Graduate Carl's Nightmare Induction

[Lee]

It was around 8:20.am when Irene arrived at the office, grateful that the caretaker had got there even earlier and opened up. It was already uncomfortably hot and the forecasters promised that it would be yet another incredibly hot, humid and sticky day to add to the string of scorchers of recent weeks. By the time she had made it to her office, a small number of her staff were making their way into the car park, anxious to start as early as possible in the hope they might able to ‘flex off’ nice and early and enjoy some of the evening sunshine. As they wended their way in, there was an unfamiliar face in their midst and a few of the girls cast their eyes in the direction of the good-looking young lad looking a bit awkwardly around him.

“Excuse me” asked Linda, “are you the new temp by any chance?”

“I am yes” replied the lad, with a polite beaming smile that immediately endeared him to the group of girls, “I’m Carl”.

“Ah right, this way, the manager’s waiting to see you.”

As they guided him into the large open plan office, Carl slowed down his brisk pace to a near halt and in a clear, calm and well-spoken voice he
said, “Is there a toilet I can use, please?”

“Of course” replied another one of the girls, it’s just back outside, on the right-hand side. I’ll wait here for you.”

Carl confidently made his way back out through the doors he had just come through and felt pleased he had asked and even more pleased that the toilet was readily available and nearby. He’d been out last night and although it was unplanned, the evening had turned into a heavy session with his mates and he had lost count of the number of pints of cool lager that had been consumed amongst them in the warm and sultry weather. He hadn’t wanted to be showing any effects this morning and had downed several large jugs of cool water before leaving home, but they were starting to have an impact on his bladder.

Carl was 22 years old but having gone through Sixth Form College and then off to Bristol University to undertake a sports science degree, he hadn’t actually had a proper job before and this first temporary assignment was with a view to a permanent role. It was just an administrative role in a finance team but he hoped, as a new graduate, it would induct him into the workplace environment.

As he approached the wood-stained gents toilet door he casually pushed on it and was a bit taken aback to find that it was firmly closed. He pushed again, this time with a bit more force but it was not to be moved. With that, the door of the adjacent ladies loo opened and a girl of a similar age to him emerged, looked at him, and presumably thinking he was a visitor or someone of similar status, she said,

“Oh, Norman won’t have unlocked the gents yet. There’s no men working here at the moment so he doesn’t always bother. You’ll have to see if you can find him somewhere, ask at the counter.” And with that, she was off to greet one of her arriving work colleagues.

“Damn!” cursed Carl. His bladder was twitching uncomfortably and he’d hoped to be nice and comfortable before settling down. Now he’d have to embarrassingly go back into the office and announce that the toilet was locked. He walked back into the office but before he could even get both feet through the door, the girl who had directed him and had clearly been waiting for his return, virtually ushered him past the row of desks, chattering rapidly as she went and suddenly they were at the door of the office of a tall, middle-aged lady, a bit ‘headmistress-type’ in appearance, although she smiled and nodded at him.

Before any other words could be spoken, the lady introduced herself as Irene, the office manager and then immediately proceeded to announce, “I’m so sorry Carl, but I’m afraid I’ve got to leave straight away. I would normally make sure that I was here to introduce you and show you what you need but I’ve been called to a meeting and I’ve got to go straight away or I’m going to be struggling to make it in time.”

Carl almost wanted to respond with ‘I know how you feel’ but he wisely kept the words inside his head. With that Irene had rattled off a few brief instructions to Katie, the girl with him, and with that she was gone, hurrying out of the door.

Katie meanwhile was definitely not lost for words at all and just reeled off a whole string of announcements about working conditions, working hours, desks, coffee machines, water, etc. so much so that most of it passed straight over Carl’s head. Katie presumably, was not particularly experienced in doing staff inductions!

