In the darkest corner of a utility room lit only by the trickle of light leaking in around the window's heavy curtain, the calico found her food and water dishes in the recess between the washing and drying machines and buried her snout in the too-dry food. The noise she made when she ate sounded something like the crunching-gravel sound the Man’s truck made when he came home from work. She dropped a piece of food and lapped it off the floor. Crunch crunch.

When she’d had her fill, she licked a few powdery crumbs from her whiskers and turned to the water dish.

The dry water dish.

She meowed and turned away with an uppity swish of her tail.

The Man was good about keeping her food bowl full, but when it came to keeping her watered, he still needed some training.

She jumped into the laundry basket on the dryer, peed into the mound of unfolded clothes, and went in search of something to drink.

Last time the Man had left her dry, she’d found a pot in the kitchen sink half full of water and some kind of orangish substance she thought was supposed to be cheese (although not any kind of cheese she’d ever eat). Drinking that water had been disgusting and more than a little degrading, but it had been better than dying of dehydration. Probably.

She sauntered through the empty house, hopped onto the kitchen counter, and peered over the edge of the sink.

Empty. Dry.

She considered peeing on the stack of dishes beside the sink but decided maybe it was more important to hold on to her last bit of liquid than to give the Man a message he might or might not even understand. She dropped off the counter and continued her search.

The door into the bathroom was shut but not latched. She pressed against it with the top of her head and forced her way inside.

The bathroom sink was as dry as the kitchen’s had been. The toilet seat: down, forbidding. When she jumped onto the bathtub’s ledge, however, she found what she’d come looking for. There, in the middle of the bathmat, a shallow pool of dirty-looking water.

The cat thought drinking this sludge might be even worse than drinking the “cheese” water, but it was (again) better than death.

She dropped into the tub and lowered her head to the puddle. Short, curly hairs floated in the liquid; she drank around them. The water tasted like soap, dirt, and sweat, but she tried to ignore the taste and concentrate instead on giving her body what it needed to survive.

She finished all but the grungiest streamers of water and went to work giving herself a bath. She had one saliva-drenched paw raised to her forehead when the tub let out a soft grumble.

Her first thought was that another cat had gotten under the house. They found their way down there sometimes, birthed their kittens among the decades-old construction debris or engaged in drawn-out, screeching fights. She would listen to them, longing to join in their feral fun while simultaneously enjoying the fact that she had a nice, dry place to sleep and (usually) an endless supply of food and water.

The grumble came again, and this time she couldn’t pretend it was a sound any cat was capable of making. She perked her ears and turned toward the tub’s drain.

Ggggrrrrrhhhhg.

She approached the moist hole and tried to look into its black depths. The hair on her back felt electrified; she guessed it was probably standing straight up. She thought she saw something in the drain, a white bit of contrast in the mirk.

A tooth?

No. That couldn’t be. She leaned closer. Despite the water she’d just ingested, her mouth and throat felt dry. Too dry to swallow. Almost too dry to breathe.

The drain moved, widened, and her instincts kicked in. She might have been as curious as the next cat, but she wasn’t suicidal. She leapt away from the drain.

And hit the shower curtain.

It was a clumsy move. Not like her at all. She’d known the curtain was there, should have been able to jump out of the tub without coming anywhere near it.

But there it had been, and now here she was, rolling down the slick surface and back into the bottom of the tub. And not feet first. Another anomaly.

She scrambled back into a standing position and lowered herself, preparing to jump. The tub bulged in the middle like some living, breathing monster and knocked her off balance. She fell to her side, gasping, yowling, a one-cat cat fight.

The sides of the tub wavered, rippled like things seen through a sheet of rain. The floor bulged again, and the cat slid toward the drain. The hole had continued to widen, was now almost litter-box sized. She’d been right about the tooth. Except it wasn’t just one. The sharp, white points filled the drain, gnashed and clacked together. She’d seen a dog’s mouth up close and had lived to remember it thanks to a lucky swipe of her claws. This was worse. And she didn’t think her claws were going to do her much good this time.

