…and as the pus bursts against the mirror, immediately a small stalk sprouts outward from the center mass, giving life to two tiny toothed mouths . . . around the edge three petal formations unfurl and stretch outward, delicate and pale pink in the overhead bathroom light…
Tag: bathroom
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bathtime again
Downstairs, I run a bath for my daughter. I kneel down to check the water.
When I rise, the old woman is standing in the doorway. She is hunched over, watching me.
“Fuck.”
And then she’s gone.
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passing by
In the upstairs bathroom, I stand and wait for my youngest daughter to finish.My back is to the door. Given my history, that’s uncommon.
As I help her down off the toilet, I catch a glimpse of someone passing behind me — walking through the hallway just beyond the door. I assume it’s my teenage daughter coming out of her room to head downstairs.
But the hair was too dark, too long. And she did not stop to say goodnight to her sister.
And there was something cold in her manner.
While my wife puts our toddler to bed, I go downstairs. My middle daughter is there on the couch.
“Have you been down here this whole time?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“Yeah, why?”
I shrug. “Just wondering” I reply . . . though I am not really wondering.
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bath time
“Will you check the tub in a minute?”
My wife comes into the room, a little cross. We are getting our daughter ready for bed.
“What’s wrong?”
“There was almost no water in the tub and it was cold.”
“Really?”
She repeats this again. Unspoken is the rebuke — or, perhaps, the fear — that something odd has happened.
It was full, I know. And warm. I checked it myself just a few minutes earlier.
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stench
Over the holidays, there were a number of points when I noted a pungent smell in the little hallway at the back of our kitchen — a cloying stench, like rotting fish.
(I do not care for this little hallway. It feels off to me, somehow. There is a mirror of it upstairs and the one gives me a vague sense of unease as well — though I have not noticed any phantom smells there.)
More than once I looked everywhere trying to find the source of the smell — searching in the hallway as well as the adjoining rooms. But there was nothing. And, oddly enough, the smell seemed to fade away as I searched.
Other times, most times, there was no smell at all.
I mentioned it finally to my wife who said she’d had the same experience on numerous occasions but couldn’t find an explanation for the smell either.
It was puzzling and — not surprising, given my usual temperament — a bit eerie.
Late one evening as I was getting ready for bed, I was in the shower — the bathroom is located off of the little hallway — when the same rotting smell suddenly rose up around me, permeating the steam of the shower. I gagged, nearly vomiting from the sudden, overpowering stench.
And, inexplicably, every hair on my body and scalp stood on end. I was chilled, despite the heat of the shower.
After a few moments, it passed.
After I got out of the shower, I checked the drains — the most likely source of the smell. Nothing.
We have not experienced the smell since.
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ragged
Sitting on the toilet in the back bathroom, I hear a sound at the door — as through someone pressed against it from the outside, maybe one of the cats?
But the door has nearly an inch gap at the bottom. I can see nothing outside.
A few minutes later I am jolted into a panic by the sight of something coming quickly towards me — it is as if it passed through the door.
It is white and ragged, trailing fluttering strips of cloth. I have an impression of gray hair, a wrinkled face . . . an old woman who vanishes just before she reaches me.
I am startled. I am scared. My hair is standing on end. The akin on my arms feels prickled and tight, almost sunburnt.
This was not a vague impression or an easily explained corner-of-the-eye episode. I saw something.
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gentleman caller
…and while my daughter plays in the tub, there’s a sudden wave of men’s cologne — acrid and sour — that passes over me. My throat closes, I am overcome with a coughing fit.
Inexplicable. My wife does not wear perfume. I do not wear cologne.
It lingers for a number of minutes there in the bathroom before slowly dissipating.