Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Evil Restroom




Evil Restroom
Todd Camnitz
1/6/2013

Not quite drunk. His friends say he is, but he isn’t, not really. Just had a little. Feels wobbly, sure, but drunk? Nope. “Go head, guys,” he says. “I’ll catch up at the bar.” Really has to go. Doesn’t want to wait.
He teeters into a park’s public restroom, and nearly promotes his innards to outards, right there on the floor. Had more than he thought. But not drunk. Buzzed. Yeah. That’s the word. That’s what his ex, Sarah, always said, trying to placate him the next morning. “It was a great party! But don’t worry, I only got buzzed,” she’d say, while holding her head and popping hangover pills. Smooth the truth. Buzzed right into some other guy’s lap, no doubt.
When your girlfriend cheats on you, would you prefer for her to be drunk, or merely buzzed?
Ah, forget it. She was a liar, anyway.
Of course, there was that one time, when Sarah was out of town. That small get-together, and that little brunette; what was her name? Ashley? April? Something with A. Anomaly. Anemone. An enemy. Whatever. That made things even. Sort of. It was just a kiss; well, a few kisses, and a hand running up…hold that thought, the world is spinning…
On his knees, he barfs into a trash bin near the door. Waste of decent seafood. The floor is cold and hard and painful. He pulls the can closer. It’s heavier than it looks. The metal bottom screeches like a banshee against the concrete. A trashcan banshee. Trashcanshee. He rests his arms on the rim and the can tilts with his weight, but doesn’t fall.
Until very recently, the can was propping open the bathroom door. Freed from the hindrance, the door slams closed. The resulting breeze ruffles his hair.      
He retches once more, mostly hitting the wastebasket. Definitely not drunk now. He feels better, after a few breaths. Gets up, hands on his knees. He pulls eight paper towels—all at once—from the metal dispenser near the sink. The bathroom offers other options. There is, in addition to the dispenser on the wall, an automatic air dryer. Can’t clean his face with that. He wipes his mouth. Forgets the bits of crab still on the floor. Needs to pee.
  Out one end, then out the other. Dried urine rims the toilet bowl. Either one person had atrocious aim, or many people had not-quite-perfect aim. Regardless, there is one certainty: no one will wipe it off. Not in a public restroom. He’s not going to do it, either. People are such pigs, he thinks. He shakes a few times, clearing the last drops. All of them land on the rim.
He stumbles from the stall without flushing. One shoe nearly steps in a puddle against the back wall. A puddle from nowhere. It’s a mystery how the water (or whatever it is) got there. No drain, no window, no rivulets down the wall, no miniature creeks from under the stalls. It’s just a secluded puddle. His very own Walden Pond, on the floor in the public restroom.
A fluorescent fixture lines the top of the mirror behind the sink. It supplies unapologetically meager light, prone to epileptic fits of flickering. The soap is empty. He hits the knob on the tap (a timed-release), and a niggardly trickle falls from the faucet. The water lasts for three seconds. He swears. Pounds the knob again. Resorts to holding it down with one hand while washing the other, then switching hands. When he presses the button on the hand dryer, nothing happens, so he dries himself with another paper towel.
He turns and strides to the exit. Yanks on the vertical door handle. It detaches from the green, metal door with a loud scrunch, the noise echoing around the empty bathroom.
The light flickers.
The door stays shut. Didn’t move an inch.
He can see two, rough, metal circles where the handle had been welded to the door. In a disoriented haze, he stares at the piece of aluminum in his hand. Glances around, briefly. Still no windows. There’s a sheet of paper taped at eye-level on the back of the door. A maintenance log, apparently. If he looked at it closely, he’d see that different names appear on each line, each followed by a date. There are thirteen names. Thick, red lines skewer nine of the names and dates, left to right. Only four names have no line. The most recent date reads March 17, 2007. Five years ago. He eyes scan the page without seeing, without comprehension.
Is the puddle getting bigger?
