by Simon Wood
The sun continued to climb from the depths of the ocean spreading more light. Paul Thompson’s light-sensitive body burned like a torch on the beach. His smile disappeared in the flames, as did his undesirable future.
THE LADIES’ ROOM
“And finally, the restrooms both need mopping every night,” the cleaning supervisor said.
“I have to clean the ladies’ room?” Terry asked, uncomfortably.
“Of course. There’s no one else here who’s going to do it.”
“What if someone’s in there?”
“Don’t be so damn squeamish. Just call out beforehand and while you’re in there, put the “Cleaning in Progress” sign outside.”
Terry frowned.
“Security will be in around seven. Any questions?” Before Terry could answer, the supervisor said, “Good, I’ll be off then.”
Alone, Terry got on with his job, dodging the restrooms. He opted to clean the offices—leaving the ladies’ until last. It may have been his first night on the job, but he hadn’t come all the way from Boston for this.
California hadn’t been the golden state for Terry. The biotech researcher’s job had fallen through the day he had arrived and finding something else in the same field had proved impossible. The best he had come up with after two months of job hunting was this—office cleaning.
Terry stood in front of the ladies’ room and eased the door open. He heard voices. Just what he hoped wouldn’t happen.
“Did you know a man was killed in here?” a woman said.
“No. Really?” another responded.
Terry thought the building was empty except for him and this was what he feared most doing this crappy job—walking in on a woman with her panties around her ankles.
“Hello,” he called, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Janitorial services. Anybody in here?”
No one answered.
Terry edged his bucket forward into the restroom with his mop, like it was on point duty. The bucket was on castors and easily followed orders. No one took a potshot at his GI so he hooked his head around the privacy wall. He didn’t see anyone.
“Hello. Is anybody in here?” he asked.
No one answered, again.
Terry swallowed and ventured into the restroom. No one stood at the sinks and the stalls looked empty but he knocked on all the doors to make sure no one was inside. Who the hell had been talking and more importantly, who had been killed?
Terry cursed. His nerves were getting the better of him. The best thing was to mop this place as quickly as he could and get the hell out. He left the ladies’ room, moved the “Cleaning in Progress” sign from the men’s to the ladies’ and re-entered.
Terry started to mop. He didn’t like being in the ladies’ room. He felt like a pervert sifting through women’s dirty underwear. Men were just not meant to be in the ladies’ room—it was for women and it felt sacrilegious to be in there. Being the night-cleaner might give him license to break the rules but his guilt was making him sweat.
He had washed in-between the stalls and was mopping the edge of the sink units, when what he saw in the mirrors stopped him in his tracks.
Blood bubbled up from the grout like it was coming from an underground spring. He knew it was blood. It had to be. The color, texture, everything told him it was, but how and why it was happening, was a mystery. How could the floor bleed?
The blood broke the law of gravity. The ladies’ room floor was sloped from its walls to a central drain. From its source, close to the drain, a single crimson bead ran in the grout. It traveled between the tiles and along the floor, uphill, against the gently sloping floor. Transfixed, Terry could only watch.
The blood’s redness was in stark opposition to the cream tiles. The contrast drained the tiles of their color and bleached the floor whiter than the sterile fluorescent lighting did. The unappetizing slick made Terry dry-heave.
The trail continued in a straight line for four feet before bloody branches split off at ninety degrees, making a geometric skeletal tree. It continued to bubble from its implausible spring. The blood stopped branching out at the top of the tree and began to pool. And the pool grew.
Fearing that if he didn’t do something, his Burger King lunch was going to make a surprise reappearance, Terry charged the gruesome mess with his dripping mop. He slapped the mop onto the blood spring and frantically tried to staunch its wound. Terry’s mopping didn’t erase the bloody trail; he only assisted in spreading the diluted fluid across the width of the floor. The bathroom looked like a butcher’s countertop after a side of beef had been chopped into pieces.
The blood spring continued to flow.
Terry slopped more water onto the blood to dispose of the mess, but the tainted water expanded across the floor and under the stalls. In a final attempt to overcome the blood, Terry kicked the bucket on its side and the water washed over the floor, cutting a furrow through the red sea. Terry followed through with the mop and guided the blood down the inadequately sized floor drain that was meant for the occasional spillage, not the contents of an abattoir. His toes wrinkled in his sneakers as the blood soaked through and his feet squelched inside.
“Jesus, stop bleeding,” he pleaded with the hemorrhaging floor.
The blood spring ignored him and continued to flow unabated.
The bathroom door burst open and a security guard stormed in.
“What the Sam Hill is going on in here?” he boomed. The security guard immediately looked confused, obviously expecting to find something other than Terry standing awash in a bathroom of blood.
Terry stammered for an explanation but came up with nothing.
“Who are you?” the guard asked, after a minute of Terry’s babbling.
“I’m Terry, the new night cleaner,” he managed.
“Well, you’re not a very good one with all this water everywhere,” he added.
Terry stared down at his feet. The blood had disappeared and his feet were awash in soapy water. It was gurgling down the drain. There was no trace the blood had ever existed, but where had it gone?