Carl hardly knew what had happened in the whirl of the preceding minutes but suddenly he found himself standing behind a desk and chair, with Katie pulling the chair back right behind him and almost forcing Carl to plonk himself down on the seat. The sudden thump as his backside flopped onto the seat made him wince slightly as the tightness of his tummy became more apparent and he knew he had to say something,

“Erm…” his unexpected intervention interrupted Katie’s flow and she stopped suddenly and looked at him as Carl continued, “The toilet was locked when I went out there, another girl said that…”

Katie’s silence was momentary, “Oh Norman, yes I expect he’s forgotten to open it up. We don’t have any men work here at the moment so there’s usually no need for it be unlocked. I’ll see if I can find him, although to be honest he’s probably out having breakfast at the café. I’ll tell the others to look out for him.”

“Please, if you could,” Carl replied with a slight smile, “I’m actually busting”.

“I bet you are” said Katie, with a slight screech in her high-pitched voice, as she patted his shoulder, “First-day nerves and all that!”

Carl grinned again, but as Katie began to no doubt reel off another list of instructions, her attention was drawn to her name being called on the other side of the office, and she yelled back, “Okay, I’m coming, I’m coming.”

Turning back to Carl, she thrust a set of print-outs and a green highlighter pen onto the desk in front of him and said, “Can you go through these and highlight all those where it says ‘action’ in the final column, thanks”. And almost without pausing for breath, she said, “We’ve got a staff meeting next door, I’ll come and see you when we’ve finished.”

Suddenly, she was halfway across the room in pursuit of all her colleagues who were disappearing through the door and into another room. As almost the last one out, she turned back and called out to Carl, “Sorry about this, we wouldn’t normally desert you but this is an important staff meeting and we’ve got to start on time, sorry. Help yourself to coffee and water, won’t be too long.”

Carl looked up from what had been a whirlwind period and glanced around the empty office. He could see both a coffee machine and a water cooler but drinks were the last thing on his mind right now. He needed a toilet! He sat for several minutes, glancing through the spreadsheet document he had been given. The task itself didn’t seem too onerous and he used the highlighter to mark the first few lines as required. But after five or six minutes, he could feel his need for a wee becoming more apparent again and he decided he’d have to try the toilet again.

Feeling a bit conscious about being the only one in the huge office, he stood up and made his way to the door, feeling his bladder like a football in his stomach after soaking up all that early morning water. He stepped out into the deserted corridor, walked over to the toilet and tried the door again – it was still firmly locked. For a brief moment he felt tempted to pop into the ladies but quickly dismissed that ridiculous idea. Nothing would be more certain than someone would come in as soon as he had got in there.

Suddenly, there was a tap on the window and as Carl spun round, there was a woman outside getting into her car. He had absolutely no idea who she was and nor did she know him, but through the window, she mouthed the words, “Ask Norman”, smiled and got into her car, closing the door behind her. This so-far-mystical character Norman had better show up soon, otherwise it was going to be Carl in danger of showing himself up!

He walked back into the office and as he sat back down at the desk, he endured a slight moment of panic as he realised just how badly he needed to go. He stomach felt taut and the waistband of his dark grey trousers pinched noticeably, making him want to undo his belt. He was a slim guy with no more than a 30” inch waist but he felt as if his waistline had expanded to stretch his tight trousers around his pert backside.

Ten minutes later, as he heard yet again the telephone ringing briefly before clicking onto an answerphone, and after another fruitless trip to the locked loo, Carl was feeling decidedly uncomfortable. His need was such that he was absolutely bursting and the feeling seemed to be getting worse by the minute. A couple of times, acutely aware of having no-one watching over him, he had given himself a little squeeze under the desk to try and ease the discomfort but he was now gently jigging his legs, scissoring them back and forth in a near continuous rhythm.

His condition wasn’t being helped by the fact that it was stiflingly-hot in the office. It didn’t seem as if anyone had set the air-conditioning before going out and the humidity outside was being replicated inside the building. Carl could feel his trousers clinging uncomfortably to his legs and he was starting to regret his choice of a green shirt, conscious that any perspiration under his arms might make an unsightly wet stain.

‘God, I haven’t been bursting like this for ages’ he mused to himself, ‘It would have to happen today of all days.’

