I am the least religious person you will ever know. I believe religion is the cause of most of the problems today, and probably the cover for most of the rest. It is therefore of no shame for me to admit that the greatest dump I've ever dumped was dumped into the toilet of the church my brother attends.

I take opiates for a chronic pain in my leg. And if you're not already aware, one of the side-effects of opium is a laxed peristalsis -- otherwise known as a form of constipation.

My brother got confirmed recently. Out of familial respect (they're all Lutherans), I attended. However, we arrived fairly early, and I had that rare-but-cherished urge to use the loo. And there I received a big surprise: the men's bathroom in the church only had one stall. Luckily, it was empty.

The seat was fairly clean -- thank goodness for sanitary churchgoers -- so I easily sat and readied myself. I have a history of enormous, ass-ripping, monolithic shits that leave me either in tears or close to them, and I didn't expect anything else in so perfect a location as a church. To my expectations, this was the most prodigious, unholy mammoth to have ever been released from my bowels. I could feel it all the way up my rectum as the behemoth forced its way out, the crowning process of which left me gritting my teeth and resenting the fact that I had not brought any book or magazine to distract me from the pain.

I was halfway finished when someone entered. He got barely a step in the door before he was assaulted with the ungodly stench and, judging from what I saw of his feet from beneath the stall door, knocked backwards by the sheer magnitude of the effluvium. I was rather focused on the arduous effort of pushing, but I thought I heard something to the effect of "dear God", followed by a hasty exit.

Alas, that man was not the only person to enter the room at so unfortunate a time; but at least that man didn't hear the worst of it. The second person entered when the colossus was almost out. All I had to do was force my sphincter to remain open so the girth of the beast would pull itself free. The second man paused as the eldritch stench that had emanated from my bowels raped his senses, but remained long enough to hear my very audible gasp of relief as the creature slithered free of my anus, feeling like it dragged claws along my interior sphincter in a vain attempt to remain inside. I pictured (and the sound that actually occurred was accurate to this image) a breaching whale coming back to slam sideways into the water. I felt the splash as the door to the bathroom once again slammed closed.

If I had been in possession of a knife at the time, I would have engraved two notches into the stall wall.

Surprisingly, the monstrous creation of my bowels had a surprisingly clean exit, aside from the splash. I had honestly expected blood, as the thing had taken me twenty minutes or so to expel, but there was no such thing. It only took a few paper wipes to conclude that it would be something to hold up to the U.S. military officials for an example of a clean exit strategy.

It was at this point that the best part of the story occurs. I looked down at the demon I had defecated and knew immediately that it was not flushable. This thing was easily the length of my forearm and looked solid as a rock. The curves that it had to fit into the bowl were rigid, and I was reminded of horns as I inspected the numerous pointy extrusions that ran along its length. This thing, this nameless horror, would not go down without a fight -- and it was a fight I didn't have in me. (At least, not without a hanger or other instrument.) So, washing my hands, I proudly made my exit, the words "holy crap" ringing in my head.