The bathroom

In the bathroom, when I close my eyes, and when the droplets of water splash my face, I can see in my mind a woman with a knife waiting to slash my back. I suddenly open my eyes and I see that it’s the fear within me.

‘Claustrophobia is the fear of confinement to places. Even seasoned horror movie buffs’ nightmares come true when they are confined to the four walls of a room…’, said professor Nick Masson when everybody in the class started discussing.

‘I agree with you prof. My worst fears are when I park my car in the garage’ some one said. ‘Mine when I am alone in the house’, some one else added and yet another said, ‘mine when I am sleeping alone in my bedroom and the power goes off…’

Prof. Nick Masson was a psychiatrist at the national college institute for psychological and criminal sciences. Masson was delivering a lecture on ‘fear of confinement to closed spaces’. ‘….and mine when I am in the bathroom…’ Jamie told herself and a chill ran down her spine and she shivered under fright.

‘I have my own reasons to be frightened of a bathroom. A friend of mine was murdered in cold blood under mysterious circumstances in a bathroom, the previous day. It was rumoured that she killed herself under her own fear’

Jamie and Megan have been friends for more than three years, in fact, very good friends. They confided in each other their worst fears. Megan was claustrophobic. She always felt some one was gonna kill her when she was in an enclosed room. The previous night, Megan was alone in her apartment when she heard a sound in her bathroom. She immediately called up Jamie and said, ‘I am having a problem. Somebody’s there in my bathroom….’ And even before she could continue the call hung up. Jamie called 911 and reached Megan’s apartment.

The whole place was dark when Jamie reached the place. She stumbled upon something and fell down. She woke up and reached for the lights, and looked around for the object that stumbled her down. She couldn’t find any.

‘Eeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww…….’

She shouted under fright when she saw a palm sliding down the glass walls of the bathroom and she reached for it when she saw Megan lying down in a pool of blood.

Police reports later, confirmed that Megan slipped down in her bathroom and died when her skull hit against a sharp edge fracturing the posterior part of the skull and causing a hemorrhage in her medulla oblongata.

Jamie wasn’t convinced of these reports. She knew that some one was there in Megan’s apartment and that Megan called her. Also she stumbled upon what seemed to her to be Megan’s killer.

Jamie could vaguely hear the professor say, ‘Tomorrow, we’ll discuss about….’ when she was still thinking about her murdered friend. The only clue she has to Megan’s murders is that she is claustrophobic and today the prof’s taken a lesson on claustrophobia. After the class Jamie left to her room. She immediately changed into some loose clothes and fell back on the bed and started to read Robert Bloch’s ‘Psycho’. Just as Marion Crane undressed herself and opened the shower, Norman Bates attacks her with a knife before slashing and stabbing her multiple times.

Suddenly there was a sound in her bathroom. Jamie turned towards the direction of the sound and slowly pulled out the butcher’s knife which she always kept near her bed for safety. Now she was damn sure that somebody was there in the bathroom.

Jamie closed the book and stepped down from the bed and walked towards the bathroom. ‘Yes, I am claustrophobic and yes, I am frightened to take a bath, but …..’ the words spoken by Megan rang in her ears again and again. She slowly opened the door by turning the knob and peeped inside.

‘Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww……..’ she shouted and ran back onto her bed when she saw hundreds of bugs, black in colour emerging out of her western toilet. The bugs were emanating like water from a burst pipeline when Megan fell back on her body. Regaining senses in a fraction of minute she looked towards the bathroom and it was all clear once again. ‘I think I have been thinking too much about Megan’s death’ she thought.

‘I need to have a refreshing bath’ and untying the knot of her dress which slowly slid down her curvy body and she looked at the mirror praising herself as she turned back and forth looking at her image in the mirror.

Suddenly her heart started to beat faster and she began to pant under fright when she saw a man in black clothes behind her holding a knife. Moving her hands over her naked parts she turned back and there was no one. ‘Why am I thinking much about Megan’s death….’ She thought.

She then opened the tap and drop by drop, lukewarm water started to shower upon her, wetting her skin and the bathroom was filled with the hot vapours within a few minutes. She turned off the shower and reached for the soap and closed her eyes when she applied it over her face. And then she reopened the shower as the soap washed away from her body.

She slowly opened her eyes and was aghast to see blood being sprayed from the shower. She hollered for a minute and ran out of the bathroom. ‘Something’s really wrong’ she thought even as she slowly picked up the knife in her hands which were still trembling under fright.

