I pick up my briefcase and stand up from my depressingly squeaky swivel chair. I look out over the stationary sea of beige cubicles and try to catch Sandra’s golden-green eyes, but I soon realise that she is making an obvious attempt to ignore me. I think about how she had had a very different attitude towards me at last week’s office party, but then again, alcohol does temporary wonders for one’s inhibitions.
I walk out of the soulless, ugly office block that I call work, the building’s grimy glass door screeching open. I reach my old red Austin Allegro, awkwardly parked in the cracked, neglected car park. The pensioner of a car jolts into life and trundles home.
I walk up the outside, skeletal stairwell running up the spine of the grim grey apartment complex, illuminated by the polluted twilight. The higher I climb up the building’s exoskeleton, the quieter the sounds of the frantic city’s bustle become, and the louder my thoughts grow.
I think back to the relatively carefree days of my childhood when I and my friends would play in the woods near my old town. How we would invent fantastical stories where we would be the heroes and the fools, the villains and the damsels. My mind leads me by the hand, back through the vista of years to that long-gone day, frivolled away in the lush, bronze autumn woodland, that I can never forget.
My miniature bare feet pounded across the rotting expanse of nature’s floor, their rhythmic thumping filling my head. The sound of rushing footsteps was accompanied by another pair of running feet coming up close behind my own. The two panting boys ran out into a small clearing with a modest pond lying in the centre like an open wound. I was so exhausted that I knew that I would fall victim to my pursuer if I did not come up with a heroic plan to save the day. I turned to face my enemy, eye to eye, boy to boy, friend to friend. The young boy before me bore a scratched, dirtied white mask with a crude angry face clumsily scribbled upon it in red marker. The boy grasped a flimsy stick in his sweaty palm.
“Stay back Villain!”
The Hero took a step back, towards the pond.
“I’m going to kill you, Hero!”
The Hero stepped back again, evermore closer to the pond.
“I’m going to end your evilness and you’ll never kill anyone ever again!”
“The Hero”, as I called myself, took one final step back, grabbed the Villain by the shoulders, and in one swift movement, we spun around and I pushed him into the deep lake. A surprised yelp escaped the boy’s suddenly scared mouth, as his flailing body crashed into the lake’s peaceful skin. The boy’s form quickly disappeared from view, and the lake regained its peaceful status once more.
I stood next to the river laughing my last laugh of childhood innocence, but my high pitched giggles started to quieten down as I began to notice that I was laughing alone, as my best friend, who was known to the rest of the world as Charlie, had not yet resurfaced. A violent cascade of bubbles erupted out from the murky depths of the below, and then all was silent forevermore.
I gasp and look around suddenly, finding myself lying in my bed in the present day, a furiously cold sweat dripping down every inch of my trembling form. I lean over the bedside table, the duvet clinging to my wet chest. The glowing phone shines with 2:25am plastered over it. I lift myself out of the bed’s comforting, warm embrace.
I reach out into the darkness and grab hold of the cheap plastic light switch that hangs helplessly from the ceiling. I yank it and am instantly blinded momentarily as the fluorescent bulb flickers into life. I wander over to the sink which lies beneath a wide mirror, my feet stinging slightly as they move over the cold tiled floor. I turn on the blue-capped tap and cup my hands underneath the flowing silver. A deep puddle quickly forms, so I lift it up and splash it against my face, both grounding and refreshing me at the same time. I wash my face, rubbing away the slimy sweat and salty tears. I straighten my back and stare at myself in the accusing mirror.
I look at my hairy chest breathing its rapid breaths, at my eyes glistening with hints of new tears, at my short brown, dripping wet hair, at the grainy dark brown stubble that must have begun sprouting whilst I slept. I look at the man who had bottled up all of his guilty grief from all those years ago. It had been twenty years ago today since his death, which explained why all the memories had flooded back to me all of a sudden.
I had never told a soul the truth about what had actually happened to Charlie, for fear that my younger self would get in trouble, and as the hours, days, months and years built up, it became increasingly harder to imagine ever confessing to anyone. Not even his parents ever knew the true fate of their son. I shake my head suddenly as if doing so could rid me of my painful thoughts. I hastily wipe the fresh tears from my eyes, breathe in deeply, filling my lungs, then exhale slowly and compose myself.
