Stalled

***TW: Inference of Childhood SA***

I’m not gonna take a dump in a public restroom. I’m not gonna take a dump in a public restroom. I’m not gonna…

Damnit.

I’m not gonna make it home. And it’s RIGHT there. That grim, concrete bunker masquerading as a sanctuary of sanitation. Sickly 40-watt bulbs over twin entrances generating just enough illumination for the beast to be visible in the night. Barely-there beacons of hope guiding desperate travellers to safety. Or to ruin if they function for a siren.

Which, to me, they always have done. Late night, deserted park, squat building lurking like a gargoyle? Hard pass. I haven’t avoided that place for thirty-five years only to let it pounce now. I’ll keep walking. It’s only fifteen minutes. I can hold it. I can make it. I can…

Fuck.  

I can’t believe this shit. 

Literally.

I don’t do public toilets. At school. At work. In restaurants. Anywhere. My schedule has been refined over the years to ensure it’s never a requirement. My plans are meticulous. My itinerary for every occasion is drafted around preparatory expulsions and drainage. The first three items on my agenda before any excursion are always: Be clean. Be presentable. Be empty. Quickly followed by: Have phone charged, cash in wallet, and an escape plan, though these are secondary considerations. I can get away with screwing up on those. Bladder, too, can be humoured if it refuses to comply, though with difficulty and potential for embarrassment. Empty bottles, vacant alleys… It can be done. Bowels can’t. Not in any way, shape or form. Don’t even go there. 

And yeah…there have been close calls. Various delays have led to some near catastrophic misses when my schedule got shredded by forces beyond my control. Like tonight. When I broke a golden rule by chatting longer to a Tinder match than I should have, missing the 10 o’ clock bus. It was dumb, but things seemed to be going well, and I liked her. Could have predicted the “had a lovely evening but didn’t feel a connection” text I received ten minutes after saying goodnight and boarding the later bus, but I let my guard down because she played the part of interested well. My bad. I was kidding myself anyway. Not like it was going to last, even if we did decide to continue. It never does.

I was already on dangerous ground at that point, but it would have been okay if not for the bus taking a meandering route through every unpronounceable village in the county and getting held up by roadworks. At midnight. Okay, maybe it makes sense to re-tarmac roads when there’s less traffic but still…thirty minutes on to a sixty minute trip and by the time I disembarked my gut was groaning.  

Haven’t been this close to the edge in decades. The pressure. The persistence. The pain. Stumbling along like a drunken gazelle, clenching my butt cheeks, trying to think happy thoughts.

But I can’t. Something’s up in there. I can’t hold it. Not for fifteen minutes. Not for fifteen seconds. It’s coming out and I have to go in. To the belly of the beast. To a urine-soaked, germaphobe’s nightmare. To that den of depravity, again, after thirty-five years.

FML. I bite the bullet and veer off the path, half-running, half tiptoeing across a narrow strip of grass to the concrete-slabbed perimeter around the monolith. It seems to inhale sharply, holding its breath as I approach, like a slumbering, concrete apparition, solidifying its presence in readiness for a reunion.

I almost stutter to a halt as I reach the entrance with the faded ‘male’ symbol on a scratched, perspex panel alongside. I haven’t seen that up close since ‘89 and just being here now makes my stomach clench tighter than my ass. I want to turn, walk away, give up and just shit my pants. But…I can’t let this haunt me forever. There has to be a time to face the past. 

That moment, apparently, is now, because my feet keep moving and next thing I know I’m inside, feeling like I’m thirteen again.

The smell hits me first, a mix of stale urine, bleach, and something rotten that almost resurrects the sushi I devoured two hours before. Until the familiar surroundings my eyes drift over cause it to cower back down inside. I focus on the stalls at the back of this ceramic-tiled crypt. I keep my eyes forward, avoiding the cracked mirror over the grime-coated sink, the crude graffiti on the walls, the trio of yellowed urinals, that leer as I pass, like dirty old men with pissed pants. Beneath my feet, crumpled tissue and puddles of stagnant liquid squish and splatter, above me fluorescent light tubes flicker and fizz.

What am I doing here? 

I almost spin on my heels and head straight back out of this reeking vault, but my gut screams and the battering ram in my bowels launches a fresh attack, splintering the castle doors and poking through.

I rush into a stall, not the one against the exterior wall, or the one in the centre, the one to the right I trust is safe. Just get it over with, I think, banging the metal door shut and sliding the lock. I undo my belt with one hand while curling the other inside the toilet dispenser to feel for a telltale sheet. Safe. But even if it was empty there was no stopping this now. Button open, zip down, pants dropped, I turn and lower myself towards a broken-seat, hoping to hover and not make full contact. But I have to abandon my revulsion and ideals of cleanliness as the castle gates buckle and the hounds of hell howl and thunder through. 