She meowed and screeched until her upper half entered the chewing maw and the razor-sharp teeth bit her cleanly in half. For just a moment, she felt (or thought she felt) her lower half in the tub above and her upper half sliding down into the drain’s depths. A pool of water and her own blood engulfed her, and then there was nothing but the cold—that damp cold—and the ever-gnashing teeth.

In the now-empty bathroom, the tub’s showerhead turned itself on. Warming water sprayed the tub, the surround, and the curtain. The cat’s hairy, clumped remains washed toward the drain, and the tub lapped them up. It sucked lengths of guts like spaghetti noodles, crunched bone and slurped sinewy tendons. When it had finished, when all signs of the gore were gone, the shower shut off and the drain swallowed the last juicy drops.

It belched, sounding less like a burping man than a satisfied dragon.

The truck’s tires kicked up gravel when Bruce swung into the driveway. He braked when he reached the end of the drive, then parked and slid the keys out of the ignition.

He’d taken his shirt off during the drive. Sweat dribbled down his chest and back, left him glistening and feeling disgusting. He took the wadded tee off the passenger’s seat and flung it over his damp shoulder.

Before he went inside, he unloaded the tools from the back of the truck. He’d been framing walls all day and hadn’t needed much: the compressor, air gun, nails, hammer, nail puller, level, a saw, and a chalk line. He carried the items into the windowless shed between the driveway and the house and locked them inside.

He ran a hand through his hair. When he pulled it away, a sweaty, sawdusty paste covered his fingers. He wiped the hand on the back of his jeans and sighed. It had been 6:30 when he left for work that morning. Although he didn’t wear a watch, the half-set sun told him it was at least 8:00 now.

Two more days, he thought. Finish those walls by Thursday and take a three-day weekend.

He shook his head. The sorry fact was that even if he did finish the walls by Thursday, he’d have to work Friday and Saturday and maybe even Sunday. He was at least three weeks behind schedule. A month of rain and the ensuing mud had not been his friends.

He crossed the small side yard and shuffled up the steps to the porch. A bundle of mail jutted from the mailbox. He took the envelopes and circulars out but didn’t bother sorting through them. That would be a job for after his shower and two or three beers.

Inside, he flicked on the lights, dropped the keys and the mail on a side table, and got out of his muddy work boots. His feet stunk something awful. He lifted one closer to his face, took a big whiff, and shivered.

Shower first. Then beer.

He crossed the living room—only barely resisting the urge to drop his grungy self onto the couch—and called for Sel.

“Sel?” He made kissing sounds and called for the cat again. If she wasn’t waiting for him dog-like at the door, it usually meant she’d curled up somewhere for a nap. He tried one more time: “Here, kitty kitty.”

Very manly, he thought. You are the epitome of a manly man.

He chuckled and made a few more kissy noises. When she still didn’t come, he shrugged.

She’ll be waiting for you after your shower. And will probably appreciate the lack of that nostril-searing stench.

In the bathroom, he took the t-shirt off his shoulder, stripped out of his jeans, undies, and socks, and dropped the wad of dirty clothes in the hamper beside the toilet. He turned on the shower and stood naked before the mirror while the water warmed.

He’d cut his back on a protruding nail earlier in the day. The cut wasn’t bad, but he thought he probably ought to put some ointment on it anyway. No sense risking infection just to prove how tough he was and make up for the fact that he made kissing sounds at his cat. He stood with his back to the mirror, looking over his shoulder at the cut. Not bad at all. Just a nick. After the shower, he’d hunt down some anti-biotic cream. He looked into his reflected eyes. They shone out from amid the streaks of mud and sweaty sawdust. Blue. With a speckling of green. There had been women who referred to them as beautiful, mysterious, sexy, magical, and (his personal favorite) intoxicating.

Steam wafted out from behind the shower curtain. Bruce slid the plastic sheet aside and stepped in.