I silence that remorseful voice in my psyche, as I had done hundreds of times before, turn off the chiding bathroom light and start striding purposefully back to bed, when I hear a quiet sound from behind me. I turn my head, curious, to look back at the bathroom behind me. After not hearing anything for about fifty loud beats of my heart, I am about to turn away again when I hear it a second time. I peer into the domestic darkness and slowly walk back into my bathroom to locate the source of the sound. It sounds like the whispers of a ghastly ill creature. I turn the light back on and hear it a third time. I instantly realise that for a reason that I couldn’t begin to fathom, it’s emanating from the toilet. I feel a quizzical expression spread across my face as I peer over the bowl of the toilet, to see a horde of bubbles quickly rising up to the skin of the water’s surface.
As they pop out into the stale bathroom air, I hear the barely audible noise that sounds like a soft gust of wind mixed with nails being dragged across a chalkboard. The sound hauntingly forms the words:
“So… hungry…”
Seeing as a toilet seems to be talking to me, I don’t quite believe what I have just witnessed, so I kneel in front of it, waiting for any kind of confirmation that I have just experienced some sort of late-night hallucination. But sure enough, to my dismay, my eyes watch a new group of bubbles swim up and the quiet sound that’s barely louder than a rat’s whisper seems to form the words:
“Please…”
I nervously try to swallow some saliva, but my mouth is bone dry. I lower my head slightly over the bowl and, feeling like a complete madman, I croak:
“Is someone down there?”
Almost immediately I spy the air bubbles rising up to speak the words:
“Haven’t… eaten… for… so… long…”
Assuming that I’m not going completely insane and that this is actually happening, I ask the mysterious source of the bubbles:
“Are you okay? Do you need help?”
“Food…”
Realising that whoever was down there probably wasn’t there by choice, and seeing as they didn’t seem to be able to reply to me coherently, I decide that they were delirious and in need of urgent help.
I grab hold of the cold porcelain sink and haul myself up to my bare feet and pad over to the door. Now in the bedroom once again, I pick up my phone off of the bedside table.
I walk into the kitchen and wake up my phone from its electronic slumber. A happy picture of Sandra I found on her Instagram illuminates my face from my phone’s lock screen, which reads 2:34am. I unlock it, go to the calls app, tap in 999 and hit call. I’m starting to wonder how long I’ll have to wait when I’m greeted by a tired young woman’s voice; she yawns weakly before she speaks.
“999, what’s your emergency?”
“Hi, I think there’s someone stuck in the pipes under my flat; I don’t know how they got there, but I think they need urgent help.” I proceed to recall my address to her from memory.
“Sir, what makes you think that there’s someone in your pipes?”
“As crazy as this sounds, they’ve been talking to me through my toilet, they were begging me for food.”
A frustrated sigh flows out of my phone.
“Sir, have you taken any recreational substances recently?”
“Are you fucking shitting me right now?! I’m telling you that someone’s damn life might be in danger, and you’re accusing me of taking drugs?! Just send someone here as quickly as possible, for God’s sake!”
“Sir, please calm down. I’d recommend that you stop taking whatever it is that you took and get some rest.”
“Fucking typical, you know, you people are everything that’s wrong with this damn country.”
I end the call, angrily flinging my phone away from me in utter disgust. It smacks against the soft fabric of the sofa with a dull thud.
I pick up a banana and head back to the bathroom. I sit down next to the toilet once again.
“I’m back, I tried to get help but the police are incompetent.”
“Hungry…”
“Fine, I don’t know how else to help you, so I brought some food for you. How do I give it to you?”
“Flush…”
I peel the banana, tear a large chunk off and drop it into the toilet. I press one half of the shiny metal oval flusher that resembles the ying-yang symbol. The lump of potassium is whisked away by the miniature waterfall, being dragged down into the murky depths of the pipes.
After a long moment, the clump of banana bobs back up to the surface, hanging helplessly by the skin of the water. The banana has half a dozen small grooves etched into its exterior as if a small creature has lightly bitten it. I peer closer and realise that a small yellowed tooth is lodged into one of the grooves, a thick wisp of grey matter attached to it that looks like some long-dead gum. The banana is pushed aside by a stream of bubbles.
“Meat…”
My heart starts thumping in my chest as I come to the realisation that the bearer of the tooth can’t have been in the realm of the living for some years, let alone alive tonight. I start talking loudly into the still water.
