Down the Drain Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  BW Image

  Freeze Ad

  Praise

  About the Author

  Also by Daniel Pyle

  Copyright Page

  DOWN THE DRAIN

  _________________

  DANIEL PYLE

  For Marshy, my friend.

  ONE

  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.

  TWO

  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.

  THREE

  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.

  FOUR

  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 h
is 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.