He stood beneath the spray, watching the grime sluice down his body and swirl toward the sucking drain, and thought (as he often did in the shower) of Eileen. The two of them had made a habit of showering together at night: him washing her back, her washing his, and then (more often than not) the washing leading to steamy bouts of lovemaking. Even now, he could still smell her shampooed hair, remember the taste of her just-soaped body, feel her wet legs around his waist and her pebbly nipples against his chest. Six month’s worth of dust there might be on her side of the vanity, but those shower memories were still fresh, vivid. By the time he’d washed away most of the day’s dirt and sweat, he was rock hard.

His erection jutted from his pubic thatch, throbbed. He wrapped his fingers around the shaft and gave it what it wanted. Gave himself what he wanted.

It didn’t take long.

When the convulsions came, thick wads of semen erupted from his penis. Some of the fluid splattered against the wall and oozed down to the edge of the tub. The rest dripped to the bathmat between his feet and stuck there despite the surrounding currents of water. He continued stroking for just a little bit longer, closed his eyes, braced himself against the wall, and waited for his shivering body to settle. The fuzzy current of pleasure electrified his mind, replaced his thoughts with an incoherent jumble. Things cleared (eventually), and he opened his eyes.

He used the side of his foot to slide the dollop of sperm from the bathmat to the drain. Then he reached down to pull the clinging streamers from between his toes. These bits he flicked in the drain’s general direction. The shower would wash it all down. Let the water do its job. When he had finished the clean-up, he stopped and listened for a moment.

Sucking. Was that sucking he heard?

He eyed the tub’s drain, thought the water seemed to swirl around it a little more quickly than usual, thought the sound of the water slipping into the plumbing below had intensified somehow, become a sucking, slurping sound. A strand of semen came unstuck from the tub’s floor and spun into the black, guzzling hole.

You’re insane, he thought. And of course that was true. Had to be. His aunt, upon catching him in the act in her guest bathroom during a family picnic one summer, had told him he’d go crazy if he touched himself too often. Maybe she’d been right.

He lathered his entire body with soapy layers of Irish Spring, rinsed off, repeated, and repeated again. Sawdust could be a bitch to get off. If he didn’t overshower, he’d be tossing and turning in bed all night, too hot and sweaty and gross feeling to get any kind of decent sleep.

He washed both his skin and his hair with the bar of soap. There’d been shampoo once upon a time, but he hadn’t bothered to replace the last empty. Shampoo had been Eileen’s thing. As far as he was concerned, Irish Spring did the job just fine.

Finished, clean, he shut off the water and stepped out of the shower amid a billowing cloud of steam. His reflection, obscure in the steam, shadowy, floated across the mirror over the sink when he moved. He grabbed a used towel from the hook beside the shower and used it to dry himself.

The antibiotic ointment he found in the medicine cabinet had expired, but he slathered a little bit on his cut anyway and slapped on a sports band-aid.

With the damp towel wrapped around his waist, he went in search of his cat again.

“Selly?”

He went into the bedroom and looked beneath the comforter, stepped into the little-used office and checked the desk’s kneehole. When he didn’t find Selina in either of her favorite spots, he called to her again.

No response.

In the utility room, he found her empty water bowl. He also smelled out the yellow puddle in the laundry basket and sighed. Selina wasn’t the finickiest of cats, but if she got upset about something, she’d pee on the first inappropriate thing she could find.

He dumped the soiled clothes back into the washer, threw in some detergent, and set the machine going. He took the laundry basket to the back patio for a later washing. It had gone full dark outside. He noticed lights on in some of the neighboring houses and held his towel shut in case one of them happened to glance out the window during an untimely gust of wind.

Inside, he refilled the cat’s water and checked her litter box. Dry. And empty.

Where is she?

He didn’t think he’d left a door or window open but guessed it was possible. He checked the house and found nothing but closed, locked exits. Could she have gotten out when he came home? He thought he would have seen her, but he’d been more than a little brain dead when he arrived, and she could be sneaky when she wanted. He stuck his head out the front door, still clutching the towel’s loose knot.

