He sat back on his heels. The logical part of his brain—the part that priced used paperbacks and alphabetized Vonnegut—screamed hair trap. Soap scum. Call Keith . But the animal part, the deep, mammalian hindbrain, whispered something else. Something lives in the pipes. Something that was here before Harold. Something that feeds on what washes away.
A long, dark rope of hair emerged, slick as an eel. Then another. But these weren’t his. They were far too long, with a strange, reddish tint. The previous tenant, he’d been told, was a man named Harold who’d worn tweed and collected stamps. Harold had been bald as a billiard ball. bath tub blocked
He knelt on the bathmat, the cold linoleum biting his knees. He rolled up his sleeve, took a breath, and plunged his hand into the murk. His fingers found the drain, a metal starfish of grime. He pushed past it. He sat back on his heels
The water swirled once, a weak, apologetic half-circle, then gave up. It sat there, grey and slick, a tepid mirror reflecting the cracked ceiling of Jasper’s rented flat. The sponge bobbed listlessly, a defeated starfish. Call Keith
He snatched his hand back as if bitten. The water in the tub, the entire grey, stagnant gallon of it, trembled once. A ripple formed at the edges, moving inward, converging on the drain. It wasn’t draining. It was being drawn .
“Oh, for the love of…” Jasper nudged it with his toe. Nothing. Just a greasy film and the faint, sour smell of old soap and something else. Something deeper.
Now, it was a standoff. Jasper was in his bathrobe, late for a shift at the bookstore, and the water was winning.