As the minutes ticked past with no sign of anyone, least of all this damn Norman fellow, Carl was starting to realise he was close to being in serious trouble. As he shifted on his chair for the umpteenth time, he could feel the seat of his underpants clinging to him and although he knew it was purely body sweat, it was nonetheless a heart-pounding moment. He experienced the same damp sensation in his thighs as he clamped his legs together and as his knees rubbed, there was yet another clammy feeling and he wiped beads of sweat from his forehead, aware that some strands of his hairs were sticking wetly to his scalp.

‘If someone doesn’t come soon or if I don’t do something, I’ll end up in serious danger of sitting here and wetting myself’ he told himself, making his stomach flip at such a thought. But it wasn’t far from the truth. ‘I’m going to have to go and try that toilet again’ he decided. As he stood up again, he found himself thinking the most ludicrous thoughts ‘If it’s still shut and I can’t wait, what if I end up doing it in my pants. Then I’d have to just get out of here and leave and how could I explain why I wasn’t here when they got back?’

He immediately rebuked himself over even considering such nonsense, but the alternative had to be that he either used the ladies, which was becoming even more of a non-starter now as what if the meeting finished and they all came in whilst he was in there? Or he just sat and waited and held himself until they came back. But that was going to be some challenge. This was awful. His mind was going into overdrive, ‘What if I try and wait and then they come back and I ask them again and they still can’t find Norman? I might wet my trousers right in front of them’. The sheer prospect, however ludicrous, made him sweat further.

When he got outside, he unsurprisingly found the toilet still locked but before he could think any more thoughts – sensible or pure nonsensical, he was shocked into almost pissing himself on the spot. The loudest and most ear-piercing shriek he had heard suddenly erupted from almost behind him and he saw a flashing blue light on the wall accompanying the shrill sound of what was undoubtedly an alarm. Carl stood, almost open-mouthed and stunned at the intense noise coming from the bell directly above his head.

Within seconds, one of the doors burst open and the whole host of girls and ladies came flooding out. “Quickly” said one of them, grabbing Carls’ arm without even asking what he was doing out in the corridor, “it’s the fire alarm, we’ve got to evacuate the building.” Carl found himself being herded amidst the women, through the staff car park and into the supposed relative safety of a small children’s playing area about 100 yards away. All of the women were laughing and chatting away. Carl meanwhile, was in full-blown panic mode.

“It’s only a fire alarm. Are you okay, dear?” He was spoken to by an older woman who had appeared alongside him. “You look ever so hot.” Her comments attracted the attention of a couple of other girls who also looked at him, “You must be baking; you should have worn your shorts!” one of them laughed.

Carl wiped the back of his hand across his brow again, feeling the droplets in the palm of his hand as he experienced a sensation of little stabbing pains in his lower belly “I’m absolutely dying to go to the toilet” he said, almost without realising the words he was uttering. “Oh are you? You poor thing!” the older lady said, as one of the girls helpfully added, “Last time this happened we were out here nearly two hours.”

As Carl pressed his legs tightly together as conspicuously as it was possible to do, he glanced around him in full panic mode, desperately looking for somewhere he could relieve himself. The older woman, who had apparently not seen his desperate leg-clenching action, called out to another group of girls, “There aren’t any toilets nearby, are there? This lad’s bursting to go.” They all shook their heads disinterestedly and the woman said, “Oh well never mind. Just you enjoy the sunshine and try not to think about it. There’s nothing else you can do.”

Carl couldn’t believe it, this was the stuff nightmares were made of. He was either going to wet himself like a four-year old in the playground, or he was going to have to try and find a tree or a bush to pee behind or simply just do it on the grass in front of all the girls within the first hour of starting his new job. But he couldn’t, this was a play area even if it was unused at the time.

Remarkably, five minutes later, no-one had still appeared to notice that the green-shirted young lad was in total despair. He was standing on the grass, next to a child’s rocking horse, bobbing up and down on the balls of his feet and every so often bending one leg up behind him. He was occasionally resorting to standing on the outer sides of his feet and gently gyrating his hips to try and ease the discomfort which had now turned into little spasms of severe pain.