“Okay, who the fuck are you? What kind of sick, twisted prank are you playing at? Because the police will be here soon and they might want to damn well know why someone has climbed into my pipes, with what looks like a dead child’s tooth!”
“Have… forgotten… already…?”
“What the hell are you on about!?
“Murd… murderer…”
The word seems to float out of the toilet and dance around my head, ricochetting from ear to ear, gradually eating away at my mind, until it slowly morphs into an unbearably shrill whine that makes me forget everything else.
I cry out, covering my ears, trying to block out the sound, but it makes no difference. I cast my eyes downwards and see a consistent stream of bubbles, and below the unbearably loud sound, my pain-filled ears barely pick up the single repeating, raspy request.
“Meat… meat… meat…”
I stand up suddenly and career out of the bathroom. As I run to the kitchen, I think no thoughts and hear no sound other than that of the high-pitched deafening drone. I run into the kitchen, throw open the fridge door, and frantically rummage around for anything that could come under the protein-infused umbrella of meat. I hurry back to the bathroom and deposit the exploits of my short expedition onto the white gleaming tiles.
I tear open a packet of cooked sliced chicken and flush the meaty slivers down. As I’m about to open another packet, the ringing becomes indescribably worse. The weak, raspy voice that normally accompanies the bubbles is replaced by a fierce, demanding snarl.
“Raw!”
I use the tip of my turquoise toothbrush to stab the taut plastic roof of a packet of raw mince beef. I pull back the plastic and scoop a moderate pile out with my shaking hand. I drop the clump of pulverised bovine flesh and flush it into oblivion.
Almost immediately the unbearable ringing noticeably declines in volume and intensity. The bubbles speak to me in a quieter, more restrained fashion.
“More… more…”
I empty the rest of the mince, throw in slabs of slimy chicken breast, chuck in a whole packet of bacon rashers and drop in several generous cuts of various fish. The foul-smelling, meaty cocktail with a hint of salmonella rises high above the dull-red water, coloured with animal blood. I hit the flush.
A heavy sigh of relief escapes my dry lips; the more uncooked, deceased animal muscle that disappears from sight, the quieter the maddening sound becomes. With every heartbeat, I feel relief flooding into every orifice, my body begins loosening, my normal thoughts returning and my eye-lids rolling down over my eyes like store-front shutters after a long day.
I awake no more than three hours later to the morning sunlight streaming in through the opaque patterned glass window. I don’t even notice my aching muscles, complaining about having slept on the hard tiled floor, because the ringing is back, and it is worse than ever.
I arrive an hour late to my beige cubicle devoid of anything eyebrow-raising. A planet of a man that I’m required to refer to as ‘Boss’ shuffles into the view that the entrance to my suffocatingly boring cubicle permits, a displeased expression etched into his unhealthily flabby face.
“So what time do you call this? You do understand that this is a professional institution, don’t you? You can’t just turn up whenever you damn well please, there are rules you have to follow goddammit!”
“Right, it won’t happen again.”
“Well, that better be true, otherwise we may have to reconsider the status of your job.”
When he has finally finished spluttering his routine reprimand, he casts a bloodshot eye downwards, his eyebrows furrowing into his fat head. His cheeks jiggle like jelly as he talks.
“Say, what happened to your hand there?”
I hold up my heavily bandaged right hand, my little finger replaced by a short stump with a crimson stain slowly seeping through the countless layers.
“Oh, this? It’s nothing really, just a small plumbing accident.”
“Well don’t try using this as an excuse to slack on your work, you’ll be getting no special treatment from me, you hear? I’ll see you later.”
His stubby legs visibly struggle to support his unfathomable weight as he slowly waddles off to bother more of his cubicle minions.
I stiffen slightly when I hear some very faint ringing, which I know would evolve into an overpowering cacophony before long if left unchecked.
I had made a grim discovery earlier that morning, when the unbearable pulsating sounds had reached their peak and I could not bear to withstand a single second more, for fear that I would lose my mind. When a frenzied, frantic fumble through the fridge and freezer yielded no raw meat, I had made a most terrible decision. I had splayed my right hand on the chopping board, grabbed the biggest knife within reach, and before I could rethink it, I brought the blade down into my pinky with a terrible force. The domestic knife sliced cleanly through flesh and bone. But I didn’t scream, for the only bodily sensation I experienced was that of the intolerable noise. I had picked up my dismembered, blood-dripping finger swiftly between my thumb and forefinger, and hurried to the bathroom. The voice was getting restless.
