In other news, I played The Last of Us. I loved it. But so did anyone else that owns a PS3.
It's one of those titles that makes me wish there was no console war. That everyone could afford to own every system and buy every game. This way there would be peace.
But sadly, there is no peace, and I have no original thoughts regarding games at the moment. So until that time I will grace you with a short story I wrote about the time a friend and I tried to unclog our shower. *Spoiler* It ended in our deaths. If anyone actually reads this, I apologize if the story sucks, I liked it.
The Thing in the Drain
By James Jakins
The basement was dark, and the lack of any light switch made it seem that much darker. Luckily the two young men didn't have to go too far in. The clogged pipe was right inside the door.
The shower in the old house had always been slow to drain, but the day before it had stopped completely. Any attempt to snake the drain had failed. Billowing clouds of black muck floated up the drain and darkened the already stagnant water sitting in the shower, and something solid prevented the snake from making it past the first bend in the pipe.
One of the men worked on getting the pipe off, the other held the flashlight. The man with the light let his attention wander briefly. He looked over his shoulder, farther into the basement. In the darkness he could see piles of boxes and plastic totes, unfinished walls and crumbling stone. Even in the silence beneath the sound of plumbing he thought he heard something. Perhaps in between the cracks of the old stones that made up the foundation?
“Got it!” A slow trickle of rancid water began to escape the pipe and run down the wall, “let’s get that bin ready.”
The two of them each grabbed a handle of a large plastic garbage bin and held it under the pipe.
“Ready?”
The man with the light nodded and his friend pulled. Before the water had been a creamy color. Now it appeared black as it rushed out to fall into the bin. From where he stood the man with the light saw the mass of hair that had prevented the water from running. If sin really did have a shade of black, it was the color of this slimy mass that only partially flopped out of the way for the oncoming rush of water.
The man stared at the hairy mess in disgust. He almost thought he saw a few congealed segments of the mass retract back into the tube. But of course, his eyes were playing tricks on him. It was dark after all. Even with the light in his hand.
To speed the process along his friend pulled the other end of the pipe out of it’s position attached to the drain and dropped it in the bin. the water drained much faster without the block to slow it down.
When the water stopped pouring the two men carried their load outside. With the container sitting on the grass, they peered into what appeared to be a small, vile smelling tar pit. One of them even thought he saw the surface bubble.
One of them finally worked up the courage to reach in and pull out the clogged segment of pipe.
“Let’s get this crap out of there.”
The garden hose turned on full force finally managed to clear the pipe. The mass of hair and other unidentifiable material fell out onto the grass with a sickening plop. Then followed a stream of more black water as the hose cleaned out what the hair had left behind.
If the two of them had not been watching this they may have thought they saw a small something make its way out of the mass of hair. A small something covered in tentacles and mandibles. Something that had all the characteristics of jelly, but moved with the grace of a cat. They may have thought they saw it bury itself in the grass. But, of course, that would have just been a trick of the dimming light.
Once the pipe segment was cleaned they re-attached it to the rest of the plumbing. The man holding the light noticed that even as it grew darker the basement seemed less ominous than it had before. The cracks in the wall seemed silent.
After that the shower drained perfectly. No more sitting water for blackness to seep upward. The sound of the water draining was music after so long.
The man who had held the flashlight showered first. When he was finished the other took his turn. The first took the two dogs out into the night for their nightly routine.
The larger dog chased the smaller around the front yard for a short time before it stopped and warily wandered around the side. The side where the men had dumped the black water.
The dog growled deep in its throat. “What is it, girl? Smell something you don’t like?” The young man asked laughing. he assumed she simply did not like the pile of hair they had left on the grass.
He jumped a little when the dog barked and charged into the dark around the house. Then he laughed to himself and jogged around the house after the dog. She yelped once before he got there.
When he rounded the turn there was no dog. Just black night. He pulled out his phone and used the screen to make the night visible.
He saw a creature roughly the size of his dog. It was darker than a starless night sky. All tentacles and claws. It looked as though it would have to move across the ground like a slug, but it moved with incredible speed and grace. Before the man could open his mouth the mass of blackness was on him.
Inside the other man walked out of the bathroom. “Dude,” he exclaimed while pulling on a clean shirt, “It’s working so well. We should have done tha...” He stopped mid-sentence. In front of him stood a man made of the purest darkness. All soft edges and sharp points. He died on the floor, his throat open and draining.
The thing entered the bathroom and stood in the shower. From somewhere on its body a small black mass fell into the drain. It had the consistency of jelly and crawled down the pipe with the grace of a cat.
Eventually this home would house more people and the cycle would repeat. But for now the corpse outside this room was larger than the first, and the thing from the drain was hungry.
The End
The Thing in The Drain by James Jakins is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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