I awoke on the gleaming floor to the relentlessly quiet sound of movement---a low, thrumming energy that resonated just on the edge of hearing, stretching endlessly, almost footed, almost consonant, but never fully forming.
I blinked away the confusion as I stared at myself in the reflective sheen of the floor. My face, shining back from the countless crimson tiles, felt insectile---fractured, as though seen through the compound eyes of botflies burrowing between flesh to brood the clutches of their eggs, nestling them---burying them---beneath the pooling blood. Each individual version of myself viewed back through that kaleidoscopic vision, individually, a thousand viscerally uncomfortable tiny me’s writhed together in unison. As I stared at them, they stared back at me.Â
But they felt---different---somehow. I couldn’t see what that difference was at first, but I knew it was there, lurking beneath their mirrored gazes.
Wait---something was happening in my head---to my thoughts… I could feel it. I would never put that much alliteration right at the beginning of a new chapter. Not ever.
It’s a literary sign---a flashing red light---used to illustrate a character’s descent into madness it’s the same with low, thrumming sounds that never seem to end.
GASP! I gasped! The realization hit me like a brick.
Something else is doing this.
This immaculate restroom really was nefarious! I knew it! Called that right as soon as I got here. Never liked it! Not from the first moment the toilet belched me up.Â
It was putting thoughts inside my head---ones I didn’t make.
What’s that one? That creepy one over there? Is that mine?
Oh. Yup. The one about performing surgeries at a school for the blind? See, you start by removing every student’s eyes while they sleep and then you make them eat their own eyeballs back by mixing them into the cafeteria food---that one’s mine for sure. I thought of that one yesterday.
But that other one? The one about being wrapped up and swallowed whole by a spider that unhinges its jaw like a boa constrictor? Nope. Too stupid to be mine.
There were things in my head that didn’t belong there. Things that found cracks, crevices, or pores that led all the way inside.
I am fascinated by dark things. I welcome them. But instinctively, I could feel the smooth pull of this lustrous place, leading me deceptively into corners that looked pristine and bright. I knew better. It was all surface patina---a glamour hiding something much darker beneath.
The room was feeding me opaque thoughts---darker than the ones I usually made myself. Most were shocking simply for the sake of it, so they were easy to spot. A lot of them were stupid, but for every dumb idea I noticed weaseling its way in, there was one that was disturbingly good. Some were so close to something I’d think of on my own that I couldn’t tell whether they belonged to me or not.
It was kind of neat.
But also bad---very, very bad.
Not good.
Already somewhat unhinged, it takes twice the effort to drive me into unrelenting madness. I come and go from places like that at will.
I guarantee I will notice if I’m being manipulated into them.
This is the worst bathroom in the whole fucking world---because I love it just as much as I hate it.Â
That’s what I thought rose from the floor. On the surface, it simply appeared too clean, but there was so much more lurking beneath. Most people wouldn’t notice it, but I always dig deeper because I never forget to bring my shovel.
So many of the dark musings that visited me in the moments I sat staring at myself on every surface, everywhere---amusing as they might have been---were seeds implanted in me.
The horizon folded, swallowing the final house. Mine.
The flowers bled when touched too gently. Classic me.
The raven stared. I stared back. We both found it awkward. Boring. Not mine.
A bullet with butterfly wings. This one’s The Smashing Pumpkins’. Come on, Bathroom...not even trying.
Each one struck me with a peculiar clarity, as if the thoughts weren’t being formed but broadcast---fully realized and uninvited. It wasn’t inspiration. It was invasion. A way for the room to give birth to perceptions horrifying and alien to the person forced to endure them.
In a way, I found it delightful. Exciting, even. But I knew better. Letting it feed me these things would lead only to destruction, wrapped in a prettier package. I could feel the room’s potential to consume me, to seduce me willingly into abandoning what was mine. The allure of the strange and the new was potent, dangerous---a parasitic temptation veiled in fascination.