“Sel? Here, kitty kitty.”

He quieted for a minute and listened for her familiar meow.

Silence.

Bruce closed the front door and made another loop through the house, checking the hidey holes and out-of-the-way places he’d skipped the first time around, half expecting to find the animal dead somewhere, curled up with her bloated tongue protruding from the side of her mouth and her eyes glazed, unseeing.

He found a furry slipper (Eileen's) in the back of the closet and was sure for a moment that he’d discovered the cat’s body. So sure that he surprised himself by welling up a little. When he moved aside the other piled shoes and found only more footwear instead of a corpse, he wiped away a single tear that had slipped through his day's worth of stubble.

Manly man indeed.

He couldn’t find her anywhere. Either she’d gotten out of the house, or she was playing one hell of a game of hide and seek.

Resigned, he went to the fridge for a beer and grabbed two instead. He took the brews to the sofa, started to turn on the television, and decided there wasn’t anything he wanted to watch. He twisted the top off the first bottle, took a long drink, and slouched.

Five minutes later, he was dead to the world.

The next day was a total disaster.

Problem one: a bad night’s sleep. He woke on the couch with a stiff back, a sore neck, and a wet spot on the cushion beneath his butt that was half the result of the damp towel he’d forgotten to remove and half from spilled beer.

Problem the second: he still hadn’t been able to find Selina in the morning. Not in the house, not outside, not anywhere.

And then: he’d had to rebuild three different walls at work when his measurements came out slightly (or in one case, astronomically) wrong. He tried to tell himself she was just a cat, that he shouldn’t let her disappearance affect him so much, that she’d probably be waiting for him when he got home that night.

But she was more than just a cat. She’d been his companion for over ten years and the only friend he’d had since Eileen walked out.

And what if she wasn’t there? What if she was gone for good? Run away, or dead and decaying in a ditch somewhere? Maybe he was letting it get to him more than he should have, but to feel nothing would have been...dysfunctional. Soulless even.

So he thought about the cat, worried about her, and he screwed up his work. He’d started the day three weeks behind and ended it three weeks and two days behind. Hard to believe that staying home and sulking could sometimes be the productive thing to do. No three-, two-, or even one-day weekend for him this week. He’d have to come in at sunrise and work until dark every day until the following Saturday at least.

Need to get yourself some help. Couple of kids who’ll work for seven bucks an hour and do all the grunt work.

No, that would be a bad idea. A cheap solution on paper, but in reality he’d end up worse off. He’d hired help before and found that the kind of people who will work for the money he had to offer, if they showed up at all, would do more damage than good. They’d bust their butts for a couple of hours, but then they’d sneak off into the woods for a smoke (or a meth) break and come back two hours later ready to call it a day. Or they’d accidentally knock down a brace and send a whole series of walls dominoing into one another and shattering into worthless kindling. Or they’d knock the Sawzall out a window and bend the blade. Or they’d sword fight with their loaner tape measures and knock each other out a window. Bruce had seen it all once or twice. All those things and stupider. He was better off working on his own. Behind or not. Preoccupied or not.

By the time he got home that night, it was long past dark. His muscles screamed, the sawdust in his nose half suffocated him, and all he wanted to do was get in bed. Instead, he searched the house again.

Bedroom: empty. Bathroom: nada. Office: catless. Utility room: no Selly.

He opened a can of tuna and left it on the porch, hoping the scent might draw her home if she was anywhere in the vicinity. More likely, some stray would end up with the snack, but it didn’t hurt to try.

He brought a beer into the bathroom and turned on the shower. By the time he’d gotten out of his filthy work clothes, he’d changed his mind and decided maybe tonight should be a bath night. His aching muscles could use a soak. He reached past the shower curtain, shut off the water to deactivate the showerhead, turned it back to hot, and plugged the drain.

While the tub filled, he checked the tuna on the porch and found an empty can but no Selina. He went into the kitchen for a second beer.

