It was about 6:15 when I headed up to the women’s bathroom on the eighth floor. In the past few weeks it had become a Friday afternoon ritual. Staying late until everyone else had left the fifth floor for the weekend, looking like a diligent employee just working ahead on the next week’s projects. And then after the door was closed for the last time, slipping back to Murray’s office for a small withdrawal from the petty cash drawer to…well, work ahead on the only project for the next week that really seemed to matter.
Murray was the office manager, but he also had issues with booze and gambling, and in the three years since his wife left him, he’d really gone off the rails. Last April I noticed him dipping into the cash box before ducking out at two, but at the time I’d just filed the information away as a potentially useful nugget if I ever got in a jam or needed leverage. Then three months ago I started hanging out with a crowd that snorted powder on the regular—ne’er do well types that were way more interesting than the ex-boyfriend that had introduced me to them. At first I joined in on the coke to be sociable, then because it made everything brighter and sharper and more fun.
Now? Now I was stealing petty cash, drifting in the wake of a fifty year-old alky gambler, all so I was topped off the next week to buy some more booger sugar.
Murray would probably never catch on, and even if he did, what could he do that wouldn’t implicate himself? Still, the risk was always there if there was ever a department audit, and it wasn’t like I wasn’t taking a bit more every time. It was becoming a very expensive hobby, and I was having trouble convincing myself that the ritual was optional anymore.
But that was negative thinking, and I didn’t need to spoil my favorite time of the week with negative thinking. It was already six o’clock, and the guards usually started their evening check of the floors around seven. They wouldn’t care I was still in the building, but I’d rather not have them notice me lurking around the bathrooms three floors up from where I worked.
But after the cash box, I had to hit the stairwell. The unfrequented, uncameraed stairwell that had a dark recess behind the first floor stairs. It hadn’t been cleaned or even looked at in years, and no one was going to find the little baggie I kept duct-taped into the shadows there. Even if they did, I tried to wipe off any prints when I remembered.
That was the big takeaway from my time with Joseph—he of the perpetual unemployment and expensive drug habit who had cooler friends than he deserved. You never hide your stash on you or where you stay. The only way someone was going to catch me with drugs was if I had a blood test or very bad luck, and that’s what I had my ritual for.
I puffed back up the stairs, past the fifth floor and on to the eighth, the little bag of powder feeling warm in my pocket. I was already getting excited, and the sweat at my armpits wasn’t just from a few flights of stairs. Shit, how deep into this did I really want to go? How long before the hobby went from habit to ritual to something worse?
Shaking away the thought, I pushed open the door to the bathroom and went in, looking for any feet under the stalls before going to the handicapped stall at the far end. This was one of the perks of the even-numbered floors. Spacious handicapped stalls with their own mirrors and sinks. No chance of coming out with white smudges on my nose or looking more fucked up than I could handle. I could ride out the initial rocket holding onto the thoughtfully placed metal railing beside the toilet and then do another small courtesy bump once I knew I was handling my shit and could go down to hail a cab. Another necessary expense—you don’t drive when you’re fucked up on cocaine.
I put the seat down on the toilet—first for the line and then for my ass, but always in that order, especially now, when my skin was starting to crawl and my stomach was twisting, telling me I was behind schedule. I opened the bag and tapped out half into a single rail. I already had the tube of my favorite ballpoint pen ready in my purse, and once I fished it out, it was off to the…
“But…but I don’t want to.”
I froze. The voice had come from two stalls down—a woman’s voice, watery with tears. What the fuck? How hadn’t I seen her when I came in? Was she standing on the damn toilet? And no one had come in since I’d gotten here, I was sure of it.
I looked down skeptically at the line on the toilet seat and then the tiny clear jeweler’s bag that held the rest. No, I wasn’t fucked up, at least not yet. I hadn’t taken some and forgotten, and it had never made me forget stuff anyway. But what should I do? My internal plan had always been that I would flush anything I had if anyone ever came into the bathroom during my Friday evening party for one, but now that I was faced with it…it was such a waste. And I really wanted it. Maybe she would just leave in a second.
“I know you’re right, but maybe things will get better. I-I can try to make them better, can’t I?” Who was she talking to? Maybe she was on the phone?
I crept over to the far wall of the stall so I could hear better. The woman was sniffling, and I almost thought I could hear another voice, but it was very faint. The strange thing was that the second voice didn’t have the clipped, tinny quality I’d expect from the other side of a phone call. It was soft, but it sounded natural—present.
Frowning, I bent down to look under the stalls again. I could see the woman’s feet now—scuffed black flats wrapped around pale feet going up into shapeless ankles pinpricked with black stubble. Maybe what the girl didn’t want to do was shave. Covering my mouth, I let out a small snicker as I caught a glimpse of red scab on her calf. Damn. Looked like she needed more practice too.
I looked back at the toilet seat. Shit, why wouldn’t she just leave? Or should I just hit it and go? Leave Moaning Myrtle in here to do whatever she…
“It’s okay to let go.”
