The Shower Scene

The hero steps into the bathroom on a cold and gloomy night. The light flickers. Wet tiles feel grimy beneath his toes and the mirror shows him everything he doesn't want to see. Something flutters outside the window, or perhaps it was in. Too far into the edge of his vision, he shrugs it off while his eyes trail habitually to the cracked ceiling.

The square is still there. Logic tells him it is merely an access to the wiring or plumbing that supplies the bathroom with power and water, but something gnawing at the back of his psyche screams at him that no, there is something there. Something malignant, something that has been watching and waiting to spring for years and years and years. It is inevitable, and the square seems to have followed him throughout his life, in nearly every bathroom in nearly every home. Like a trapdoor to hell, only above and not under its victim.

The walls are tiled too. They reflect and refract the yellow light in eerie hues, a too many pairs of eyes in too many faces too distorted to call his own. A sound suddenly leaps from behind him, and it takes him a fraction of a heartbeat too long to realise it is only water dripping somewhere below, its descent echoed by the single drain opening. He jumps.

The chair is there. Sitting, quite obviously. Like some devilish contraption, growling and howling and moaning and drooling. As a child, the sound of it made his hair stand on end, and now he only raises an eyebrow at the memory, his fears conquered but not forgotten.

Only now are the clothes shed, piled like moulted snakeskin beside the sink. He moves towards to shower proper, and something pulls at his mind again. Something is still wrong.

He stops and turns a full circle, eyes darting, watching a hundred other pairs of eyes glance about wildly, wondering which pair would catch sight of the impending doom that is to befall him, finally.

Nothing.

The square is still closed, and it seems that if anything did emerge, it has all but disappeared again. Or it is behind him.

No.

One deep breath later, he steps into the shower, sliding the clear glass door closed behind him as he does, wincing as it wobbles shut angrily. The water is cold, but the chill he gets from knowing something is still so very wrong has got nothing to do with what is spewing and spurting from the shower head.

What is it?

In his mind, scenes from Psycho and Ju-On replay themselves over and over again. A silent killer with a shiny knife, or a disembodied hand, pale and grey. But there is no knife, and no hands except his own, of which are still empty, save for the shower head. Thankfully, the water has started to warm.

He looks above and behind him one final time, checking to see if for some strange reason the closed and locked window is not closed and locked anymore. Wouldn't want the neighbours to catch sight of more than what they bargained for when they signed the deed for a "house with a view".

And it hits him.

He can see.

He isn't supposed to be able to see. Not here. Not like that.

Almost too aghast to laugh, he steps out of the shower.

And removes his glasses.