Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung
The Head
She was about to flush the toilet.
“Mother?”
She looked back. There was a head popping out of the toilet, calling for her.
“Mother?”
The woman looked at it for a moment. Then, she flushed the toilet. The head disappeared in a rush of water.
She left the bathroom.
A few days later, she met the head again in the bathroom.
“Mother!”
The woman reached to flush the toilet again. The head sputtered, “N-no, just a minute …”
The woman stayed her hand and looked down at the head in the toilet.
It was probably more accurate to refer to it as “a thing that vaguely looked like a head” than an actual head. It was about two-thirds the size of an adult’s head and resembled a lump of carelessly slapped-together yellow and grey clay, with a few scattered clumps of wet hair. No ears, no eyebrows. Two slits for eyes so narrow that she couldn’t tell if its eyes were open or closed. The crushed mound of flesh that was meant to be its nose. The mouth was also a lipless slit. This slit was awkwardly opening and closing as it talked to her, its strained speech mixed with the gurgling of a person drowning, making it difficult to understand.
“What in bloody hell are you?” the woman demanded.
“I call myself the head,” the head replied.
“You would, obviously,” the woman said, “but why are you in my toilet? And why are you calling me ‘Mother’?”
The head strained as it formed unpracticed speech with its lipless mouth. “My body was created with the things you dumped down the toilet, like your fallen-out hair and feces and toilet paper you used to wipe your behind.”
The woman became furious. “I never gave the likes of you any permission to live in my toilet. I never even created you in the first place, so stop calling me ‘mommy.’ Leave before I call the exterminators.”
“I only want so little,” the head hastily added, “I’m only asking that you keep dumping your body waste in the toilet so I can finish creating the rest of my body. Then I’ll go far away from here and live by my own means. So please, just keep using the toilet like you always have.”
“This is my toilet,” the woman said coldly, “so of course I’m going to use it like I always have. But I can’t bear to think of a creature like you living in it. Finishing your body is none of my concern. I don’t care what you do, and I’d appreciate it if you stopped appearing.”
The head disappeared into the toilet.
But the head kept reappearing.
After a flush, it would peer over the toilet seat and stare at the woman as she washed her hands. Whenever the woman felt like she was being watched, her eyes would dart to the toilet and lock gazes with its hard-to-tell-if-they-were-open eye slits. The mashed-up face seemed to be trying to create an expression, but it was impossible to tell what of. The head quickly disappeared down the toilet whenever she approached. The woman would then slam down the lid, flush, glare at the toilet for a while, and leave.
One day, the woman had used the toilet like always, flushed the bowl, and was washing her hands. The head appeared in the toilet behind her, as it normally did. The woman stared at it for a while through the mirror. The head stared back. The mashed-up face underneath the irregular clumps of hair would’ve normally been yellow and gray, but now it was oddly red.
The woman remembered she was having her period.
“Your color looks different,” she said to the head. “Does it have anything to do with the state of my own body?”
The head replied, “Mother, the state of your body has a direct effect on my appearance. This is because my entire existence depends on you.”
The woman took off her underwear and sanitary pad. She stuck the pad smeared with her menstrual blood on the head’s face and shoved it down the toilet. She flushed.
The head and the pad swirled around the bowl and vanished into the dark hole. She washed her hands. Then, she vomited into the sink. She vomited for a long time, then rinsed the sink and left the bathroom.
The toilet got clogged. The plumber presented the sanitary pad to her as if it were a trophy and delivered a long lecture about not throwing such things into the toilet.
She began to keep her toilet lid closed. Whenever she was doing her business, she developed the habit of frequently looking into the bowl. The woman developed constipation.
One day, just as she was about to close the toilet lid, she caught a glimpse of the head peering out of the hole. She slammed down the lid. She flushed several times. Just as she was about to leave the bathroom, she carefully cracked open the lid. Her eyes met those of the head. It was staring at her from the water. Its hair floated around its face. She shut the lid again. She tried to flush but the water wouldn’t go down.
The woman told her family about it.
“It’s not like it’s laying eggs or anything. Why don’t you just leave it alone?”
And that was all her family said of the matter.
The woman avoided going to the bathroom at home.
One day, she saw it at her workplace bathroom. She had flushed the toilet and was washing her hands when she caught sight of, through the mirror, the head peeping out from the toilet in her stall. She quit her job the next day.
Her constipation worsened. Her bladder became inflamed. The doctor told her she needed to make regular visits to the bathroom. But the thought of something lurking below where she did her business, waiting to eat her defecations, made going to any bathroom unbearable.