Down the Drain

backed out of the water, reaching for his sore penis and breathing so irregularly he was almost hyperventilating. Through the bubbles, he watched the drain slide from the middle of the tub to its usual spot at the end. The bathmat was gone. Maybe sucked into the drain, maybe melded with the tub’s surface during its...what? Morphing? Yes, he supposed that was as good a word as any.

He took another step back, afraid the tub would reach out and grab him again, molest him again. Water, bubbles, and blood streamed down his body. A pink thread of semen dangled from the tip of his now-flaccid penis for a second before detaching and landing in the hair on his lower leg. In the tub, the band-aid he’d applied the night before floated to the surface. It had a single bloody streak down the middle.

Bruce grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his waist. Crazy as it was, he didn’t want the tub to see him naked any longer than it had already. Not that it seemed to be able to see anything at all.

Are you serious? he thought. Of course it can’t see you. It can’t do anything. It’s a goddam bathtub. You’re still sleeping, and none of this is real. Open your fucking eyes already.

Except there was no chance this was a dream. He’d never had dreams this lifelike. Or this freaky.

A huge air bubble escaped the tub’s drain and blurped when it reached the soapy surface. And then the water level started dropping. Bruce could hear the liquid surging through the pipes beneath the floor. He continued backing away from the tub, watching where he stepped to avoid shards of the broken beer bottle. His crotch throbbed, and his legs shook. He thought he might not be able to make it out of the bathroom, that his body would betray him, buckle beneath him, and he’d fall within striking distance of the tub.

Striking distance?

He shook his head and rubbed his eyes; then he slammed his palm into his forehead. As if he might be able to bludgeon the last five minutes out of his memory. Again: smack. Harder: SMACK.

Pinpoint bursts of light flickered across his inner eyelids. The last of the bathwater swirled down the drain with a sound that almost reminded him of chuckling. He peeked out between his fingers like a scared little kid and finished backing out of the room.

In the hall, he closed the bathroom door and sat down with his bare back against it. For what seemed a very long time, he tried to regain control of his breathing. His chest hitched, his throat trembled, tears leaked from the corners of his eyes.

Not real, he kept thinking. There’s just no way any of that could have been real.

His oozing wiener begged to differ.

You have to destroy it. Whether it really happened or not, for your own sanity, you need to get the sledgehammer from the shed and bust the thing into a million little pieces.

Could you solve crazy with even more crazy? Bruce didn’t think so, but he also didn’t think he could get past what had just happened without doing something. Destroying the tub seemed liked as good an idea as any.

He pushed himself up and hurried through the house. He grabbed his keys from the side table by the front door and stepped outside. On the porch, the wind got hold of his towel and whisked it off his body. It was too wet and heavy to go far. It fell in a heap on the ground just beside the porch. Bruce let it go and hurried to the shed wearing nothing but a little blood on his inner thighs.

The keys jangled when he poked them at the shed’s locked door. He glanced over his shoulder.

Someone might drive by.

No one’s going to drive by.

Someone might see.

The only way anyone’s going to see you is if you keep dawdling out here on the lawn all night. Get inside. Now.

He found the right key, unlocked the door, and hurried in.

The sledge hung from a rack on the wall to his right. A pair of shovels flanked it, one square-headed and the other round. Bruce ignored the rest of the tools, although there were enough of them in the small place to start a hardware store. He needed only the hammer for now. He pulled it off the rack and hefted it. The wooden handle slid through his hands and felt as smooth as plastic. Years of sweaty use had worked like polish on the tool.

Brownish gunk caked the sledge’s head.

Blood.

No, not blood, just mud with plenty of red clay mixed in, but it gave him a chill nonetheless.

He slung the hammer over his shoulder and backed out of the shed.

You better hope nobody drives by. If ever a person looked like an all- out psychopath, it’s you right now.

Was he a psychopath? Could you set out on a mission to slay a bathtub monster and still call yourself sane?

He scurried across the side yard, his penis flapping against his legs, his bare feet getting stuck in the mud and making sucking sounds when he pulled them free that reminded him of the noise his manhood had made when the tub had finally let him yank it out of its drainhole.

He left muddy footprints on the floor inside the front door but ignored them and strode across the house. Now that he was safe from prying eyes, he didn’t have to worry about things like modesty and decency. Or even sanity.

He stopped at the closed bathroom door and allowed himself a little time to build up his courage before wrapping his fingers around the knob and letting himself in.

If not for the spilled beer, you never would have known anything had happened here. The water had finished draining from the tub, leaving behind only a few sudsy remains; towels and dirty clothes lay heaped on the floor where they'd been when he left; and the array of toiletries spread across the vanity hadn’t moved an inch.

See? Just a dream. Or maybe a brain tumor. It didn’t happen. No, sir.

Bruce moved closer to the tub, shuffling instead of walking, keeping his weight on his back foot and leaning toward the door so he could rush that way should the need arise. He peered over the edge of the tub and saw his bandaid stuck to the edge of the drain. A long, silver protuberance flicked out of the hole like a metallic tongue, wrapped itself around the band-aid, and retreated with its prize. Bruce licked his own lips and stared, momentarily unable to swallow or breathe.

He was so focused on the drain he almost didn’t notice when the tub’s floor began to bulge. It started as a tiny, roving bump–he saw it from the corner of his eye–like a disoriented mole burrowing just beneath a lawn’s surface. Bruce turned to look at the bulge, watched it grow to the size of a softball, and then a basketball. He didn’t wait to see if it would reach beach-ball size. Instead, he gripped the sledgehammer very low on the handle, giving himself the maximum amount of leverage, and swung the thing with as much force as his overused muscles would allow.

The sledge hit the bulge and bounced off as if it had struck rubber instead of fiberglass. Bruce had to let go of the tool and duck to keep it from rebounding into his face. It flew over his shoulder and struck the mirror above the vanity instead. Safety glass tinkled onto the vanity and into the sink, crackling and popping. The sledgehammer fell on the faucet head first and dented the metal. Bruce expected water to come shooting out of the fixture, but apparently the hammer hadn’t had enough force to cause that kind of damage.

The tub squealed. Whether it had a kind of rudimentary vocal chord system within its plumbing or used some telepathic ability to beam the sound directly into his head, Bruce wasn’t sure. But the scream was real. No doubt about it. Not a scream of pain as much as an indignant yelp of surprise and fury.

The tub hadn’t broken apart the way he’d expected it to, but a long crack had appeared across the bulging surface. He retrieved the sledgehammer and swung it again, careful this time to aim it so it wouldn’t ricochet into his face.

The sledge’s muddy head struck the tub again, and the crack widened. This time, Bruce managed to hold on to the sweat-polished handle and let the hammer glide back to its position on his shoulder as easily as a baseball player taking a practice swing. The tub continued to scream at him, but now it supplemented the anger and animus with screams of real agony. Bruce swung a third time. A fourth. A second crack crossed the first, making a jagged