The missed bus, the delays on the road, the sushi that clearly wasn’t good. A perfect shit storm that created a perfect shit storm, one that leaves me quivering and sweaty. Sixty seconds later I’m still here, trying to ignore my reality. The stink, the feel of the seat beneath my fully deposited ass, the creaks and buzzes and eerie, flickering emptiness of this alien landscape, one I never thought I’d visit again. But I did. I came back. And it didn’t kill me or send me screaming into the deepest pits of despair.

I sigh, feel myself relax, allow my eyes to slip open.

No, it didn’t kill me. But this wasn’t the cubicle. Where the nightmare occurred. That was two away, below the window, the one with the hole in the wall separating it from the middle stall. The hole plugged tight with tissue paper.

Like the one I see next to me now, as I turn to pull the flush handle.

Was that there when I came in? How did I not notice? I took the time to check the dispenser, how could I have missed what was opposite? Was I that blinded by the urge to evacuate that I overlooked what’s haunted me for decades?

The hole in the cubicle wall with the scrunched up tissue securing it, keeping its purpose a secret until an unwitting victim comes along, innocently locking themselves into a vertical coffin, lowering a protective barrier of clothing, exposing themselves to the evil forces lurking on the other side of a flimsy, plywood panel. A patient predator that chooses its prey wisely. The young. The vulnerable. The meek. Sitting there and festering, in the middle stall of three, biding his time until an opportune moment arises and the trap can be sprung.  

Until the plug can be removed, clearing a roughly-carved, three inch diameter passage between the domains of decency.

Like it was thirty-five years ago.

And is again now.

I can’t move. I can only sit, trousers around ankles, ass glued to the seat, beads of sweat on my brow as I shock-see the ball of tissue vanish. Hear shuffling, furtive sounds from the neighbouring cubicle as the sound of the flushing water fades. Observe a flicker of movement in the darkness beyond the hole.

And then, with a hiss, something shiny and serpentine slides through. 

A snake with glistening scales slithers an inch into my stall, then another. Its body flexes and sways, it tastes the air in my direction with a forked tongue. My breath catches as it stretches closer. Its tongue gleams, its fangs drip venom, its empty eyes stare into my soul.

How is this happening? How can there be a snake?  

I want to shout, stand, run, but I’m frozen to the spot. I’m afraid a noise will make it angry. I’m afraid a movement will make it strike. I’m just me, here, alone, with no one to help me. I have to be still. I have to be silent. If I just keep quiet it might not hurt me. If I let it do what it wants, it might leave me alone. 

Just let it do what it wants.

No.  

Its eyes entrance me, drawing me deeper, its undulating body hypnotises. It knows me in a way I thought I’d forgotten and it thinks it can use that against me. Fear-infused silence presses down on me, filling the air with the same quiet dread I remember, but I’m not going to sit here and take it. 

Not this time.

I’m not a kid, cowering against a dirty cubicle wall. I’m a grown man. And I don’t have to let that thing touch me. I’m not going to let it attack.

I twist, grab the cistern lid, faster than I should but I don’t care. Bite me if you want, I think, lifting the heavy porcelain. Bite me and this time I’ll bite back. 

I don’t have to. The snake is frozen, unmoving, beady eyes analysing my every move as I break its spell.

“Fuck off!” I shout, and slam the cistern lid against the wall, forcing the stalking serpent to retreat.

This can’t really be happening, I know that, deep down. This is some kind of trauma response, brought on by my return to this lair after so many years. This place where evil may still lurk. 

This place that should not be standing. 

The snake is gone but the hole remains and I don’t want to see what comes next. I lower the cistern lid, drop it to the floor where it clatters, stand to yank up my trousers. There’s paper in the dispenser but I forego it, I just want out, no time to waste, so I reach for the door as I tug up my zipper. Fifteen minutes to home, ten if I run, then I can strip and shower and wash away the filth and putrid memories. My fingertips graze the metal latch.

"Open the door."

A whisper, thin as smoke, stops me dead. I freeze, chest tightening, mind racing. The fluorescent light tubes flicker faster, their buzz an electric hum, like a warning. Did I hear that? Did I imagine it? Was it just another echo from the past? 

“Hurry, let me in.” 

That voice again, insistent, forceful, like a hand around my throat exerting pressure. A voice of authority, the kind that requires you to obey. I shrink back, swallow a lump, both hands fumbling with my belt, drawing the strap so tight it digs into my skin.

It sounds the same, it sounds like him, but it can’t be.

Can it? Thirty-five years later, is he still here? Doing the same thing to innocent children?

“Open the door!” It’s a command now, dominating, urgent. The door rattles in its frame and I squeeze my eyes shut. Impossible. He’d be sixty, more, he can’t still be here. I haven’t seen him around town, not since Deborah left and I moved back home to face my demons.

And how is that working out?