I could feel it already: a preference developing, a taste forming---a taste for the room’s artificial over my organic.
I have to get out of here.
I leaned my back against the wall, and everywhere I looked, I was there. Reflected. Staring back at myself from every surface, every angle. The screws holding the cubicle walls together gleamed with distorted visions of me, fractured and endless, like I was being slowly multiplied into infinity.
What had happened before this? Before I woke up here, sprawled on this flawlessly gleaming surface?
I couldn’t remember.
The question churned in my mind as a compulsion rose within me---stupid, irrational, and irresistible. Without any second thoughts, I reached one of my hands up, underneath and blew my nose into my palm---then smeared it across the gleaming scarlet tiles.
GASP! I gasped again.
Then I gasped again, reflexively dragging the sound back into myself, where I felt it rattle like an insect as it threw itself against my fillings. Mine. No wait–not mine? Can it be both? Is that a thing?
I watched in horror as the sticky smear of boogers and stringy mucus began to dissolve, as if the tiles themselves hungered for my filth. In moments, it was gone, absorbed into the surface like water into dry sand. The burnished sheen returned, somehow brighter---cleaner---than before.
I am unclean.
I must end myself so my filth can, in turn, be absorbed.
Absorb my filth. Swallow my disgustingness.
I must be rinsed away and made to gleam.
STOP THAT.
The command snapped through my mind like a whip, silencing the intruding thoughts. That one---I didn’t like it. That one wasn’t mine.
What the hell was going on? Had it really taken so little time for this place to make a move that bold?
Something was missing. A misremembrance. A sequence of events that had slipped through the cracks. I could feel it, like a black thread dangling just out of reach. Something was lurking at the edge of recollection, precariously perched on the top shelf of a dark, nebulous place inside me where such memories were kept. Forgotten. Filed away for safekeeping, serving no purpose but to weigh me down.
And it wanted out.
I could see the shelf, feel the memory sitting there, a heavy, tangible weight just out of reach. Yet the harder I reached for it, the further it receded, pulling away as if the very act of wanting it drove it deeper into hiding.
The space around it wasn’t linear---it shifted, expanded, stretched like something alive and malicious, taunting me. The shelf flowed through the twisting walls as though it belonged to water rather than solid space. I tried to trap it, to build a room in my mind where it could stay locked in place, but the room always dissolved, the walls crumbling into smoke as the shelf slipped away once more.
I could never glimpse the memory itself. It was cloaked in a velvet veil of black so impenetrable that even its shape eluded me. Its presence was undeniable---a pulsing void with a gravity all its own---but its substance remained unknowable, an enigma wrapped in shadows.
It felt cruel. Deliberate. As though some unseen hand delighted in this game, placing it just close enough to taunt me but always out of reach. Yet every time the shelf withdrew, disappearing into some newly conjured labyrinth of twisting passageways, I found my way back to it. Not by choice, but by the maddening truth that it could be moved but never erased. Hidden, but never gone.
And each time I found it, navigating the maze became easier. Every twist, every false room, every dead end burned itself into my mind, carving a map. My understanding grew sharper with each attempt, the paths more familiar. I was learning the game. And I knew---sooner or later---I would win.
But then, seeking this memory became suffocating. The space around me grew hostile, filling with viscous smoke that stuck to the walls, folding them inward like collapsing lungs. I realized with growing horror that the smoke wasn’t smoke at all---it was alive. A swirling, syrupy obscurity of obsidian honey, writhing and choking with intent. It clung to me like tar, pooling at my feet and rising higher with each step, dragging me down. I stumbled and staggered, my body sticking to every surface as the syrup surged forward, determined to drown me in its depths.
Still, I watched this space---mine, within my mind, belonging to me---as it fought to prevent me. It no longer waited until I reached the memento to retreat. Now it was in constant motion, shifting endlessly, knowing that my determination was unflagging.
It feared me.
It feared what I would do if I reached that shelf....