He throws the handle into the trashcan, and it clangs against the side. When the noise fades away, the light-fixture’s faint buzzing is all he can hear. In the trash, the handle sits in a pool of…well…yeah.
He imagines a doctor, looking in the wastebasket: “I see why you threw up. Appears you tried to eat this door handle.”
He reaches to open the door some other way, but there is no other way. A dense ball of apprehension settles in his gut.
Don’t worry. He’ll get the door open.
He can’t.
A thought forms in his mind. He won’t acknowledge it, not yet. The thought stays, though, hovering. Tapping on his consciousness. Excuse me. Please, excuse me. Think me.
He’ll get it open.
Still doesn’t open.
He thinks the thought.
I’m trapped.
He’s trapped in a public restroom at two in the morning, and by now his friends will have reached the bar. The thought comes close to amusing him. Certainly this would be funny if it were happening to someone else.  
 Trapped? Really? Can’t be. Can’t actually be trapped. Not yet panicked, but more than a little perturbed, he gets down on the floor and tries to wedge his fingers under the door. It’s useless. Not enough space. He knew it would be useless before he tried. He tries grasping the tiny, metal ridges the handle left when it detached, but he can’t get a good grip. When his hand slips, the metal slices his skin. He sucks his fingertip, a couple drops of blood spattering the floor.
The door’s edges are nearly flush with the wall; there’s even less space than at the bottom. The thinnest seam.
His keys. Yes, the keys, they will help. They’ll fit between the wall and the door. He clutches them. Grips them so tightly, they leave mirror-image dimples in his skin, a pattern for opening pressed into his palm.
He manages to force a key between the wall and the left side of the door. He’ll pull, with his forefinger through the key ring, and the friction will force the door open, just enough. Then, he’ll be able to get a better grip and swing it the rest of the way. He pulls and pulls. Nothing. The key sticks for a moment, then pops out of the seam each time, the door having moved not at all. The key leaves little streaks of silver where it scratches the paint.
He kicks and pounds on the door with his fist. He yells. In the bathroom, the noise from his assault is deafening. No one comes. The door stays shut. He paces from one end of the bathroom to the other. Passes the sinks, a single urinal, two regular stalls, and finally, the handicapped stall, where he recently relieved himself. Apart from the door, there is no way to exit the restroom. There is a circular vent in the ceiling, roughly the width of his hand.  
He climbs on top of the toilet in the handicapped stall, aims he face at the vent, and yells some more. As he strains to be heard, he loses his balance and slips. One foot goes in the toilet bowl as he crashes to the cement, bruising his shin and hitting his head against the wall in the process.
Violent swearing fills the restroom. He’s laying on his back, holding his leg up to his chest, hands on his shin. Something cold and wet touches the back of his head. He jerks up. His hair is sopping wet. The puddle is spreading. He scrambles to his feet, backing away.
The liquid is dark, like molasses, and the surface is smoother than the jerk Sarah hooked up with. The edge of the puddle creeps toward him, as quietly disconcerting as an oil spill. The water in his hair is uncomfortably cold. He yanks on the roll of toilet paper to dry himself.
For no reason he can explain, the last thing he wants to do is step in the puddle. To avoid this, he crawls under the divider and into the adjoining stall. The puddle has yet to spread that far, and he makes a limping beeline for the exit. Toilet water and urine squelches in one of his shoes. With another paper towel, he gingerly plucks the aluminum handle from the trashcan. Fumbling with it, he tries to put it back where it used to be, as if by touching the sections of metal to each other, they’ll remember their old closeness and re-attach. This accomplishes nothing, and he flings the handle across the restroom with a frustrated shout.
The handle careens off the back wall and splashes into the dark water. It’s as though the puddle was just waiting to be disturbed. A dam has broken. The first ripple grows into an entirely unreasonable amount of water—a miniature tsunami—rolling violently into all four walls. It covers the floors, and the backsplash washes against his knees. His legs prickle with the chill, and he can’t see his shoes beneath the water’s surface. The water rises.
