Halfway through my failed attempt to eat the Burger King Halloween Whopper into a bat symbol.

When I was 5 or one of those other dumbass ages when you do dumbass things, I had a two day obsession with cranberry juice. Part of it was that I was at my dad’s house and cranberry juice was the only thing that didn’t taste like bullshit, but most of it was because on my second glass, my father’s roommate said “Wow, you’re going to pee red if you keep that up.”

I kept going for two goddamn days didn’t see so much as a darker yellow.

In the intervening years, I would get mad at myself for believing in such a stupid, hopeless dream. But the glimmer of hope shined once again when I learned of “Frankenberry Stool” a condition so named because the red dye used in the original 1971 Frankenberry cereal turned poops pink.  This was not seen as a selling point.

Poop is not pee, but legends of Frankenberry Stool are the best/only convincing evidence that magic once existed in this world. A cereal based on a book about a guy made out of corpses turned children into freaks of nature when they pooped. Magic. The stuff of dreams.

But some dreams do come true.

I am always a freak of nature when I poop. If you’ve read my book or even just glanced at the site name in your address bar, you’ll know I eat like an asshole. My digestive system is mostly decorative and I need a handful of pills and a couple of injections to make it do anything. The point is, I’ve seen just about every kind of poop there is and it takes a lot for me to get excited about a bowel movement. I would literally have to shit magic.

Then the other day, I did.

About halfway through my work day, I stepped into my other office and went about my business. Fairly clean, nothing out of the ordinary. But when I got up, I saw a beautiful two-toned poop half basic brown and half glorious green. Like Green Giant green. Pantone 355 C green. “They should have sent a poet” green. I was so stunned, that I couldn’t even get a picture before the automatic flush returned the world to gray, but here’s an artist’s rendering made minutes later on my phone.

Two islands in the porcelain sea.

The excitement was palpable, even while my mind raced with all the possibilities of what this could be. Was it my recent change in pills? Could MRI contrast dye have anything to do with it? Has my digestive system finally given up?

Gimmicks, when properly applied, turn the good great and the great into legends. The Whopper is good. Adding A1 sauce and a black bun has it brushing greatness. In a blind taste test, I probably could not tell the Halloween Whopper from the regular A1 Whopper. But the joy I get from eating a thing that looks like it missed the bag and has been sitting in the garbage for two tours of duty is unquantifiable. Add to that the number of people who told me not to eat it and the cool little mummy wrapper it comes in and you have a perfect storm of a sandwich. The only thing keeping it from being the greatest sandwich ever is one question: does it turn my poop green?

I had my first Halloween Whopper Monday night/Tuesday morning at midnight. There were two people working and no other cars in the drive thru; a perfectly spooky setting. My heart fluttered when I first saw it, but that did not keep me from destroying it. The dog was disappointed that she got nothing but the chance to watch me lick A1 off of the wrapper.

Pictured here: Lila P. Dogface getting jack shit.

For my second Halloween Whopper, I went to the same Burger King at the same time in the same WASP shirt and ordered the same combo, though this time I opted to go for the large instead of the medium. I still destroyed the sandwich in under 5 minutes.

Pre-fight staredown.

I will admit my experiment is flawed because there’s a slight chance that–though I haven’t had any issues in the past–the orange Powerade Zero I got from the Coke Freestyle machine could be contributing. Strict science would dictate that I drink only water, but the reality is fuck you I wanted a Powerade.

The gestation period for the last Whopper was about 36 hours, so I was ready for a long wait. But it was a mere 12 hours later that I felt a gurgle in my stomach and ran to the nearest non-auto flush bathroom. And you know what happened on that stall?

Magic. NSFW Magic.

Magic in the way the dye radiates around the larger mass. Magic in the way that the linked picture is actually of the second, funnier poop I took that day. Magic in the way that, after many years and a lot of pain, the Halloween Whopper put a little joy back in my toilet.

Thank you, Great Pumpkin. Thank you.