He started stammering again before he said something tangible. “I kicked the bucket over. I’m sorry.”
The security guard snorted. “Sounded like World War III had started.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry.”
“Okay. Let me know when you’re going,” the security guard said, then hoisted his pants over his ample gut and saw himself out.
Terry stood pathetically, with his mop in hand, alone in the ladies’ room. I hate this room, he thought, I hate this job. The quicker he got finished, the quicker he could get out of there. He righted the bucket and started soaking up the water.
Terry squeezed out the mop in the bucket and tried to comprehend his experience. He would have believed he had suffered an acid flashback, but he had never dropped LSD. Had the stress and strain of moving to California caused him to have a breakdown? Sure, things were crap, but he knew he hadn’t flipped his wig just because a job fell through. He gave up. It didn’t matter how many times he sliced it—he couldn’t explain what he had seen. The last of the water trickled down the drain and he mopped up the residue.
With everything neatly put away for the night, Terry crossed the reception area. The security guard looked up from his newspaper and Terry gave him a self-conscious nod.
“All finished for the night?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Terry answered.
The security guard nodded and eyed Terry with suspicion.
“Sorry about earlier,” Terry offered, reading the guard’s thoughts, then continued, “I think I spooked myself being on my own and all.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. Someone told me some spook story about the ladies’ bathroom. Some bullshit about someone being killed in there. You wouldn’t know anything about that would you?” Terry inquired heavy-handedly.
“Nope.”
“Have you worked here long, er…�
��
“The name’s Kyle. And, I’ve worked here fifteen years and I’ve never known of anyone to be killed in the ladies’ crapper.” Kyle turned the page of his newspaper and snapped it taught. “I think someone’s been yanking your wang, son.”
“Sounds like it.” Terry laughed nervously. “Probably just wanted to make the new boy look like a jerk.”
“Well, they did that alright,” Kyle said abruptly.
“Yeah. Yeah. Well, I’ll be going then. Seeya tomorrow,” Terry said and quickly made for the door.
“Yep,” Kyle said, not bothering to look up from his newspaper.
***
A six pack of Buds and a solid dose of TV put pay to any thoughts of blood-filled bathrooms from an invisible victim, but stepping back into that bathroom the following night replayed all his fears at full volume. Gingerly, he re-entered the ladies' room.
“You should have seen the blood. It looked as if he lost every last drop in his body. He must have been lying there for hours,” a woman’s voice recounted.
“Janitorial services. Anybody in here?” Terry called.
No answer.
Without a hint of fear, Terry barged into the ladies’ room. He was pissed off by whoever wanted to play jokes on him. It wasn’t funny and it damn well wasn’t clever either. Like the previous night, no one seemed to be in the bathroom. Anger replaced his previous bashfulness and he kicked in all the stall doors. Each one crashed into the partition wall making all the stalls shudder. Every one of the stalls was empty. He examined the walls and ceiling for listening devices and speakers but he couldn’t find anything.
Frustrated, he said, “Who’s taking the piss out of me?”
No one replied.
Suddenly, one of the fluorescent tubes started to hum loudly and the light dimmed.
“God damn it,” Terry cursed.
The light started to flicker; bands of light and dark pulsed the length of the tube.
“I can’t work in this,” he told himself. He couldn’t clean the ladies' room with a dodgy light. First, it would give him a headache and second, his supervisor would chew him a new asshole if he didn’t change it.
For ten minutes, Terry ransacked the Janitor’s storeroom. The place was a mess. What had his predecessor been up to? Finally, he found a replacement light and snatched it up.
By the time he got back to the ladies’ room, the light was continuously strobing and his reflection in the mirror had a stop-go animation look.
Terry cursed, remembering he hadn’t brought a ladder with him. He couldn’t be bothered to go back to get it. Using the mop as an arm extension, he dislodged the light diffuser. The diffuser tumbled from the fixture and Terry deftly caught it. He rested the diffuser against the sink units.
Substituting the sinks for a stepladder, Terry climbed on top of them with his replacement strip-light in one hand, giving him a biblical presence—Moses leading his flock. He plonked the fluorescent tube in a sink basin and with great care and balance, reached out from the sinks for the defective strip-light. He had to grab hold of the ceiling framework with one hand, dislodging one of the foam tiles and in the process taking one foot off the sink for balance. With fingertip reach, Terry managed to hook out the fluorescent tube. The tube was red hot. He cursed and panted while he bobbled the tube from hand to hand like he was holding a boiled egg fresh from the pan. He just managed to get the tube into the sink without dropping it.
“That’s you out of the way,” he said, shaking his hands.
With the strip-light removed, the lights were at three-quarter strength and the ladies’ room would have had a seductive mood, if it weren’t a toilet. Terry extracted the new strip-light from its cardboard sheath, letting the sheath fall to the ground. Performing the same balancing act as before, he reached out for the light fixture.
Replacing the tube proved more difficult than taking the old one out. After five attempts, Terry was losing his patience and was thinking of conceding to his human limitations of dexterity and getting the stepladder.
