The toilet water bubbled.

A few scraps of toilet paper, dropped into the basin by the stall’s previous occupant, became less and less visible as his blast of pee pushed it further down into the water. A mean piss. The strength of his stream was probably the reason this toilet bowl was complaining so much. Pissing and moaning, you could say of the basin’s protest, yelling at Wallace in plain English. Not that he hadn’t been yelled at recently by his own toilet at home. But this was the first time a commode had bitched at him in public.

It was awkward, having this happen in the men’s room of the Salmon Ladder, his favorite Seattle bar. Wallace knew the guy in the next stall couldn’t hear the toilet’s yammering. But unfortunately, he couldn’t stop himself from responding in kind. “Just shut up and receive the piss!” Wallace yelled. “You’re a fucking toilet, for Christ’s sake! What’d you think was going to happen here?!”

Before he could take much satisfaction in his retort, he heard his stall neighbor speed-zip his pants, throw open the stall door, and make a quick exit. Clearly the guy’s alarm outweighed any curiosity about why a grown man was verbally abusing a toilet bowl. But hey, this dude probably had never been demeaned by a kitchen coffeemaker. Or had a sink spit mouthwash back up at his face. Or had a refrigerator refuse to open its door because it wanted to continue its Sunday afternoon “nap.”

No, the bathroom-fleeing patron could never understand the crap being served up in Wallace’s life right now. And up until a few weeks ago, Wallace himself couldn’t have understood it either. A few weeks back, he would have run out of the stall, too, chased away by the Toilet Shouter.

Before the trouble started, Wallace had been enjoying a routine life, with a boring nine-to-five, a shitty apartment he struggled to make rent on, and three umbrellas — a big one and two small cheapos to cope with Seattle’s rain.

That was before he brought home the checkerboard.

It had been love at first sight: a worn wooden box with squares painted on top, a hinged lid, and checkers stored in the compartment. It was a dignified set. A checkerboard fit for a grown-up. As chance would have it, Wallace had just vowed to start playing checkers against himself, something he’d done as a kid. It would help him unwind after work. There was only so much TV a guy could watch.

Back when he was rotting away during his 11-year marriage, Ellen didn’t like him doing stuff that made him happy. She would have mocked him for playing checkers. But Ellen was history now. He’d finally found the gumption to move out. His ex-wife — aka the Succubitch — had bled him dry, financially and emotionally. He hadn’t quite recovered, on either front. But at least he no longer had to hear her wheedling voice or watch her eat pickled herring, that Norwegian food she ate because it reminded her of her late mother.

As the 42-year-old assistant manager of Seattle’s largest Salvation Army store, Wallace worked long hours, and his take-home pay was modest. The benefits were good, though, including full dental. He liked a few of his coworkers, and a couple of store regulars told amusing stories.

On the negative side, his 29-year-old boss, Todd, holder of some kind of accounting degree, was a dick. Also, some of their customers… well, some could be a bit odiferous. Still, he preferred them to the hipsters. Bargain-hunting trustafarians, half of them. He could practically read their minds when they glanced at him: Look at this dork with his pricing gun, nametag, beige pants, and short-sleeve button-down. Whatever. Artist-wannabes. Unemployed millennials making peanuts in the “gig economy.”

It’s true, Wallace wasn’t living the dream. But every day there was a reminder that things could be worse. His store served people unsure where their next meal would come from, or where they’d sleep that night.

And he could still take pleasure in little things. Stuff as small as the McDonald’s Dollar Menu made him happy. He felt true elation when Verizon mistakenly refunded some charges he’d racked up. And the sight of the checkerboard had put a literal smile on his face.

It had been sitting on a dusty, shadowed shelf next to a donated game of Risk. It had just arrived, he knew, since he’d inspected that same shelf the day before. Gazing at the game board, he pictured himself at home in his kitchen, playing checkers, bottle of Redhook in hand. Only problem? Employees weren’t allowed to put dibs on store items.

But Wallace had an idea. The game hadn’t been priced yet. Strike that. It lacked a price sticker, which meant one of three things: an employee screwed up, a customer peeled it off, or an unknown person, perhaps put off by a line at the donation counter, had shelved it themselves. This fact, combined with a store policy allowing employees to purchase items if they sat unbought for a month, gave Wallace an opening.