My eyes snap open, anger, no, annoyance, replacing the fear in my chest. I take a deep breath and speak out.

“Who’s there?”

The sound of my adult voice once again shatters the illusion. The lights aren’t panicking, the door isn’t shaking, the ghost repeating old words has fallen silent.  

“Fuck this.”

I step forward, take hold of the latch, ready to face what awaits. If there is someone there, if it is him, or someone like him, this time I will take a stand. I’m not a victim. I don’t have to comply. I don’t have to bite my tongue or keep a secret. I’m not afraid to confront a monster, not anymore, because the monster was always just a bully and a creep. A well-groomed reptile in a top tier suit and fancy shoes, wearing the face of a paragon of virtue. A fake-smiling avatar whose insides were rotten to the core. A symbiote who managed to hide his…

Before I slide the latch and open the door, something shifts below and I look down.

Twisting into the stall, in the space between door and floor, is a mass of writhing tentacles, weaving and winding through the piss and grot coating the tiles.

I stagger back, bump against the toilet bowl, watch the grey appendages approach, twisting around each other like a mass of limbs, reaching out to coil around my ankles. I lift one foot, then the other, hurriedly climb onto the toilet, clutching the top of the stall as the tentacles roll closer. They spread across the floor, curl around the base of the toilet, start to undulate upwards, seeking me out.

This can’t be happening. I know it’s not. It’s not.

“Get away!” I shout, my voice bouncing off the tiles. “You’re not real!” 

But as the words echo, a voice outside the stall whispers back, not the same as before but just as familiar.

“It’s real,” it says, a warm voice, comforting and gentle. I feel it before I recognise it, like a ghost caressing my cheek. Melissa? “It was always real. But you tried to bury it, and it made you close yourself off to the world.”

I can’t breathe. My eyes dart to the stall door, desperate to see if she’s on the other side.

The door starts to rattle again. The owner of the tentacles, still attempting to get in. I look down to see them curl over the rim of the toilet and brush against my feet. 

Another voice pipes up from beyond the door, stronger, resentful. “You gave him all this power,” Brooke accuses, forward as ever. “You wouldn’t name him. Wouldn’t tell. Not even your mother, who was waiting outside when it happened. You took on that shame and let it destroy you.”

“No…” I whisper. “Stop.” 

This isn’t fair. I just wanted to go to the bathroom. I didn’t expect anything else. Tears fill my eyes as the tentacles reach my ankles and slip inside my trouser legs.

A third voice, Caroline’s, my love, enters the void. “You wouldn’t talk to anyone. You kept it in, let it eat you alive and push me away.”

Her voice, like the others, stabs my heart and I tremble, blink, try to push it back in time where it belongs. 

Why am I hearing all this? None of it was my fault. I’m not the reason things never worked out. He is. That man. That perfect, upright citizen the town adored, the educator, the counsellor, the patron of the arts and local charities. The polished liar hiding behind crumpled tissue and scrawled numbers on bathroom stall walls. He did this.

“And what are you going to do about it?” that same low voice returns, snapping me back to attention. “You think you can keep me out? Locked door or not, I’m coming in.”

I jolt as something slams against the door and a length of garden hose slaps over the top, thick and black, swaying as if its alive. From its winking nozzle, a single drop of viscous liquid falls. I flinch, know what’s coming. I reach out to grab it and aim it away but the tip of the hose erupts quickly, spewing thick, tar-like goo over my face. I squeeze my eyes shut, grip the hose with both hands, howl as the ooze fills my mouth.

“Good boy,” the voice chuckles, and I see red.

No. I’m. Fucking. Not.

I squeeze, throttle, pull on the now fleshy hose, feeling it wriggle and writhe warmly in my grasp. “Let go!” the man outside the stall shouts, trying to reel it back in. “That hurts, stop, let go!”

“I’m not your good boy,” I hiss, through clenched, grinding teeth. “But okay. I will. I’ll let go!”

I gave the thick hose one last yank and the man howls in pain as it snaps, tumbles into the stall, drops loose and limply to the floor. The invading grey tentacles slip from my legs and shrink back, shrivelling up as they dissolve, taking the hose and its dirty ooze with them. 

Drawing the nightmare away.

I blink and everything is gone. My face is dry. The hole in the wall is no longer. The only sounds to be heard are the hum of the light tubes and the desperate, panicked pounding of my heart.

I dismount from the toilet, reach for the latch, release it, and push open the door. The restroom is empty. I stumble out into the night, the fresh air welcome as I catch my breath. My phone feels cold in my hand as I remove it from an inside jacket pocket.

It’s late, but I know she’ll be awake. Even if she’s not it doesn’t matter.

I hold the phone to my ear as I walk, wait until I hear her surprised voice.

“Mum,” I say, voice breaking. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

The words tumble out, and with them, years of silence, as tears flow freely down my face.