“Meat… meat… meat…”
I flushed it down the toilet as if it were a piece of trash, and not a part of me that I had always known. The relief that surged through every part of my body was unlike anything I had ever experienced before; it was a divine, exhilarating ecstasy that somehow sparked a flame of self-forgiveness in my grief-stricken heart. I had discovered that the relief-fuelled-high of flushing human meat was much greater than that of regular animal meat.
The hustle and bustle of workers going home after a long day of work awakens me from my thoughts. I look at cheap plastic on the wall, which tells me that it’s six in the evening. My eye catches sight of a pair of exceedingly familiar, attractive blood-red lips and the long flowing dark-as-night black hair that could belong to no other than Sandra, who I slept with last week and had since been doing her best to avoid me. I hear the cacodaemonic whispers ringing in my head, and instantly feel my overwhelming self-consciousness and embarrassment drip out of me, much like the blood that had dripped from my finger stump earlier that day.
With entirely new-found confidence, I shoot up out of my depressingly squeaky swivel chair and stride purposefully over to her cubicle. Having never had the regal permission to view the interior of her cubicle palace, I immediately notice countless photos of Sandra smiling with an incredibly handsome smiling man holding her curvy waist. In all of the pictures, the two of them were always surrounded by a wall of grinning children, which makes me think about how they look like a small army protecting the king and queen of happiness.
“What do you want?”
“Hey Sandra, I wanted to talk to you about what happened the other night. It was amazing, and I really like you; I’m not up to anything tonight if you wanted to catch a movie or something.”
“Look, I don’t know what you think happened between us, but it was nothing, it meant nothing and it was a massive mistake that I would rather forget ever happened. There will never be anything between us so leave me alone, you creep.”
I stare at her cold, unsmiling, elegant face for a long moment before walking away, a sickening resolution hardening somewhere deep within my psyche. I walk straight out of the building, not bothering to collect my belongings.
I sit behind the wheel of my car, eyes locked onto the office block’s grimy glass doors, the intolerable ringing creeping up to its peak once again, obstructing my normal train of thought, replacing it with a single objective. It strikes me how hungry that poor thing in my pipes must be by now, how selfish it was of me to come to work and leave it all by itself for the whole day. I will make it up to it by getting it a very special treat.
The dirty doors jerk open unwillingly and Sandra steps out into the darkening gloom of the neglected parking lot; her footsteps are so delicate that she almost seems to float over to her tastefully colourful car. I slip silently out of my distasteful lump of rusted metal on wheels and am swallowed by the all-encompassing shadows. I prowl through the night like a black panther hunting its unsuspecting, oblivious prey. She unlocks the driver seat’s door and she is just about to climb in when her beautiful face suddenly gets brutally smashed into the top of the car door’s frame, a terrible crunch echoing through the still night air.
Her body instantly goes limp and crumples to the ground in an undignified heap of clothing, black hair and limbs. I grab hold of Sandra’s immaculate wrists and attempt to pull her towards my car, but I’m confronted by the realisation that unconscious bodies are surprisingly heavy. I feel my face turn the colour of a fiery sunset as I drag her impeccable form across the grating gravel, which is slowly tearing away at the moisturised skin of her legs.
After what seems like a strength-draining eternity, we reach my car. I open the boot, and quickly glance around the eerily empty car park for signs of any passers-by. Wanting to get out of here as quickly as possible, with one final grunt of effort I scoop her up by her torso and unceremoniously dump her body into the cramped space. I have to bend and twist her into a terribly uncomfortable-looking knot to allow the boot to close. It locks into place with a satisfying click. I hurry round into the driver’s seat, slam the door closed, jam the key into the ignition and floor the acceleration. The car jerks into a rickety trundle and speeds out of the parking lot. I feel an adrenaline rush surge through me, a biological reward for my cruel act.
The drive home costs me only a fraction of the time that it normally did, for to say that I was speeding would have been a sizeable understatement. I park by the pavement under the towering assortment of flats that I call home. I fight the sticky key out of the uncooperative ignition and climb out of my car. I feel the faint kisses of a light rain peck at my face.
