English Session: Mr. Sené 2006 (by Lo)

He poked the pillows, smoothed the blanket. Cosy. As he was getting between the lukewarm sheets, he heard a queer sound coming from the bathroom. Almost a moan. Almost like shivering water. His heart stopped. He got up, dizzy, cold-sweating. Billy tiptoed to the bathroom door, his heart pouding. Locked. He felt as if something terrific was waiting behind the door, croutched down.

He tapped on the door with his nails, suddenly aware, too aware, of the reptilian clicking sound they made on the wood. The disquiet suddenly grew strong in him and he thought of Babbito Lake, where he had gone swimming often as a boy. By the first of August the lake was warm as a tub. But then you would hit a cold pocket that would shiver you with surprise and delight. One minute, you were warm; the next moment it felt as if the temperature had plummeted twenty degrees below your hips. Minus the delight, that was how he felt now – as is he had just struck a cold pocket. Only this cold pocket was not below his hips, chilling his teenager’s legsin the black depths of Babbito Lake.

This one was around his heart.

“Is anybody inside?”

This time he did more than tap with his nails. He rapped on the door. When ther was still no answer, he hammered on it.

“Can I help you?”

His heart. His heart was not in his chest anymore. It was beating in his throat, making it hard to breathe.

“Can you hear me?”

In the silence following his shout, he heard a sound wich brought panic up from the belowstairs part of his mind like an unwelcome guest. Such a small sound, really. It was only the sound of dripping water. “Plink... pause. Plink... pause”

He could see the drops forming on the snout of the faucet, growing “pregnant” there, and falling off: “Plink”.

Just that sound. No other.

He thought vaguely: “This is all a mistake of some kind and we will laugh about it later. The old creepy dumb gave me the wrong room and Mr. Temple ou Mr. Mulholland is surely taking a bath: he filled up the tub and then remembered he didn’t have cigarettes and went out to get them before he took his clothes off.”

Yes. Only he had already locked the bathroom door from the inside and because it was too much of a bother to unlock it again he had simply opened the window over the tub and gone down the side of the house like a fly crawling down a wall. Of course.

Panic was rising in his mind again – it was like bitter black coffee threatening to overflow the rim of a cup. He closed his eyes and fought against it. He stood there perfectly still, a pale statue with a pulse in its throat.

With a moan, he gripped the cut glass doorknob and turned it. It tried to slide through his hand again – his palm was wet with sweat. He shook widely the door and shivered when he heard the latch falling. Age of Miracles. He pushed the door open and the sickly smell of chemicals overcame the bedroom.

He looked at the tub with its blue shower curtain bunched at the far end of the stainless steel rod. He sipmly stared at the tub, his face as solemn as the face of a child on his first day of school. In a moment he would begin to scream, but for now, this one moment, Billy simply stood silent with his hands clasped in front of his brown pyjamas, his face solemn, his eyes huge.

And now the look of almost holy solemnity began tu transform itself into something else. The huge eyes began to bulge. His mouth pulled back into a dreadful grin of horror. He wanted to scream and couldn’t.

The scream was too big to come out.

The bathroom was lit by fluorescent tubes. It was very bright. There were no shadows. You could see everything, whether you wanted or not. The water in the tub was bright pink. Immersed into the water was pulsing a mass of bloody flesh. Two chests on one waist. Litteraly sewn together. Billy became suddenly aware that the tub was not filled of bloody water but of some kind of visquous physiological liquid. He noticed at last the surgeon stuff scattered around, the pools of blood.

Another drop fell into the water.

Plink.

That did it. Billy Weaver at last found his voice. Staring to what had been Mr. Temple and Mr. Mulholland, staring into thier expression of abysmal frozen horror, they dead and sparkling eyes, he began to scream.