, Chester stood up and peered out of the door. Would he even be able to breathe? He took a step outside, holding his breath. When he couldn’t hold his breath anymore, he gasped for air and was surprised to find that he could breathe. 

Smiling, Chester took a few more steps away from the toilet. He stood, looking around the red planet. There were no trees or bushes that he could see. There was something, though, a speck in the distance that seemed to be moving towards him.

Chester slowly backed up as the speck became a smudge, then a blob, then what looked like a person running towards him faster than he would have thought possible. He thought about stepping back into the toilet and shutting the door but hesitated, and in that instant, the thing stopped right in front of him.

“Hi,” it said. It sounded like…..a girl? It didn’t look like any girls Chester had ever known, though. It was bright green and had three large feet with webbed toes; long legs covered by a red dress that looked like it was made out of leather. She, because he was fairly certain now that it was a she, had two normal enough looking arms, two hands, and one head. On top of that head was a mass of tight, curly, orange hair. She had a human-looking face, even though it was green. She had a little button nose with what looked like dark green freckles and a wide smile.

“Um…..hello,” Chester replied quietly. The girl seemed nice enough. “Do you know where I am?”

“Of course, I live here, don’t I?” she smiled. “This is Mars. Where are you from?”

“Earth,” said Chester, smiling back at her. “My name’s Chester. What’s yours?”

“Flick,” the girl replied.

“Flick? That’s a strange name,” Chester said.

“It’s short for Flixetta Octavia Marxinest,” Flick smiled.

“Right, well Flick, it is then,” replied Chester. Flick reached out and pointed to his PJs pocket.

“What’s that in there?” she asked. Chester suddenly remembered he had put his torch into this

pocket after leaving his bedroom.

“It’s a torch,” Chester pulled it out of his pocket and turned it on. “You use it at night or when it’s dark to help light your way.”

“Wow…..can I have a go?” Flick asked. Chester handed her the torch. Flick amused herself by pushing the button on and off for a few minutes.

“You can keep it if you like. I have more at home,” Chester said.

“Oh, really? Thanks!” Flick said. Chester watched her put the torch into a deep pocket in her red dress. 

“I didn’t think anyone lived on Mars,” he said. Flick laughed.

“That’s what we want you to think. We don’t you earthlings coming up here and bothering us.” She laughed again, a strange sort of laugh that sounded a little like wind chimes caught in a breeze. Chester glanced down at his watch and realised that his parents would be waking up very soon.

“Oh wow, I didn’t realise what time it was. I had better get home before my parents realise I’m gone and get worried,” Chester cried. He said goodbye to Flick and promised to come back again and visit soon. Stepping back inside the toilet, he closed the door and sat down. He pushed the button with the planet on it again and, after a moment, heard the loud WHOOOSH and a ROOOAARR of the toilet taking off, and after a brief journey, he felt a soft BUMP as the toilet settled back into place in his house. 

Quietly, Chester opened the door to see the sun had risen and was streaming through the windows down the hallway. As he stepped out of the toilet, he saw his dad coming the other way up the hall.

“Morning, Chester. How’d you sleep?” he asked. Chester replied that he had slept ok and wandered down to the kitchen to find his mum preparing breakfast.

“Chester, I went out early this morning and got you bacon and eggs. I know you really didn’t want to have to move, and you have been so good about it, so I wanted to make you your favourite breakfast,” she said, smiling. Chester looked at her and thought about how he had been feeling the last few weeks. More importantly, he thought about how he had behaved. He didn’t think he deserved a special breakfast. He felt a little guilty for how he had behaved. Chester walked over to his mum and wrapped his arms around her waist.

“I love you, mum. And even though I do miss my friends and my school, I have a feeling that this house is going to be even more awesome than our old house,” he said. As he sat down at the kitchen table, he began to think about bedtime, and how soon he might be able to get to the toilet, and what other interesting adventures might lay in his future.