He went to his pricing station and checked their computerized item intake log. There was no record of the checkerboard. Which meant it had no official price in their system. So he logged it in and priced it at $18.50. Experience told him this number was high enough to discourage purchase, but not so high that it communicated “vintage” or “artisanal” to a hipster.

Pricing was one of Wallace’s most important responsibilities. The Salvation Army existed to provide affordable goods to those on extremely limited budgets. Revenue helped feed and clothe the homeless, and aided people in addiction recovery. As an assistant manager (only managers were allowed to price), he had to hit the bargain-price sweet spot: affordable, but not so discounted that revenue was miniscule. His pricing impacted lives. A 25-cent difference on a sweater could mean the difference between a poor schmuck making it through a January night or not.

But a checkerboard’s not a necessity, he told himself. No one would freeze without it. Furthermore, compared to all the colossal greed and deception in the wider world, his little scheme was so small you’d need an electron microscope to see it. It was… a peccadillo. A peccadillo, he learned in high school, is “a small, relatively unimportant offense or sin.”

Feeling a fizz of rebellion, he used a black Sharpie to write $18.50 on a price sticker. Manager Todd was at the other end of the huge floor. Back in the game aisle, Wallace stickered the checkerboard in one quick, fluid movement, then nudged it deeper into the shadows. If a coworker brought the high price to his attention sometime in the next month, he’d say, “Oh, darn! I think I know what happened. Brainfart! I was tuckered out that day. I had just priced a nice set of kitchen china with a red and black checkerboard pattern at $18.50, and obviously my wires got crossed!”

Thirty days passed. The board went unsold. It was satisfying handing their new hire, Janice, $18.50 in bills and coins from his special checkerboard fund (employees weren’t allowed to ring up their own purchases). Janice didn’t bat an eye.

Back home that night, Wallace contentedly placed 24 plastic checkers into their red and black painted squares. As he did, he reflected on the snobbery of chess players. In his opinion, real men played checkers. He imagined himself saying the following to a haughty chessmaster: “Unlike your game, mine has no queen. It’s all about kings and crowns. Dare I say… checkmate?”

He could feel his temper rising now, his cheeks warm. It was just his luck to have the checkerboard of his dreams turn out to be possessed. The one time he breaks a rule in his life.

With his hand poised to move a checker for the first time in what would become a nightly tradition, Wallace realized something. He realized he should paint “Property of Wallace B. Kelly” in red enamel paint on the bottom of the storage compartment. Grinning, he hopped up to check his junk drawer, where he recalled a tube of such paint resided. Bingo.

Striding back to the table, merry as a quiz-show contestant with the right answer, he froze. What the hell. A black checker had moved to a new square. Had he bumped the table getting up? Before he could form another thought, his cell phone rang. It was an unknown local number.

“Hello?” Wallace answered. The caller hung up. Fine, he thought. I have a game of checkers to play, jerky spam caller.

He held the black checker up to his bespectacled eyes, staring at it. As he did, he heard a faint sound. It was the sound of a sliding checker. Oh shit. Heart starting to race, he gazed at the checkerboard. Another black checker had moved diagonally, from one black square to an adjacent one. What the hell? Wallace thought for a second time.

A tantrum-thrower as a kid, he’d always had a temper. It could come out of nowhere, and virtually never did him any good. He could feel his temper rising now, his cheeks warm. It was just his luck to have the checkerboard of his dreams turn out to be possessed. The one time he breaks a rule in his life. And he’d showed so much patience, waiting out the month.

More angry than scared, Wallace B. Kelly barked, “I paid good money for you! And you pull this crap?!”

That’s when the checkerboard’s lid raised by itself. Red and black checkers slid onto the kitchen table, a couple falling to the floor. And from inside the storage compartment came a mocking male voice: “Jesus, you’re pathetic. What are you, five years old?”

And so it began. This was the night when a new age in Wallace’s life kicked off, an age where the objects of this world — products, items, lifeless constructions of wood, glass, plastic, steel — harangued him. Insulted him.