His body was wracked with perspiration and he kept desperately pulling the material of his shirt from his armpits to try and avoid any staining, although unbeknown to him, there was a dark wet streak running down the back of his shirt from his shoulder-blades. The coarse material of the insides of his unlined trousers were itching his legs and further down he was constantly curling his toes inside his shoes, with every tight toe-curl gradually dragging his short grey ankle socks further down into the warmth radiating inside his increasingly sweaty black shoes.

An astonishing half-an-hour had passed during which several girls had made comments to him about all and sundry, with Carl hardly caring if they had found his responses to be curt and sharp. Several times, he had resigned himself to simply going to the toilet in his pants standing in the park and at least once he had felt his resistance weakening and had almost started to urinate himself. Somehow, he had managed to hold on but he knew that the point of no return was not far away. When he told chillingly and despairingly dared to admit to himself, “I’m going to wet my pants!” he knew that he was telling the awful truth.

He felt a gentle hand on his lower arm and he turned slightly to see the older woman to whom he had revealed his frantic need earlier, “Oh love you do look as if you’re dying to go to the toilet. Not long now hopefully and then you’ll be able to go.”

Her words, although meant kindly, were almost fatal for Carl and he spoke with a trembling voice, blissfully unconcerned about what he was saying. “I think I’m about to wet myself” he told her, gripping himself between the legs as if to emphasise what he was saying. “Oh good lord!” the woman said, but as she turned and went to call out for some assistance or advice or just to share the embarrassing predicament, she was outdone by another louder voice as someone shouted, “Okay ladies, all clear, we can all go back in again.” There was a whoop of delight from various groups and almost like a troop of soldiers, they began to move as one.

At the back of the large group, the woman continued to walk alongside a now-hobbling Carl. She was watching anxiously and, realising that the young lad was on the verge of disgracing himself in his trousers, she was urging him to try and make it a bit further.
“Come on sweetheart, you haven’t got far to go”
“What’s your name?”
“You’re such a nice-looking lad, try not to have an accident in those smart clothes”

Carl was struggling to walk, let alone make conversation. His face was burning and in common with the rest of his body, his red cheeks felt hot, sticky and clammy. Beneath his tight-fitting trousers, his tight white briefs felt tighter than ever and the warmth around his crotch area was so intense that he felt for one terrible moment that he’d starting weeing. With every step his bloated tummy ached and one painful spasm after another made him wince, almost out loud as he felt as if his legs were going to buckle beneath him.

A couple of minutes later they were back at the entrance to the building, with the woman still by his side offering comforting support. But as they arrived and the woman quickly patted his arm, telling him to ‘get inside as quickly as you can’, Carl realised that she was not from the company he was working for. He had not realised before that it was a shared building and as the woman disappeared into another set of doors, one of the girls from his office was holding the main door open for Carl who was the last of his company to make it back.

“Are you okay?” she asked, as their agency temp, looking somewhat more bedraggled than the smart, confident young man who had arrived first thing, hobbled in. He was sweating and there were damp patches on his shirt. He was hunched forwards slightly and he had one hand across his stomach area as if he had a belly-ache.
“I need the toilet!” he managed to groan in a low voice.
With a look of embarrassed awkwardness on her face, the girl hurried ahead of him and as she reached the gents toilet door, she pushed at it and then exclaimed “oh no, it’s not been opened!”
“Quickly!” she said, “go in there and I’ll go and find Norman!”

Carl found himself propelled through the door into the office and although a few heads turned to look, few kept their eyes on him. But for Carl it was the point of no return. Even in his befuddled state, he knew that if he stood where he was, he was going to wet himself. It was going to happen and he couldn’t stop it. In a futile, last-ditch attempt to stop the deluge into his trousers, he sat down on the nearest available chair, close to a desk but several feet out away from any protection or cover.

At the same moment as he felt his backside touch the seat, Carl began to urinate.

He simply couldn’t stop himself. It was a release he had been desperately holding back since arriving at the office and there was a numbness which almost made the sensation of the hot pee wetting his pants seem unreal. Carl was motionless and expressionless but he could feel a scorching warmth engulf his whole crotch area and instantly spread under his backside. He couldn’t do anything to control himself and as the hotness seared his bum cheeks, it seemed to also rapidly massage his lower back.