My eyes went wide and I looked under the stalls again. That voice—it was a different voice, a male voice, and it wasn’t on a phone. It was in here with us. But there was no sign of another person anywhere, just her white feet shuffling as she let out another sob.
“I-I know…I…thank you…Just…you’ll stay with me, won’t you?”
“Of course I will. I won’t leave you.”
“Okay…I…Okay.”
The woman’s feet shuffled again and then I saw something dripping onto them, a red stream onto the left foot and then the right. What the fuck? That looked like blood. Had she cut herself? As I watched, the woman slumped down to the floor with a thump, a brown skirt covered in more blood coming into view under the stalls as one bloody arm fell down to her side. The cut was away from my direction, but I could still see a steady flow of red dripping out onto the tile floor.
Fuck me.
“Ma’am? Are you okay, ma’am?” Dumb fucking question, but I really didn’t want to get involved with this bullshit if I could avoid it. On the other hand, I’d rather not hate myself for totally ignoring someone that needed help, so asking once seemed like a good middle ground. If she told me she was fine, I’d leave her to her business, whatever that might be.
I waited a few seconds, but no response. She was still moving around, so she was conscious, and while she was still bleeding out, it was slow. She had time to ask for help if she really wanted it.
“It hurts…It hurts a lot.”
Grimacing, I sat back up. Did that count as asking for help? Her whispering that cutting her fucking arm hurts? No shit it hurts. But did that mean I had some duty to…
“I know, Shelly. I know. But it will stop soon. And you know you deserve the pain, don’t you?”
My heart started thudding. The blood had made me forget about the mystery voice for a moment, but it was still there, louder than before. Who the fuck was that?
“I-I know I do. Thank you. I’m just scared.”
“It’s alright to be scared. I’ve been scared for weeks you wouldn’t do the right thing, but here you are. And I’m so proud. So proud, and I love you. Just relax and let go.”
Fuck this. Standing up, I opened the door and headed for the woman’s stall. I was about to knock on it when I noticed the blood creeping out onto the floor outside of her little cubicle. Whatever was going on, I really didn’t want to be stepping in blood or leaving evidence I was here unless I really decided I had to stay. And who knew what was actually going on in there? Maybe it was just a great sounding phone and it wasn’t blood at all? Or maybe there was some killer in there with her. I just needed to get a better peek before I decided what to do.
Holding my breath, I eased open the door of the stall next to hers, tense for any movement or sound from the other side of the wall. The toilet lid squeaked as I put it down, and then again as I stepped up on it so I could look over into the woman’s stall.
What I saw first was her—a few years younger than me, she was chubby and red-faced from crying, but still prettier than I’d ever be. Her green, red-rimmed eyes found mine immediately, but there was a dazed look to them. She was fading, and the lines of red going up her inner arms were still pulsing the rest of her life out onto the bathroom floor. I was about to speak to her again, tell her that I’d get help or something, when motion caught my eye.
There was something watching me from the toilet.
I shuddered as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing. Something long, broad and white, almost like a fat snake or legless lizard, coiled in the bowl of the toilet and stared up at me. Its flat, triangular head was pocked with dozens of small black holes that seemed to shift and melt, forming and reforming into pits of dark on that ivory skin. Darkness that could see me.
I stumble-fell off the toilet, banging into the door before flinging it open and bouncing off a sink on the way out the door. I had to get away. I had to get far away and I was sorry about that poor woman, but whatever she had done or it had done or it had made her do or whatever, I couldn’t be there. I couldn’t be connected with any of…
The fucking cocaine. The fucking cocaine and my fucking purse.
I stopped ten feet from the door to the stairwell. I couldn’t go back in there. I couldn’t. But I also couldn’t leave drugs and stuff with my name on it fifteen feet away from a dead body.
Leaning against the wall, I felt my gorge rising. I had to go back in there. I…I hadn’t really seen some kind of fucking toilet monster in there. I was in shock, that was all. Or the coke was getting to me more than I’d been willing to admit. Either way, I need to get my shit out of there and then walk out of the building like nothing was wrong.
I glanced down the hallway both ways. It could work. That was the other reason I’d picked the eighth floor, aside from the spacious end stall. Floors Seven through Ten didn’t have cameras in the hall. No record of me being up there at all, so long as I didn’t fuck up because of a hallucination or whatever. Just get in and out quick, that was the key.
Forcing myself to take slower breaths, I walked back to the bathroom door and listened. Everything was quiet in there. Hell, maybe I’d open the door and nothing would be wrong at all. No snake monster, no dying woman, just some misfired synapse in my fucked-up brain.
Sucking in a deep breath, I pushed the door back open.
The woman was still there, the blood now pooling out halfway toward the sink. My eyes went everywhere as my heart began to hammer harder, but I saw no sign of the monster or anything else. Either way, I just needed to hurry up and get it done.