I release the boot lid, and to my relief, Sandra is still very much unconscious, he yellow light of the boot reflecting off of her blood-smeared face; her nose possesses a very unnatural, ugly concave. Hoping that luck will be on my side and I won’t have the misfortune to bump into one of my many neighbours, I haul Sandra onto my back like some sort of twisted fairytale hero carrying a damsel to safety. I lock my car and slowly but surely walk into the dingy hallway where a single lightbulb flickers inconsistently. I hastily poke the plastic call button and wait. The elevator doors stutter open.
My heart sinks when I see that the elevator houses an inhabitant. It’s too late to turn back now that the person has already seen me carrying a visibly hurt, unconscious woman’s body. I wish that I had just taken the stairs as I step into the hanging metal prison. I’m at once overpowered by the abominable reek that makes my nose cry out for mercy, and my eyes start watering tears of despair. I can’t fathom how I’m finding the strength not to puke my guts out as the multi-layered sour stench of stale booze, long-dried piss, a whole body that can’t have touched water for a millennium, and a hint of some diabolical diarrhoea fills my mouth, throat, nostrils and lungs. The man who looks so dehydrated and shrivelled that he strongly resembles a walking raisin wobbles slightly as he jeers haphazardly.
“Hoo woo hoo crizz’n ight, eh?”
“Mmhmm.”
I quickly press the once-shiny button with an almost-entirely faded 4 printed on it. The elevator doors rattle as they pull themselves closed, trapping me in with the alcoholic and his unholy stink. We begin ascending towards the heavens.
“Lad, didai ev-uh tell’uh bout ‘t’ time mi un bonnie ate uh rat?”
A ping reverberates around the lift suddenly, signalling that we had arrived at one of its floors.
“Ah, wheel loo’s l’ ike it’s m’ stop. Was nice takin’ t’ ya lad.”
The man careers unsteadily out of the lift. The elevator begins to rise once again and I distinctly hear a loud thud followed by a wheezed alcohol-induced groan.
I sigh with relief as I close the door to my apartment behind me. I flick on my kitchen light, pull out an ugly wooden chair from my dismal table, and manoeuvre Sandra off of my shoulder and onto the chair. Her head slumps onto her shoulder.
The unbearable ringing is still screaming in my ears as I bind her limbs to the chair with some belts I have lying around. I drag the chair into the bathroom, position her to the side of my beloved toilet, and lock the door. My ears pick up the now-familiar whispering voice; it feels soothing to my sore ears.
Sandra raises her head, her bloodshot eyes looking around in panicked confusion. Her eyes land on mine and she just stares at me; she is perfectly still except for a single fragile tear rolling down her blood-caked face, progressively turning a light crimson colour the further it travels down her cheek.
“Hi Sandra, I’m sorry to have to do this, as I am really quite fond of you, and I loved the night we shared. But you were so damn harsh earlier, you really hurt me, Sandra. For the first time since I was a kid, I have a real friend who cares about me, and I care about them; I want to make them happy. That’s where you come in, Sandra; my poor friend is trapped down in the pipes under my toilet, and he’s terribly hungry.”
“Meat…”
I kneel next to the toilet affectionately.
“Hey buddy, I’ve brought you a special treat, I hope you like her.”
Sandra watches in obscene horror as her abductor seems to talk to a toilet as if it were sentient. She groans in pain as she talks.
“You’re fucking crazy! Let me go, you fucking psychopath!”
“Oh, Sandra, as much as your heart-felt words touch me, I can’t do that, as the ringing is getting unbearable.”
I pick up the large kitchen knife out of the sink, still coated with my blood from earlier that morning, and begin to approach her. It’s at that point that she starts screaming.
I can’t guess how much time has passed when I have my next cognitive thought; all I know is that the abhorrent ringing in my head has subsided entirely, and my crazed thoughts have returned to normal. The next thing I notice is that my hands feel abnormally warm and sticky. I cast my eyes down and see that they are drenched in blood. I look around at my surroundings in such unthinkable horror that my whole body tightens so much that it seems to shrink in on itself, and I daren’t breathe.