After a minute she told herself, ‘Chill… nothing’s gonna happen.. no one’s around..’ when she walked towards the bathroom and opened it to see that there’s no blood. ‘Again, my figment of imagination’ she thought.

‘Ding dong…’ her door bell rang when she realized that she was still running around naked. Wrapping herself in a towel she reached the door and shouted ‘Who’s that’ when she looked out of the keyhole and saw Megan standing at her door. ‘Meg….nnn…. she’s dead… where did she come from….’ She muttered to herself and ran away from the door before she tripped over the bed and fell onto it.

Now she clearly saw Megan in the bathroom without any clothes. Even as Megan applied soap onto her body, she stopped for a while and looked towards Jamie and slowly walked out of the door even as Jamie kept on shouting. Megan walked towards the door and opened it. And Jamie saw a woman coming into the room after which Megan bolted the door from behind. Jamie followed her with the knife still in her hand.

The woman followed naked Megan into the bathroom when she stood there while Megan was having her bath. Suddenly the woman rushed towards Megan and held her hair in her hands and she pulled Megan’s leg with her leg and hit Megan hardly against a sharp edge in her bathroom. And the woman ran her finger over Megan’s nose, perhaps to see whether she’s still breathing or not. And then she left the bathroom adjusting her Rolex watch and then the visions vanished. Jamie was flabbergasted by these hallucinations.

Jamie looked at her wrist and saw the Rolex watch she was wearing. She dropped the knife at the bathroom door and cried ‘I killed Megan, myself…’ she kneeled onto the ground and started to cry hiding her face behind her palms.

‘Probably my hallucination… I could have never killed Megan’ she thought as she turned away before her eye caught something weird, a palm mark on the vapour condensed glass doors and she shivered under fright. ‘The knife…’ she thought, ‘I dropped it at the door. ‘Now where is it…’ and she slowly pushed the door open still kneeling on the ground.

She entered the bathroom and her pupils dilated to see beyond the vapours and she switched on the exhaust fan to clear the vapours off the room. As she was about to step out, she felt a hand reach for me. It looked more like a female hand and it slowly tickled her back. A chill ran down her spine and she jumped in fright even as the towel got unwrapped and she rushed out of the bathroom into the living hall and started to look around frantically searching for any object to defend myself.

Jamie was shouting in fear. This time it wasn’t any hallucination. She ‘felt’ a hand tickle her back.

She pulled out the lamp stand and made it slowly to the bathroom. The vapours were cleared off and could find no one in the room. With a sigh of relief she turned back when a hand pulled her back by closing her mouth. And it dragged her into the bathroom by holding her hair. Jamie turned to look behind but she could only see the gleam of the knife. The hand slowly closed onto her and she felt a stinging pain in her back.

The knife slashed across her back and blood spurted out from the open wound. The knife dug deep into her spinal cord and the limbs were almost dead even as she wriggled under pain. Jamie found it almost difficult to breath as she was bleeding very heavily. With her face lying on the floor which was filled with blood, she was close to death.

A few hours later, police were at Jamie’s apartment.

With a slash across her back till the thigh part, Jamie was found dead in a puddle of blood. The police were shocked to find the fifth such murder in the recent days. They searched for circumstantial evidence when they found something far more worthy and gruesome, they would have never expected.

Inside the fridge of Jamie’s apartment was a stuffed body of a girl slit from toe to back on the posterior. Under her bed was another body murdered under similar circumstances and wrapped neatly in a polythene cover. The over head tank was inspected and there was a dead body of another girl too.

‘I think we have unraveled the murderous crimes of the serial killer who terrorized these surroundings, finally’ detective Ramses heaved a sigh of relief. ‘The serial killer is no one other than Jamie Fox, who was suffering with a rare brain disorder. She had both her hemispheres separated to cure her of epilepsy and she was under some neurological stress which perpetuated her to murder four innocent girls before she killed herself out of the same trauma or something else….’ He told the press when they were taking photos of Jamie lying naked and dead holding a knife, partly covered with blood and still gleaming under the light, in one hand and a few strands of hair in the other.

The next day Nick Masson was taking a session. ‘As I told the previous day, today we’ll be discussing about the Alien Hand Syndrome or Dr. Strangelove syndrome. People suffering with this disorder feel that one of their limbs has a brain of its own and his or her brain cannot control it. This normally happens when both the hemispheres of the brain are separated as a treatment for epilepsy….’ She finished her session even as she checked the time and adjusted her Rolex watch….