Hopping over the blood, I went back to my stall. Pulling a paper towel from the dispenser, I raked the coke off into the towel and then flushed it and the baggie down, quickly dusting my hands off over the bowl for good measure. Grabbed my purse and opened the stall door, now I just had to make it out of the building normally, because there were cameras down in the lobby. Suddenly, all my plans fled as my eyes found the monster.
It was out there, waiting. Just curled up with its head raised like a thoughtful cobra, gently swaying in some unfelt breeze from its spot under the fold-out baby changing station. My stomach dropped as I stopped in my tracks. Was it going to attack me? It was a good ten feet from the door, but snakes could strike really far, couldn’t they? And this thing wasn’t a snake, and whatever it was, I didn’t know what it could or might do.
Still, waiting just gave it more time to decide. Gripping the handle of my purse so I could swing it, I stepped over the blood and eased slowly toward the door, keeping turned toward the thing as it watched me. The darkness on its head continued to swim in the soft, fluorescent lights overhead, and I found myself getting queasier as I looked at it. Reaching the door, I closed my eyes and shoved my way through, making it halfway down the hall before I looked back and slowed myself from a run.
It wasn’t following. I’d gotten away. At least I had if I didn’t stand out in the hall like an idiot.
My hands trembled on the railings as I went down the stairwell to the first floor, and I stuffed the free one in my pocket as I entered the lobby and passed through to the street. A couple of minutes later I was in a cab, and in half an hour I was at home, trying to convince myself it had all been some kind of bad dream.
Luke called me the next day, which was unusual on the weekend. I already knew what he was going to tell me.
“Did you hear about the woman on the eighth floor yesterday?”
I tried to sound bored, but I could still hear a slight tremble in my voice. “No, what’d she do?”
“Um, well, she killed herself. Some chick that works for that investment firm on eight slit her wrists in the bathroom up there. They didn’t find her until some time last night, and she’d already been dead a little while then.”
Swallowing down bile, I waited a second before replying. “Shit. That’s terrible. Um, any idea why she did it? Did she leave a note or something?”
“No, no note I don’t think. I’m buddies with Tom down in security, and he said they hadn’t found anything like that. Don’t say anything to anybody, but he told me one of the cops said she had little cuts all over though. Most in places people couldn’t see. Old cuts, like she’d been working up to…well, what she did I guess.” Luke cleared his throat awkwardly. “Um, anyway, sorry to bother you on the weekend. Just thought you might want to know, and it was weird and I wanted someone to tell it to. And listen, if you ever want…”
“Bye, Luke.” I hung up and tossed the phone onto the coffee table. Suddenly, I just wanted to sleep for a few days. Trudging back to my bed, I swallowed down a couple of pills before crawling back under the covers.
It was dark when I heard the distant sound of water splashing. I was still groggy, and at first I wondered if I was having a dream that I was swimming or on a beach. But no, I was in my bed. And it was night? And the splashing in another room had been replaced by a soft thump.
I wanted to look, but I was still so sleepy, and it was probably nothing. Just a fragment of a dream. I gave another token glance around the dark and then burrowed my head back down into my pillow, drifting back off immediately.
My own yell woke me up as pain seared across my inner thigh. I reached down reflexively and felt my fingers bump against something hard and scaly as it moved away from a small, welling cut just above my knee. Yanking my legs up with a scream, I rolled out the other side of the bed and turned back to watch as a bulge shifted under my blanket. I turned on the closest lamp as the thing’s white head poked out from under the covers to stare at me from those ever-shifting voids. Stare at me and speak, its voice soft and oddly soothing as it moved closer to the edge of the bed.
“I understand. I do. This must all be very confusing. Frightening even. But don’t worry. That will pass. It will pass and you will come to accept me. More importantly, to accept yourself.”
I shook my head. “I…what are you? What do you want?”
The creature swayed slightly, a small speck of red on its white skin the only sign of what it had done to my leg. I saw no mouth or nose, no real face at all. Just that same staring, swimming darkness that its pleasant voice seemed to come from as it responded.
“I want to help you. Help you be honest with yourself. You try to lie and say you don’t hate yourself, but we both know that’s not true. You promise yourself you’ll do better, make those that love you proud, but it’s just another lie, isn’t it?”
I felt tears come to my eyes as I nodded.
“And why is it a lie, Justine?”
My nose was starting to run as I sniffled my answer. “Because I never do. And because nobody really loves me.”
The creature gave a slight nod. “That’s right. At least mostly right. Because I love you.”
I felt my chest warming as I looked at him in disbelief. “You do? Do you really?”
He nodded again. “I do. And I won’t ever leave you. Not until it’s over. It’ll take time for you to see things my way, I’m sure, but in then end you’ll see that it’s okay to hate yourself just as much as I love you. And eventually, you’ll understand.”
The tears were streaming down my face now, my heart filled to bursting with both black despair and a burning sense of gratitude that he would love me and stay with me despite how terrible I was. Wanting to please him, I asked the only question that came to mind. “I’ll understand what?” He paused a moment before he responded, and I was afraid I’d made him angry. But when he did speak, his voice was so gentle and full of love that I started to cry even harder.
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