Every inch of my body and clothing is slick with life liquid. The usually shiny white bathroom floor tiles are covered with writhing veins of blood splattered upon them, the patterned walls hold red raindrops, the sink houses a shallow crimson pool, and the toilet is surrounded by shredded sickening slithers of raw meat. But none of the horrors of what I have just gazed upon could ever prepare my troubled mind for what I saw next.
An indescribably inhuman, mangled body sits atop the blood-soaked wooden chair, most of the thing’s flesh and muscle has been clumsily sliced off, and the limbs are either terribly damaged, or completely missing. The chest’s skin has been removed, revealing the ribcage which houses only a hanging heart which has ceased beating forevermore. Most of the other organs are gone. My unblinking eyes traverse the nightmarish scene up to the thing’s head, which is more pulverised meat than a face. It’s skinless, eyeless, noseless, and jawless; the tongue dangles down into the open-air sadly. I notice the traumatising monstrosity’s blood-matted, long flowing dark-as-night black hair, and I come to the unthinkable realisation that it could be no other than Sandra’s hair.
I suddenly feel vile bile stampeding up my throat, so I instinctively throw myself down in front of the toilet, which turned out to be a horrible mistake. I’m on the verge of puking my guts out when I make eye contact with a single golden-green eye bobbing upright in the water. I gaze into its neverending, accusing stare.
A very thin, bony hand with grey bloated skin slowly emerges from the depths of the toilet, its fingers bent and crooked. It reaches Sandra’s eyeball and snatches it greedily, quickly receding back into the pipes.
I make a pitiful, agonised howling noise because I can’t bear to accept the unspeakable deed that I’ve carried out; I don’t know what to think, feel or do. I’m losing my mind. I’m suddenly hyper-aware of the suffocatingly warm blood clinging to me. I wobble to the bathtub and turn on the blue-capped cold tap. I desperately shove my face under the roaring, ice-cold waterfall, rubbing myself roughly in a panicked effort to clean Sandra’s sticky blood off me. The blood-infused water pools in the bath. I stand up and look at the man I’ve become in the mirror.
I notice movement out of the corner of my eye and gaze in a petrified stillness as the withered hand I’d seen in the toilet clutches onto the edge of the toilet bowl, its long black nails screeching on the porcelain. A second equally withered and disgusting hand latches onto the bowl, but its little finger seems weirdly familiar and remarkably healthy compared to the rest of the hand. I come to the harrowing realisation that this thing’s little finger had until this morning been my own. The arms that are draped in loose diaphanous skin shake violently as if struggling to pull up some great weight. With popping, sloshing and snapping sounds, it slowly climbs up out of the toilet.
My legs give way and I collapse to the ground, as for the first time in almost twenty years I stare upon the scrawny, the severely shrivelled bony face of my first and only childhood best friend, Charlie. Charlie stands unevenly; he is still the size and shape of a young child, but parts of him are terribly malnourished and weak; he seems to be more sagging translucent skin and bone than a proper body. But other parts of him seem to be fresh and full of blood and life; it’s as if parts of his flesh are from different creatures. I recognise the slab of fish that I’d flushed down the toilet yesterday now residing in the side of his foot, the chicken breast in his thigh, the mince poking out from under the skin of his knee and the bacon rashers in his shoulder. His skull is almost entirely visible through the misty transparent skin, which makes Sandra’s piercing golden-green eyeballs, delicate nose, and defined lower jaw contrast even more.
Too weak to make my vocal chords work, I mouth the words “I’m so sorry.”
He takes one heavy, lumbering step towards me, his soggy feet slapping on the bloodied tiles.
“Meat…”
He takes another sickening step. Forcing my voice into action, I croak.
“Charlie, you were like a brother to me, I never wanted to hurt you.”
A furious gurgling sound comes out of his throat and his steps quicken, the space between us growing ever smaller. I begin to cry, the sobs racking my body.
“Please Charlie, don’t do this, I love you, please.”
He looms over me; the reek of blood and rotting meat fills my nostrils. I feel utterly hopeless and unable to move. Charlie bends over, some of his fragile bones snapping, he opens his mismatched jaw full of small yellowed and adult white gleaming teeth. His teeth come down into my arm with surprising strength, snapping my bone in two. I scream in agony as Charlie slowly and methodically devours my body. I don’t even try to stop him, I have no will power left in me.
The final thought that my brain would ever process is that of a hope that no one else ever finds Charlie lurking in their pipes.
Ciaran :3 