On night one, in his kitchen, Wallace grew furious. He hurled the game board to the floor and jumped on it with both feet, collapsing the lid. The board shut up, then. He rounded up the checkers, picked up the wrecked board, and marched out of his apartment. The checkers got a ride down the garbage chute. He flung the trashed wooden board into a parking-lot dumpster.

A month of obsessing over this checkerboard, and it was all gone to shit in minutes. It was Ellen all over again “Enjoy the landfill,” he hissed into the dumpster before stomping off.

But parting ways with the board didn’t solve anything. Things just got worse. Way worse. Wallace had no idea what he’d done to deserve such treatment, and no clue as to who or what was behind his torment. Appliances teased him. He couldn’t even stock the shelves at his job anymore without having to defend himself.

“Fuck you, Hamilton Beach popcorn popper,” he whispered, before noticing a customer staring at him.

Not long into this hell, his flat-screen TV — the priciest object in his apartment — wouldn’t turn on. When Wallace slapped the back of it, the sleek Panasonic said, “Yo, couch potato, I’m taking the night off. Go polish your dolphin or something.”

His toilet turned out to be a real prick. “Greetings, Pencil Dick,” it said one morning, before adding: “You know what, Kelly? You’re an asshole. And I should know.” His shower wouldn’t turn on. “Work stoppage,” the showerhead quipped. “I might not spray water, Wally B., but I’m dripping with sarcasm. Ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

Wallace began to smell. It didn’t help that the washing machines in his apartment building took his money, refused to function, and called him names. Twice, at work, Todd took Wallace aside and said both customers and coworkers had complained about his personal hygiene and habit of swearing at donated items. Five long showerless weeks later, the inevitable happened. Wallace got fired.

“I hope you get the help you need,” Todd said, not unkindly.

Out in the parking lot, Wallace’s 2005 Chevy Cavalier kicked him, verbally, while he was down. First the car wouldn’t allow him to open the driver’s door. Then, after Wallace pounded the hood, it snapped, “Take the bus, Stanky. Better yet, jump in Puget Sound.”

God, did Wallace need a drink. But his stench — which had strange notes of sulfur and rotten fruit, overpowering every deodorant he’d tried — would empty a bar inside of a minute.

Suddenly he got an idea. It gave him a bit of hope. What if I doused myself in aftershave? Wallace thought. The words OLD SPICE lit up in his brain like a neon sign. He went to a CVS a block from the Salmon Ladder, bought two bottles of Old Spice aftershave, stepped into an alley, and was thrilled when the white and red containers actually let themselves be opened. He soaked himself in the concoction, emptying both bottles. Five minutes later he walked into the bar.

Greg, just starting his day shift, seemed surprised to see him. “Hi, Greg,” Wallace said to the bearded bartender. “I know I smell strongly of Old Spice. Long story. Could I have a shot of Beam and a pitcher of Redhook, please?” Greg gave him a quick look, but said, “Sure, Wallace.”

Forty-five minutes later, while pissing like a race horse, Wallace scared a guy out of the bathroom with his toilet-directed tirade, and mid-insult, the toilet retaliated by spraying him with yellow toilet water. Wallace’s temper escalated.

“You’re a fucking piece of shit, you know that?!” he yelled at the toilet.

Responding in kind, the toilet, with help from its plumbing, fired a turd left by the stall’s previous occupant into Wallace’s face. He went apeshit.

Kicking and punching the commode in a blind fury, Wallace screamed, “That’s one for the Succubitch! And two for Todd! And three for Seattle hipsters! And four for that fucking checkerboard!”

Then — like an enraged baseball manager going nose-to-nose with an ump — he braced his hands on the commode’s wet rim, lowered his face within an inch of the befouled water, and bellowed, “NOT SUCH A BIG TOUGH GUY NOW, ARE YA, TOILET?!”

The commode power-flushed. With a hideous whirlpool sound, it sucked Wallace downward, his cheeks slamming porcelain like his head was a thrust plunger. Such was the strength of the suction, his face formed a tight seal with the trapway opening, and as the epic flush continued, the basin filled and overflowed. He didn’t stand a chance.

By the time Greg rushed in and wrenched his customer free, Wallace was as lifeless, as inanimate, as the multitude of objects that had mocked and disparaged him for 37 straight days.