Maybe you can actually drink both this time.

He’d left his second beer on the coffee table when he fell asleep the night before. He'd awakened to find a nasty water ring he’d either have to ignore or sand out when he had the time. Which, if this week was any indication, would be never.

He found some of Eileen’s old bubble bath under the sink and thought, what the hell.

He poured a few capfuls into the bathwater; the surface frothed and bubbled like the concoction in a witch’s cauldron. It smelled sweet, coconuty. He set his bottles on the tub’s edge and lowered himself into the suds.

This time, he fell asleep before he opened even one of the beers.

When he opened his eyes, the water had cooled to room temperature and he had another erection.

Had he been dreaming of Eileen? Of something else?

He couldn’t remember. He blinked, a little disoriented but mostly just tired. He used his foot to turn on the hot water and decided to ignore his hard on.

He splashed soapy water into his face and through his hair before reaching for one of the beers and twisting off the cap. His penis bobbed in the water, buoy like. The water warmed, and the alcohol worked its way into his system; he started to doze again. He was half asleep when the tub moved beneath him.

He opened his eyes and blinked, more disoriented now than ever.

What was that?

He still held the beer and had almost spilled it in the water. He set it on the ledge beside its twin and rubbed at his drooping eyelids.

It happened again. The floor shifted beneath him.

His first thought was that one of the joists beneath the bath had given out, rotted and split, and that the tub might crash through the floorboards and into the crawlspace beneath the house at any moment. He started to push himself up and out of the water, but then the floor rippled again and he lost his balance. His elbow smacked the side of the tub. He heard a crack and wondered if it had come from the basin or one of his bones. The beer bottles wobbled—two little drunkards—and fell to the floor. The open bottle didn’t break but spilled its innards across the tiles. The other shattered; a beer geyser sprayed everything from the toilet to the mirror to the door across the room.

Bruce ignored the beer, bent his legs, and tried to turn into a kneeling position, but the bottom of the tub felt like quicksand now. He couldn’t get purchase, couldn't seem to control his body at all. He would put a hand out to brace himself, and the seemingly solid surface of the tub would suck it in, grab it and hold on like some sort of sentient being.

He started to turn. No, the tub started to turn him. He struggled, twisted, strained his already-strained muscles until he ached from head to toe. The tub turned him facedown in the water and held him there. Bruce fought it, broke the water’s surface and sucked in a long, gasping breath. The tub jerked him back into its depths.

This is ridiculous, not real, just your imagination.

Ridiculous: yes. Real: yes. Imagination: no.

He wrenched his head back and managed to suck in another partial breath. In his struggle for air, Bruce almost didn’t feel the tub’s floor reconstituting around his still-hard cock.

If anything was impossible, surely that was it. That he could still have an erection, that he hadn’t wilted like a drowned flower.

Now he was pulling back both his head and his groin. The tub let him get his face above water but wouldn’t let go of his other head. It gripped him tight, jerked him furiously, an overeager lover. Bruce spit out soapy water and screamed. The tub continued jerking, rubbing him raw. Bruce saw some of the bubbles begin to pinken and realized he must be bleeding. His screaming intensified. Water splashed over the edge of the tub, mixed with the puddled beer and pooled near the sink where the floor dipped down a little.

He thrashed. He continued yelping, groaning. And yet, he felt himself approaching climax. Disgusting. Incomprehensible. But true.

The tub stroked for another few seconds, and Bruce spilled his seed despite himself. His hips bucked, and his mind went fuzzy, just as it had when he’d pleasured himself the night before, just as it always had when he’d come inside Eileen with her breathing in his ear and scratching his back.

The tub let go as unceremoniously as it had grabbed on. Bruce swung his legs over the tub’s edge and backed out of the water, reaching for his sore penis and breathing so irregularly he was almost hyperventilating. Through the bubbles, he watched the drain slide from the middle of the tub to its usual spot at the end. The bathmat was gone. Maybe sucked into the drain, maybe melded with the tub’s surface during its...what? Morphing? Yes, he supposed that was as good a word as any.

