X. The tub tried to grab the sledge’s head each time it impacted the surface, but it wasn’t nearly quick enough. Despite its flexibility, it didn’t seem to be able to extend itself very far.
Now that he'd gotten the angle down, Bruce hammered at the thing like an expert demolitionist. He swung until his muscles began to spasm and he was afraid he might lose all control and drop the tool on his head. He’d busted a good sized hole in the center of the tub’s bulge. He caught his breath and gave his muscles a chance to relax, then lowered the hammer to his side and peered into the new, giant drainhole he’d made.
Inside, something moved.
Bruce took an immediate step back.
The thing inside moved again. Its reflective surface looked as if it were made of porcelain scales. It shifted from one side to the other, and back; one of the scales retracted to reveal a huge, glossy eye. Blue. With a speckling of green. Just like his own.
The scale slid back over the eye, and the thing moved again, this time toward the opening, surging. The tub had re-solidified—you could tell just by looking—the flexibility, that monstrous somehow-life, was gone. The scaly thing inside worked its way out, and the fiberglass cracked, groaned, and snapped. Bruce hefted the sledgehammer, bent his legs to lower his center of gravity, and widened his stance.
His heel came down on a long beer-bottle shard. The glass sliced his foot open all the way to his big toe. He tried to readjust his footing, but the sledge unbalanced him and the blood leaking from his sole combined with the spilled beer and soapy water made for an extremely slippery surface.
He fell.
His injured foot skidded in the small (but not that small) pool of blood and flew out in front of him. He waved his free arm like a tightrope walker, but it wasn’t enough to catch his balance. He tumbled back onto his rear end. He didn’t feel any shards of broken bottle or mirror digging into his butt cheeks and guessed he must have missed all but the smallest pieces. Lucky.
Another loud crack reverberated from within the tub, and Bruce heard the thing inside pushing its way out, scales against jagged edges.
The thing surged up, now partially visible over the edge of the tub. Its scales weren’t uniform but jagged, like broken tiles. Hair poked out in tufts from between the cracks—a patch here, a patch there—and although there was no way he could be certain, Bruce thought the stuff looked more than just a little bit pubic. The eyes stared at him from the sides of the thing’s head, snake like, but with those eerily human irises that reminded him so much of his own.
The creature opened a hole in its face that Bruce guessed you'd call a mouth. The opening had no lips, nor could he see gums or a tongue within the black maw, but the lines of broken tiles above and below the opening were most definitely teeth.
Whatever you wanted to call them, they were undoubtedly the gutting, filleting, bone-crunching, life-ending weapons of a carnivorous hunter. The creature snapped the teeth together, cocked its head; it opened its mouth again and let out a long, watery, whistling-kettle hiss.
Bruce scooted back, but there wasn’t much room to move. He'd always considered the bathroom roomy; now it felt like a broom closet. When his back hit the vanity, he’d created maybe three feet of space between himself and the emerging thing.
The creature lifted a hand to the edge of the tub. Its fingers were bent but stiff. They appeared to be composed of segments of PVC pipe and jointed with L-bends of the same material. The ends of the digits came to points, as jagged as most of the rest of the beast. When they clacked against the tub, you could hear they were hollow. They didn’t look like the most articulate body parts, but Bruce guessed they could do a lot of damage.
The monstrosity let out another of those steamy hisses and leapt at him.
Bruce swung the sledgehammer with all the force and leverage his position allowed. Which wasn’t much. The hammer hit the dog-sized creature on the side of its neck and knocked loose a few of the scales, but it barely affected the thing’s trajectory. The PVC claws hit his naked stomach and sliced. Not deeply enough to do any serious damage (he didn’t think) but enough to send a wave of agonizing pain through his midsection.
The thing opened its mouth again and grinned.
Clear saliva dripped from between its teeth. A single bubble rose out of the dark, featureless throat and popped against one of the bottom front fangs.
The creature pulled back its arm, a thick appendage covered with the same kinds of uneven tiles that composed its head but underlined with lengths of copper piping, gaskets, more PVC, and other bits of torn rubber and plastic that might once have been plumbing supplies but had now become too organic to categorize.
The arm swung.
Bruce bucked the beast and managed to avoid what probably would have been a killing blow. He scooted back again, cutting his ass on more broken glass but barely noticing. When the thing jumped at him once more, Bruce swung the sledgehammer. He still didn’t get much more than half of his full force behind the swing, but he hit the thing on the chin and knocked back its head with an audible snap he could only pray was the sound of its neck cracking.
It squealed and scurried into the corner of the room like a kicked mutt. It hunkered beside the toilet for a moment, hissing.
Bruce took the chance to get to his feet. Glass shards fell from his butt, hips, and thighs and tinkled to the floor. Other shards stayed embedded in his skin and muscles. He could feel them in there, burning. The parallel scratches on his stomach oozed blood over his pubic region. Bruce took the sledgehammer in both hands and bared his teeth.
“Come on, you nasty son of a bitch.”
The creature stopped hissing but didn’t close its mouth. A bubbling, gurgling sound rose from somewhere in its throat or belly. It twitched, spasmed, and hacked up a wet, furry hunk of meat and bone. The mess slid halfway to Bruce, leaving a streak through the mixed liquids already on the floor.
Bruce spotted a single paw amid the half-digested wad, as well as a few whiskers and a bit of hide covered with calico fur.
“No.” He whispered it.
He looked back at the creature. The thing was grinning again.
“No,” he said, louder this time.
The creature rose on its hind legs, which were similar to its arms composition wise but thicker, stronger looking. It didn’t stand up fully but seemed to balance itself in that half-standing position, almost like a prairie dog. Maybe it wasn’t capable of standing erect; maybe it was just trying to make itself look bigger, more dangerous. Bruce didn’t know and didn’t care. He rushed the thing.
This time, when he swung the sledge, he put every last bit of his power into it. He swung sidearm. He felt his arms shake mid-swing; the muscles wanted to give out, but he willed his body to follow through with the motion. It did. The hammer crunched into the side of the creature’s face. One second, that Bruce’s eye of an eye was staring out at him. The next, it was gone, oozing down the side of the thing’s face from the crater the sledgehammer had created.
The beast gurgled and tried to catch the vitreous fluid spilling to the floor. The liquid streamed down its piped fingers and continued to descend. The creature turned its good eye to him and ground its fangs together. Small bits of tile broke loose and spilled down its face. Soapy drool leaked from the corner of its mouth and joined the stream of eye goo.
Bruce didn’t give the thing time to retaliate. He swung the hammer in reverse this time, uppercutting the creature and knocking its head back into the wall beside the toilet. The wall caved in beneath its skull, and a cloud of white plaster dust puffed into the air. Clear liquid spilled out of the jagged mouth. Drool? Blood? No way to tell. It