Suddenly, the warm sensation was replaced by a stinging and burning discomfort all around his balls as the urine merged with the damp sweat and resulted in an uncomfortable itchiness. As Carl glanced down, he could see a dark glistening patch on the left-side of his crotch, shimmering next to the zip-fly of his trousers but although his cock was pumping scorching hot urine into his underpants, the evidence appeared limited to the increasingly sodden stain on his groin area.

What Carl was unaware of though, was that the saturated seat of his trousers was not able to contain the vast volumes of sizzling pee beneath his backside and in addition the backs of his trouser-legs were becoming outlets for the gushing liquid streaming down his thighs and calves as the flow reached his socks.

Mortified beyond words and in a state of sheer disbelief which rendered him to a sense of near-paralysis, his world of silence other than his ringing ears, was broken by a shrill voice, “Susan, look!”

One of the girls was staring disbelievingly down below Carl’s chair, where a steady trickle of liquid was dribbling from the side of the seat and trickling onto the carpet. Not only that, but as a couple of the others instantaneously noticed the same thing, they could also see that a stream of liquid was dripping from the bottom of his left trouser-leg, running from the cuff with droplets falling onto his shoe and creating a small pool right next to the sole of the black shoe. Within a couple of seconds, the flow from out of his trouser-leg became a steady tap-like trickle and his light grey sock, which had been sucked down into the inside of his shoe by his earlier toe-curling action, began to darken as it got more and more wet. Where the top of his sock had fallen lower, a small section of his bare shin could be seen beneath the bottom of his trouser-leg and the dribbling pee was blatantly running over his exposed ankle.

“Quickly!” called out Susan, “Get him to the toilet! Linda, take him to the toilet, hurry. Get him to the toilet so that…” her words trailed off. She had absolutely no idea what would happen or even why it seemed logical to take him to the toilet. It had happened already – in Carl's pants, but in her embarrassed panic she didn’t know what to do or say.

Linda stepped a few paces forward and took hold of the still-seated Carl’s arm, tugging his wrist as a prompt to make him stand up and Carl slowly did so. He was no longer urinating, perhaps as a result of the sudden change of stance which saw him rise to his feet but as he did so, everyone in the office saw the dark-stained and sodden condition of his trousers. His entire backside was wet and the tops of the backs of his thighs were dark with saturation. There were streaks of wetness running right down to the backs of his ankles although there was less evidence on the front of his trousers, other than the drenched patch around his crotch and thin dribbles down the front of his thighs.

As he stood and moved slightly, he felt the cooling stickiness seep further down his legs and trickle into his socks. Still being led by Linda who was by now holding his hand rather than his wrist, he stepped uncomfortably forwards and began to waddle towards the door which was being opened by another girl. As he walked through it, half of the girls were staring at the sight of the lad who had wet his pants whilst some of the others were looking in astonished fashion at the sodden chair, the saturated patch on the green carpet and the wet shoe-prints he was leaving behind him.

Linda got outside and heard Katie call out, “Take him into the ladies if the gents is still shut.” The two of them got to the toilets and Linda, having pushed the still-locked men’s toilet door, was just about to lead Carl into the adjacent ladies loo when who should appear but the previously mythical Norman.

“Norman, quickly, open the men’s toilets for him. Quickly, quickly, please!”
“Alright, alright, hold your horses!” replied Norman, remaining completely unflustered and seemingly totally oblivious to the state of Carl’s trousers.

He stepped in front of the two of them and began to examine a large bunch of keys from his pocket and at the very same moment, Carl let go of Linda’s hand and seemed to slump his shoulders. It was almost as if all his previous efforts of struggling to control his taut muscles had taken its toll and, in a similar fashion to air being let out of a balloon, he faltered, relaxed his body, and began to pee like a proverbial racehorse.

