Dragged into Darkness (5 page)

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.

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 admiringly 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?”