Down the Drain Read Free Page B

pink thread of semen dangled from the tip of his now-flaccid penis for a second before detaching and landing in the hair on his lower leg. In the tub, the band-aid he’d applied the night before floated to the surface. It had a single bloody streak down the middle.
    Bruce grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his waist. Crazy as it was, he didn’t want the tub to see him naked any longer than it had already. Not that it seemed to be able to see anything at all.
    Are you serious? he thought. Of course it can’t see you. It can’t do anything. It’s a goddam bathtub. You’re still sleeping, and none of this is real. Open your fucking eyes already.
    Except there was no chance this was a dream. He’d never had dreams this lifelike. Or this freaky.
    A huge air bubble escaped the tub’s drain and blurped when it reached the soapy surface. And then the water level started dropping. Bruce could hear the liquid surging through the pipes beneath the floor. He continued backing away from the tub, watching where he stepped to avoid shards of the broken beer bottle. His crotch throbbed, and his legs shook. He thought he might not be able to make it out of the bathroom, that his body would betray him, buckle beneath him, and he’d fall within striking distance of the tub.
    Striking distance?
    He shook his head and rubbed his eyes; then he slammed his palm into his forehead. As if he might be able to bludgeon the last five minutes out of his memory. Again: smack. Harder: SMACK.
    Pinpoint bursts of light flickered across his inner eyelids. The last of the bathwater swirled down the drain with a sound that almost reminded him of chuckling. He peeked out between his fingers like a scared little kid and finished backing out of the room.
    In the hall, he closed the bathroom door and sat down with his bare back against it. For what seemed a very long time, he tried to regain control of his breathing. His chest hitched, his throat trembled, tears leaked from the corners of his eyes.
    Not real , he kept thinking. There’s just no way any of that could have been real.
    His oozing wiener begged to differ.
    You have to destroy it. Whether it really happened or not, for your own sanity, you need to get the sledgehammer from the shed and bust the thing into a million little pieces.
    Could you solve crazy with even more crazy? Bruce didn’t think so, but he also didn’t think he could get past what had just happened without doing something . Destroying the tub seemed liked as good an idea as any.
    He pushed himself up and hurried through the house. He grabbed his keys from the side table by the front door and stepped outside. On the porch, the wind got hold of his towel and whisked it off his body. It was too wet and heavy to go far. It fell in a heap on the ground just beside the porch. Bruce let it go and hurried to the shed wearing nothing but a little blood on his inner thighs.
    The keys jangled when he poked them at the shed’s locked door. He glanced over his shoulder.
    Someone might drive by.
    No one’s going to drive by.
    Someone might see.
    The only way anyone’s going to see you is if you keep dawdling out here on the lawn all night. Get inside. Now.
    He found the right key, unlocked the door, and hurried in.
    The sledge hung from a rack on the wall to his right. A pair of shovels flanked it, one square-headed and the other round. Bruce ignored the rest of the tools, although there were enough of them in the small place to start a hardware store. He needed only the hammer for now. He pulled it off the rack and hefted it. The wooden handle slid through his hands and felt as smooth as plastic. Years of sweaty use had worked like polish on the tool.
    Brownish gunk caked the sledge’s head.
    Blood.
    No, not blood, just mud with plenty of red clay mixed in, but it gave him a chill nonetheless.
    He slung the hammer over his shoulder and backed out of the shed.
    You better hope nobody drives by. If ever a person looked like an all-out