If the amount of urine he had released into his trousers and underpants sitting in the office had seemed voluminous at the time, this was now another level. His over-worked bladder simply gave up the struggle and the vast volumes it still contained began to empty in powerful and uncontrollable fashion and Carl completely and torrentially wet himself standing there.

His already saturated trousers soaked up the flow which was hissing and pouring down his legs and this time the puddle formed around both of his shoes, frothing and bubbling on the carpet as the hot urine scorched his legs from thighs to ankles and cascaded down like a jet, right into his shoes and his socks. “Bloody Hell!” said Norman, suddenly realising that the lad was wetting himself, as Linda put her hands to her cheeks in horror.

Carl stood weeing into his underwear for a good 20-30 seconds before the deluge started to ease, by which time the pool around his feet had stopped frothing and bubbling and was now steaming gently, shimmering and glistening on the wooden flooring, with little trickles and dribbles running over his wet shoes.

Norman took control of the situation, opened the gents’ toilet door and prompted a trembling Carl through the door, “Come on, mate, let’s get you sorted out!”

Linda walked back into the office to near-silence from the colleagues who were still agog at what they had just witnessed.
“He did it again” said Linda, herself red-faced with embarrassment, “He wet himself again standing outside the toilet.”
“He couldn’t have done it all the first time, poor guy” said someone else.
“He asked when he arrived first thing” confessed Katie, “he said he was busting then. He must have been hanging on desperately all this time without saying anything to anyone”.
“He’s a bit of a stunner too! Fancy doing it in his pants like that? How embarrassing for him” and they all nodded in agreement.

Back in the toilet, Norman was trying to be as helpful as possible without really offering much in the way of advice.
“You must have needed that pretty bad, my boy. I hope you don’t think it was my fault the toilets weren’t open? Only they never told me we had a bloke starting today and I’m not a mind-reader, you know.”

Carl couldn’t offer any sort of counter-argument and his mumbled response told only a tenth of the story, “I’d already started doing a bit in my trousers in the office” he confessed, crimson-faced. “Really? Blimey! I’d suggest you get those pants and trousers off, lad. They look like they’re absolutely saturated”.

Carl said nothing but eased off his shoes one at a time and then unbuckled his belt, carefully pulling his trousers gently down his legs. The wetness of the coarse insides chaffed all down his legs and as he lifted one knee at a time to remove the trousers completely, he almost unintentionally removed his socks as well. As he handed his trousers to Norman, who was holding out his arms in anticipation, Carl’s horror at seeing the grey material sodden all down the back and front as well as the legs was further intensified as he was aware of his white briefs hanging heavily between his legs, weighed down at the crotch by the sheer amount of urine that they contained.

“You can’t keep those knickers on, boy; you’ll be catching a chill, you’ve wet them worse than I thought. Look, I’ve got some waterproofs in my room, I’ll bring those in for you and you can get your pants off, alright?”

Norman disappeared and left Carl standing, trouser-less, shoe-less and with cold trickles of urine dribbling down his legs. He simply couldn’t believe what had happened. How on earth had this ended up with him wetting himself? It was a genuine living nightmare situation.

A couple of minutes later, Norman returned with a pair of yellow waterproof trousers that he wore when cycling to and from work if it was raining. Carl took them and began to pull his pants down his legs but the thin white cotton was so wet that it rolled up as he pulled them and by the time they were round his ankles, they looked like a white cotton rope, all twisted up. Norman took the underpants too and Carl pulled on the crinkly, plastic yellow trousers, “I’ll put these wet things in a bag for you, one of the girls is waiting to run you home, okay?”

Five minutes or so later, Carl was walking out of the building and towards a red Vauxhall Astra with Maureen from the office waiting in the driver’s seat. Scarcely able to glance at the girls he knew were watching out of the window, Carl walked bow-legged to the passenger door. He looked a bit of a sight in his lime green shirt and the baggy yellow waterproof fisherman-type trousers which only just reached his ankles. His light grey socks had almost turned dark grey around both ankles, with streaks of wetness across the tops and soles of his feet and as he climbed into the passenger seat, Norman, who had walked out behind him, handed Carl a large brown paper bag containing his trousers and pants, followed by his black shoes which he plonked down on Carl’s lap. The royal blue inners of the shoes were stained damp and dark-coloured and he could even feel the laces soaking wet.