He took another step back, afraid the tub would reach out and grab him again, molest him again. Water, bubbles, and blood streamed down his body. A 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 psychopath, it’s you right now.

Was he a psychopath? Could you set out on a mission to slay a bathtub monster and still call yourself sane?

He scurried across the side yard, his penis flapping against his legs, his bare feet getting stuck in the mud and making sucking sounds when he pulled them free that reminded him of the noise his manhood had made when the tub had finally let him yank it out of its drainhole.

He left muddy footprints on the floor inside the front door but ignored them and strode across the house. Now that he was safe from prying eyes, he didn’t have to worry about things like modesty and decency. Or even sanity.

He stopped at the closed bathroom door and allowed himself a little time to build up his courage before wrapping his fingers around the knob and letting himself in.

If not for the spilled beer, you never would have known anything had happened here. The water had finished draining from the tub, leaving behind only a few sudsy remains; towels and dirty clothes lay heaped on the floor where they'd been when he left; and the array of toiletries spread across the vanity hadn’t moved an inch.

See? Just a dream. Or maybe a brain tumor. It didn’t happen. No, sir.

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.

It squealed and scurried into the corner of the room like a kicked mutt. It hunkered beside the toilet for a moment, hissing.

No broken neck then. Damn.

Bruce took the chance to get to his feet. Glass shards fell from his butt, hips, and thighs and tinkled to the floor. Other shards stayed embedded in his skin and muscles. He could feel them in there, burning. The parallel scratches on his stomach oozed blood over his pubic region. Bruce took the sledgehammer in both hands and bared his teeth.

“Come on, you nasty son of a bitch.”

The creature stopped hissing but didn’t close its mouth. A bubbling, gurgling sound rose from somewhere in its throat or belly. It twitched, spasmed, and hacked up a wet, furry hunk of meat and bone. The mess slid halfway to Bruce, leaving a streak through the mixed liquids already on the floor.

Bruce spotted a single paw amid the half-digested wad, as well as a few whiskers and a bit of hide covered with calico fur.

“No.” He whispered it.

He looked back at the creature. The thing was grinning again.

“No,” he said, louder this time.

The creature rose on its hind legs, which were similar to its arms composition wise but thicker, stronger looking. It didn’t stand up fully but seemed to balance itself in that half-standing position, almost like a prairie dog. Maybe it wasn’t capable of standing erect; maybe it was just trying to make itself look bigger, more dangerous. Bruce didn’t know and didn’t care. He rushed the thing.

This time, when he swung the sledge, he put every last bit of his power into it. He swung sidearm. He felt his arms shake mid-swing; the muscles wanted to give out, but he willed his body to follow through with the motion. It did. The hammer crunched into the side of the creature’s face. One second, that Bruce’s eye of an eye was staring out at him. The next, it was gone, oozing down the side of the thing’s face from the crater the sledgehammer had created.

The beast gurgled and tried to catch the vitreous fluid spilling to the floor. The liquid streamed down its piped fingers and continued to descend. The creature turned its good eye to him and ground its fangs together. Small bits of tile broke loose and spilled down its face. Soapy drool leaked from the corner of its mouth and joined the stream of eye goo.

Bruce didn’t give the thing time to retaliate. He swung the hammer in reverse this time, uppercutting the creature and knocking its head back into the wall beside the toilet. The wall caved in beneath its skull, and a cloud of white plaster dust puffed into the air. Clear liquid spilled out of the jagged mouth. Drool? Blood? No way to tell. It could have been the thing’s goddam sperm for all he knew.

The creature dropped to its knees and brought its claws up to its face. It let go long enough to swipe at Bruce, but the attack was feeble and pathetic. He dodged it easily.

Before it could regain its composure, Bruce hit the thing again. He swung so hard this time his entire body ached with the movement. His penis—still sore from the earlier violation—slapped his thigh and throbbed. The sledge hit the top of the thing’s head, driving it to the ground and creating a dent large enough to put your fist in.