“One more go, then that’s it—okay?” he told the light fixture.
The light fixture didn’t object.
Again, Terry reached out and wedged the tube into one end of the fixing. He carefully pushed the tube into position but was fractions of an inch from slotting the damn thing into place. He edged his foot out a touch then another to give him the vital inch he needed.
“Gently, gently,” he cooed.
Terry edged a final fraction and the tube slotted into place.
“Bingo!”
Terry’s euphoria was short-lived. His focus on success caused him to lose his balance and he crashed to the floor.
The newly installed light flickered twice before it brought the ladies’ room lights back to full strength.
Terry’s head cracked open on the tile floor like an egg and made a similar sound on the unforgiving ceramic tiles. Blood oozed from his massive head wound and down his face, making a pool. He gazed at the bead of crimson funneling between the tiles, in the grout, towards the floor drain. It branched out at ninety degrees as his blood collected in the opposing grout channels.
***
“Did you know a man was killed in here?” June asked. “No. Really?” Karin responded.
“You should have seen the blood. It looked as if he had lost every drop in his body. He must have been lying there for hours,” June said.
PURELY COSMETIC
Grace looked down at the scales and sighed. Even after the liposuction she still weighed one-eighty-seven. For her height she should have weighed one-thirty but she had made her target weight a realistic one-forty. She had tried everything to lose weight--jogging, working out with a personal trainer, every fad diet that had ever been conceived, but to no avail. Her body seemed to have an aversion to losing weight and she felt the grip of desperation tighten with every extra pound like a pair of pants two sizes too small. She had to get down to her target weight, whatever the cost.
Grace stared at her toes and wriggled them. How much did her big toe weigh? Two, three ounces? It was difficult to say, she had never weighed individual body parts.
Would it matter if she lost a toe? Nobody would see it, especially a man. At forty-one, Grace was husbandless and boyfriendless, and who could blame any man for not wanting her in her condition? She looked up from the scales at herself in the bathroom mirror.
“Gravity and cellulite should be tried for crimes against humanity,” she said scornfully to her reflection.
She peered down at her toes again. Removing her big toes wasn’t a good idea--her balance would be severely affected. But her little toes weren’t that necessary. She was a surgeon. She could do it.
She would do it.
She returned home from Mercy General the following night, having managed to smuggle out equipment and write a bogus prescription for anesthetic. Grace cleaned the kitchen vinyl with disinfectant before positioning herself on the floor with her medical bag. She injected each of her feet with the local anesthetic and waited for the drug to take effect. After fifteen minutes she pricked her toes with a pin. She didn’t feel a thing.
While waiting, Grace had sterilized the shears. Suitably satisfied that the anesthetic had done its job, she slipped the open shears over her little toe on her left foot. The blades snapped shut with a click.
Her little toe popped off effortlessly. It was easier than she expected and her confidence grew. A little toe didn’t weigh the same as a big toe, so the one next to it would have to go. Grace snipped that one off as well. She repeated the process on her right foot. Pleased with herself, she closed off and bandaged her wounds. No, Grace was more than pleased with herself as she popped three Motrin horse tablets to deal with the pain when the anesthetic wore off. She had found the amputations erotic, sexy even, she was making a new Grace, a better Grace. She grinned from ear to ear as she cleaned her instruments and packed her medical bag.
Grace stared down at her handiwork admiri
ngly and wiggled her remaining toes. “On the upside, girl, some of those shoes you bought should fit now.”
When the anesthetic wore off, she was surprised by the lack of pain. It was no more painful than a stubbed toe, except that the toes were missing. Grace gathered up the toes and took them over to the toilet.
“This little piggy went to market.” Grace dropped one of the toes into the bowl. “This little piggy stayed at home.” Grace dropped another. “This little piggy had roast beef.” Plop went another toe. “This little piggy had none.” The last toe tumbled out of Grace’s palm. “And these little piggies went wee-wee-wee,” Grace said as she flushed the toilet.
Now for the moment of truth, what was her weight now? Grace stripped out of her clothes and stepped onto the scales. She sighed again. The digital readout fed back the depressing information--186.6 lbs. Four toes had weighed less than half a pound. It wasn’t the result she was looking for but what did she expect? Four toes were never going to lose her twenty pounds. So what would?
The question preoccupied Grace’s mind throughout her working day, even during an appendectomy, but a colleague ended the deadlock
“How’s life Gracie?” Doctor Drake asked.
“Fine.”
“I see you’re limping,” Drake said.
“Oh, it’s nothing. I just worked out a little too hard in the gym with bad shoes,” Grace lied. “Up to anything good?”
“Oh, I’ve got a patient who had his lung removed because of pneumonia, other than that, nothing special,” Drake said, but before he could carry on, his pager beeped.
Grace knew she couldn’t keep lopping off appendages to lose weight but internal organs were another matter--the human body possessed a number of surplus internals organs that if removed wouldn’t interfere with the body’s ability to function. And there was an added bonus--no aesthetic problems, everybody would see the outside was normal. No one would know that things were missing on the inside. How much did a lung weigh?
