Bruce moved closer to the tub, shuffling instead of walking, keeping his weight on his back foot and leaning toward the door so he could rush that way should the need arise. He peered over the edge of the tub and saw his bandaid stuck to the edge of the drain. A long, silver protuberance flicked out of the hole like a metallic tongue, wrapped itself around the band-aid, and retreated with its prize. Bruce licked his own lips and stared, momentarily unable to swallow or breathe.
He was so focused on the drain he almost didn’t notice when the tub’s floor began to bulge. It started as a tiny, roving bump–he saw it from the corner of his eye–like a disoriented mole burrowing just beneath a lawn’s surface. Bruce turned to look at the bulge, watched it grow to the size of a softball, and then a basketball. He didn’t wait to see if it would reach beach-ball size. Instead, he gripped the sledgehammer very low on the handle, giving himself the maximum amount of leverage, and swung the thing with as much force as his overused muscles would allow.
The sledge hit the bulge and bounced off as if it had struck rubber instead of fiberglass. Bruce had to let go of the tool and duck to keep it from rebounding into his face. It flew over his shoulder and struck the mirror above the vanity instead. Safety glass tinkled onto the vanity and into the sink, crackling and popping. The sledgehammer fell on the faucet head first and dented the metal. Bruce expected water to come shooting out of the fixture, but apparently the hammer hadn’t had enough force to cause that kind of damage.
The tub squealed. Whether it had a kind of rudimentary vocal chord system within its plumbing or used some telepathic ability to beam the sound directly into his head, Bruce wasn’t sure. But the scream was real. No doubt about it. Not a scream of pain as much as an indignant yelp of surprise and fury.
The tub hadn’t broken apart the way he’d expected it to, but a long crack had appeared across the bulging surface. He retrieved the sledgehammer and swung it again, careful this time to aim it so it wouldn’t ricochet into his face.
The sledge’s muddy head struck the tub again, and the crack widened. This time, Bruce managed to hold on to the sweat-polished handle and let the hammer glide back to its position on his shoulder as easily as a baseball player taking a practice swing. The tub continued to scream at him, but now it supplemented the anger and animus with screams of real agony. Bruce swung a third time. A fourth. A second crack crossed the first, making a jagged X. The tub tried to grab the sledge’s head each time it impacted the surface, but it wasn’t nearly quick enough. Despite its flexibility, it didn’t seem to be able to extend itself very far.
Now that he'd gotten the angle down, Bruce hammered at the thing like an expert demolitionist. He swung until his muscles began to spasm and he was afraid he might lose all control and drop the tool on his head. He’d busted a good sized hole in the center of the tub’s bulge. He caught his breath and gave his muscles a chance to relax, then lowered the hammer to his side and peered into the new, giant drainhole he’d made.
Inside, something moved.
Bruce took an immediate step back.
The thing inside moved again. Its reflective surface looked as if it were made of porcelain scales. It shifted from one side to the other, and back; one of the scales retracted to reveal a huge, glossy eye. Blue. With a speckling of green. Just like his own.
The scale slid back over the eye, and the thing moved again, this time toward the opening, surging. The tub had re-solidified—you could tell just by looking—the flexibility, that monstrous somehow-life, was gone. The scaly thing inside worked its way out, and the fiberglass cracked, groaned, and snapped. Bruce hefted the sledgehammer, bent his legs to lower his center of gravity, and widened his stance.
His heel came down on a long beer-bottle shard. The glass sliced his foot open all the way to his big toe. He tried to readjust his footing, but the sledge unbalanced him and the blood leaking from his sole combined with the spilled beer and soapy water made for an extremely slippery surface.
He fell.
His injured foot skidded in the small (but not that small) pool of blood and flew out in front of him. He waved his free arm like a tightrope walker, but it wasn’t enough to catch his balance. He tumbled back onto his rear end. He didn’t feel any shards of broken bottle or mirror digging into his butt cheeks and guessed he must have missed all but the smallest pieces. Lucky.
Lucky? You think there’s anything lucky about this fucked-up situation?
Another loud crack reverberated from within the tub, and Bruce heard the thing inside pushing its way out, scales against jagged edges.
Those aren’t the kinds of scales you’re supposed to have in your bathroom, he thought and held back a laugh he was sure would have sounded absolutely loony.
The thing surged up, now partially visible over the edge of the tub. Its scales weren’t uniform but jagged, like broken tiles. Hair poked out in tufts from between the cracks—a patch here, a patch there—and although there was no way he could be certain, Bruce thought the stuff looked more than just a little bit pubic. The eyes stared at him from the sides of the thing’s head, snake like, but with those eerily human irises that reminded him so much of his own.
The creature opened a hole in its face that Bruce guessed you'd call a mouth. The opening had no lips, nor could he see gums or a tongue within the black maw, but the lines of broken tiles above and below the opening were most definitely teeth.
No. Fangs.
Whatever you wanted to call them, they were undoubtedly the gutting, filleting, bone-crunching, life-ending weapons of a carnivorous hunter. The creature snapped the teeth together, cocked its head; it opened its mouth again and let out a long, watery, whistling-kettle hiss.
Bruce scooted back, but there wasn’t much room to move. He'd always considered the bathroom roomy; now it felt like a broom closet. When his back hit the vanity, he’d created maybe three feet of space between himself and the emerging thing.
The creature lifted a hand to the edge of the tub. Its fingers were bent but stiff. They appeared to be composed of segments of PVC pipe and jointed with L-bends of the same material. The ends of the digits came to points, as jagged as most of the rest of the beast. When they clacked against the tub, you could hear they were hollow. They didn’t look like the most articulate body parts, but Bruce guessed they could do a lot of damage. Enough damage.
The monstrosity let out another of those steamy hisses and leapt at him.
Bruce swung the sledgehammer with all the force and leverage his position allowed. Which wasn’t much. The hammer hit the dog-sized creature on the side of its neck and knocked loose a few of the scales, but it barely affected the thing’s trajectory. The PVC claws hit his naked stomach and sliced. Not deeply enough to do any serious damage (he didn’t think) but enough to send a wave of agonizing pain through his midsection.
The thing opened its mouth again and grinned.
It’s playing with me.
Clear saliva dripped from between its teeth. A single bubble rose out of the dark, featureless throat and popped against one of the bottom front fangs.
Jesus Christ.
The creature pulled back its arm, a thick appendage covered with the same kinds of uneven tiles that composed its head but underlined with lengths of copper piping, gaskets, more PVC, and other bits of torn rubber and plastic that might once have been plumbing supplies but had now become too organic to categorize.
The arm swung.
Bruce bucked the beast and managed to avoid what probably would have been a killing blow. He scooted back again, cutting his ass on more broken glass but barely noticing. When the thing jumped at him once more, Bruce swung the sledgehammer. He still didn’t get much more than half of his full force behind the swing, but he hit the thing on the chin and knocked back its head with an audible snap he could only pray was the sound of its neck cracking.