  If only he was a swimmer, like Sarah. They had understood each other so well. What happened? A great shiver runs through his body, making his teeth clack together. He misses her smile.
Why is he thinking of her? Why now?
The water level is rising even faster, and he’s hopping from one foot to the other, moving to the sinks. He clambers onto the sink nearest the first stall, and hangs onto the top of the stall divider for stability. The “puddle” reaches the sink’s rim and fills it with icy darkness.
The ceiling is too low for him to straighten up while standing in the sink, so he hunches over, watching the water once again envelop his legs.
Maybe he should call her. She’s probably asleep, but he could leave a message. He could apologize for screaming at her. For saying those awful things. He didn’t mean them. He’d been even colder to her than the water in the puddle. It reaches his waist, and the shock of it causes part of his plumbing to crawl up inside his abdomen. “The scared turtle effect,” one of his friends always called it.
How would the message go? “Sarah, I don’t know what’s about to happen to me, but I want to tell you that I … I …” Am sorry? Love you? Miss you? Forgive you? No, this is a terrible idea. He doesn’t know how he feels. The last five words he threw at her replay themselves in his mind. “I hate you. Get out!” He wishes they could have a second chance.
The water level is rising so fast that it’s nearly at his chin before he realizes he can’t leave her a message anyway; his phone is in his back pants-pocket. Submerged. His wallet is similarly inundated, and he has the wild thought that he’ll have to iron his bills if he survives. He’s rapidly running out of ceiling.
At that moment, the thought finally hits him. He could have called his friends. How could he be so stupid? Someone could have let him out. He could have called 911. He could have called anyone. In a frantic burst of possibility, he fishes the phone from his pocket. When he tries to press a button, it’s as he fears: dead. He drops it and it sinks out of sight, along with his hopes.
He claws his way to the vent and smooshes his face as close to the opening as he can. His hands and feet are completely numb, and soon there will be nothing left to breathe. He wonders if water is leaking out the cracks around the door. The chill is paralyzing him.
The restroom light flickers and dies. There’s now no difference between air and water, save that he can’t breathe them both. In complete blackness, he feels the water cover his face entirely. He holds his breath for as long as he can, afraid of what’s coming next. He always wanted to die doing something epic—to go out in a blaze of glory. Fate is cruel.
Try as he does to resist, eventually he opens his mouth.
Cold and fear and regret fill him. Sarah’s face burns in his mind, his last thought before consciousness flees.
***
He wakes, stiff and wet, to find his friend, Michael, standing over him. In his hand he can feel the familiar weight and shape of his cellphone. He is lying on his back, near the open door of the restroom. The trashcan is back, propping it open.
“Dude, what the hell happened? You fall in the toilet?”
He doesn’t know.
“You’re all wet…why are you on the floor?”
He doesn’t try to explain. Michael wouldn’t believe. He coughs. Mumbles something about Sarah.
“Your ex? She’s a bitch. Really need to get over her, man.” Michael helps him to his feet. “You look wrecked.“
He’s fine. Really.
“Your ass is soaked.”
He’ll dry. Nothing serious. Just give him a second.
Michael’s expression is skeptical, but he doesn’t argue. His friend walks out of the restroom for some water at the fountain.
“Really had to push to get the door open,” Michael calls, from around the corner.
No kidding. He gives a noncommittal grunt.
Slowly, he walks to the back of the restroom. Catches a glimpse of something dark receding into the corner between the floor and wall. He crouches to run his hand over the spot. Completely dry. He notices a faded scar on the tip of his finger, as if from a decade-old wound. He returns to the door, takes a breath, and checks behind. The handle is attached. Gives it a small wiggle. Thoroughly solid. He doesn’t look closely at the paper. If he did, he’d see his name and today’s date. There’s no red line.  
He looks at his phone. The screen lights up. A new message. It’s from Sarah. Five words. “Miss you. Want to talk?” Yeah, he thinks. Yeah, I do. He finally knows what he wants to say. As he and Michael leave, a man appears, making for the men’s room. He stops the stranger, and nods toward the building. “You sure you need to go?”