Friday 24 August 2018

Flash Fiction - Bathrooms

By day the bathroom is an ordinary place. If you're super lucky, you have a separate toilet. Otherwise, you're staring at the bathtub while you pee and wondering how you missed that tideline when you cleaned it last. By day the bathroom looks cheerful, sparkly even. A place where you might think, yes, I will have a bath. 

But baths are not taken in the middle of the daytime when the sun is shining and the room is safe. Baths are taken in the evening. When the night sky is dark and all you have is that single bulb keeping the nightmares away. The hot water runs and bubble bath seems like the obvious choice but then you can't see under the foam. Anything could be lurking in that water. A viscous clawed hand just waiting to disembowel you when you sit down.

Or perhaps black alien slime will slither out of the plug hole and enter your earhole as you lay down in the bath, thinking you are there to relax when really a non-Terran lifeform is deciding how quickly to eat your brain. 

And what if you make your bath too hot and you're lying there sophomoric in the heat, relaxing until you melt into the tub. Your eyelids growing heavy as sleep takes you, that vixen. Letting you sink deeper and deeper into unconsciousness, the hot water lapping at your mouth, covering your lips, entering your nostrils until you snort into wakefulness. Or not.

It's not just having the bath that could kill you. Trying to step out of the blasted giant sink safely is an art form in itself. I tell you, taking a shower is a much more sensible idea. It is definitely only the second most dangerous thing to do in the bathroom. 



Claire Buss is a multi-genre writer and poet, completely addicted to cake. Find all her books on Amazon. Join the discussion in her Facebook group Buss's Book Stop.

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