Which Bruce did. Too sore to swing the sledge again, he kneeled over the creature and punched at the hole in its head until he found the wet gunk inside that felt like used toilet paper but must have been brains. He grabbed a chunk of the wet matter and tossed it back over his shoulder. He heard it land somewhere in the vicinity of the sink—plop—but didn’t bother looking. Instead, he ripped out another handful of psuedo-brain. And another. He gutted the skull until it was jack-o-lantern hollow.

The creature made a final attempt to bite his hand and actually got its teeth around Bruce’s thumb, but when it bit down, it didn’t have enough life left in it to do anything except make a pair of barely visible punctures near the knuckle. Before it died, it looked at Bruce with its remaining eye and hissed its last hiss. Bruce watched the life drain from its pupil, watched it dull and become murky and unreflective.

He dropped back on his bare ass and sat there with his face in his hands for a very long time. He ran the emotional gamut: sad, angry, doubtful about his own sanity, relieved, victorious. He cried a little, laughed a little, shook and wondered if he'd gone into shock. Finally he opened his eyes and faced what he’d done.

The creature lay on the floor surrounded by the battle’s spilled fluids. If you’d glanced at it, you might have thought it was a demolished toilet or a pile of construction debris. Unless you’d seen the eye, of course, that single bit of near-humanity buried in a mound of lifeless junk.

Bruce reached his hand behind his butt to push himself up but put his fingers down in the regurgitated mess that had been his cat instead. Selina. He groaned, jerked his hand away from the mushy mound, and fought the urge to vomit into his lap. Blood and strings of guts dripped down his fingers and over his wrist. He looked for something to wipe his hand on, but there was nothing within reach. He shook his hand and flung the gore at the dead creature.

He spent the next half-hour demolishing the tub and piling the pieces on the monster’s corpse. The bathtub hadn’t shown any further signs of life, but Bruce didn’t want to chance it. And it wasn’t as if he’d be able to use the thing again even if he’d wanted to. Not with a giant, gaping birthing canal in the center.

He tore it all out: the tub, the surround, the fixtures. When he'd finished, he went into the bedroom and put on a pair of old work clothes. They were too torn apart to wear in public, but they made a perfect outfit for this particular chore. He’d throw them away afterward. Or maybe burn them.

He went back to the shed, got out the wheelbarrow, the shovels, and a small tarp, and took it all back into the house. It took five trips to get everything out of the bathroom and into the backyard. By the time he was done, sweat had drenched every inch of his clothes.

He dug a hole just big enough for the debris (the remains?) and spent another hour shoveling in the broken bits and burying them. That single eye—so disturbingly similar to his own—stared at him for most of the job. When he finally covered it in dirt, his own eyes blinked sympathetically.

Don’t sympathize with that piece of shit.

He rubbed his eyelids with the backs of his hands and finished the job.

He was more ceremonious with Selina. He wrapped what was left of her in the tarp and placed the bundle into an old DVD player box. This he buried beneath a rose bush on the opposite side of the yard from the monster’s grave. When he’d finished that final chore, he sat beside the smaller mound of dirt for a long time, not wanting to return to the emptier-than-ever house.

In the morning, he’d try to lose himself in his work. And on his way home, he’d stop by the hardware store and see about a new tub.

Beneath the house, the creature listened to the father-thing destroy its brother, desecrate its mother’s corpse, and then cart off the bodies. It hunkered in the dark, waiting for the father-thing’s return. Its mother may have died bringing them into the world, and its brother trying to earn alpha dominance, but it would not join them in death.

When the father-thing came back, it would ascend from the darkness, claim its place in the world, and light out for the hunt.

Dismember’s a fast-paced grindhouse-movie of a book with plenty of unexpected twists and turns and a fresh new crazy for a villain.  The late Richard Laymon would have been grinning ear to ear.

—Jack Ketchum