The journey to his family home was undertaken in near silence, just a few polite exchanges taking place without any mention of the events of the morning. Maureen eventually dropped him off at the house and as she reversed the car to turn around, she couldn’t help looking over at the door. Carl was standing, fumbling in the paper bag to presumably extract his keys from his trousers. In his smart shirt and a pair of clearly borrowed, completely unacceptable yellow fishing trousers, it was obvious to anyone watching that 22-year old graduate Carl had had some sort of accident in his trousers.

Not only did his dress betray what had had happened, but he was standing in a pair of obviously wet grey socks and he was holding a brown paper bag which was starting to show evidence of wetness from its contents, whilst he had his shoes stuffed under his arm. The last time Maureen had seen such a sight was probably back in her primary school days!

Back in the office, the girls were chattering away in embarrassed gossipy fashion about what they’d all seen and heard, anxiously awaiting Maureen’s return to see what she could add to the conversation. Norman was busy mopping and sponging the carpet after putting the chair out in the back yard.

Quieter than most was Pauline, who was still reeling after what had happened. As much as the pity as she felt for Carl, she was almost plotting as to how she could get a threesome (in a manner of words only) with her and her husband Ryan. Eighteen months ago she had got married and Ryan had done exactly the same thing and wet himself during a coach-trip on an excursion during their honeymoon in Croatia. He had clammed up completely and refused to hear any mention of the incident since, despite Pauline’s gentle nudging.

Imagine somehow getting Carl and Ryan in the same room? I wonder?

[Brian]

The various unexpected downturns in Carl's fortunes when all he needs is a pee make me feel so sorry for him. And then what an intense description you write of the awful mess Carl makes of himself and the office chair and floor and the terrible indignity of it all! It's a gripping tale. And I see you've set things up for the next part too - I want to know more about Ryan now!

[greatwater]

Paul, Ryan, and Norman as well? That would be great fun.

Great story. Honestly, I don't quite like wetting, but this story is super-hot.

[Fred]

It was a very embarrassing ending, but perhaps Carl, Ryan (who got so uptight about wetting) and Norman (who seemed so intent on getting Paul naked) will find they have an interest in common!

[Brian]

Hey Greatwater and Fred, I think Lee's character is called Carl, not Paul. Unless you're talking about Pauline?

[Fred]

Hey Greatwater and Fred, I think Lee's character is called Carl, not Paul. Unless you're talking about Pauline?

My bad. I just fixed it! Thanks.

[Brian]

Regarding Lee's final question in the story: I can imagine Carl and Ryan confiding their embarrassing experiences with each other and then not feeling so bad about them. And if all three of Carl, Ryan and Norman get together, as suggested by Greatwater and Fred, then I think Carl might get his own back on Norman by arranging for him to encounter a locked toilet door with nowhere else to go. It could be arranged, surely?

[Lee]

There may be the potential for a future 'chat' between Carl and Ryan I suppose?

But I think I have unwittingly portrayed a picture I wasn't intending of Norman. Having re-read it I can see exactly why. The phase about Norman holding out his arms in anticipation of receiving Carl's wet trousers was meant to reflect his readiness to assist by taking the wet things and putting them in a bag, rather than anticipation in glee.

I envisaged Norman as an older man, fifties perhaps. A cyclist who was a caretaker, slightly work-shy and maybe one of those 'never-to-seen-but-always-crops-up-in-a-crisis' characters. However, for the purposes of any future chapter, he can be who people want him to be, I guess?

[Brian]

Your story put exactly that impression of Norman over to me too, to be honest. Your writing is so good that your characters do come across the way you intended. Indeed, Norman doesn't seem the type to join in with such a situation.

Perhaps Norman has a more confident son in his twenties who also has some role at the workplace, got wind of what happened and how his father was (unwittingly) partly responsible, and is intrigued to meet Carl... ?

[Lee]

Thanks. Definitely further scope, then!