“I gotta use the washroom,” Freddie said, then got up and left the dining room.
Good, Hannah though, frowning as she watched him walk away. Fall in the toilet and drown in there, why don’t you? As long as you stop belittling the man I love.
“Oh, nuts,” Brad said, squirming in his chair. “I gotta go, too. Do you have another bathroom, please?”
“On the third floor,” Emily said.
Brad frowned a bit. “You don’t have one here on the ground floor?”
“We do, but the toilet in it is broken,” Mrs. Dan said. “If you can’t wait for Freddie to get back, I’m afraid you’ll have to use the one on the third floor. Sorry.”
“And Freddie takes forever in the bathroom,” Al said.
“And you don’t?” Emily snapped at him.
He raised his middle finger at her, his other hand covering it so the others wouldn’t see.
“Ooh, the finger,” she said.
Brad let out a big sigh and got up. “I guess I’ll have to go up there,” he said. “My gout’s gonna kill me, but I don’t wanna hold this in much longer.” He went out of the room.
Hannah leaned over to her mother and whispered in her ear, “I hate for Dad to suffer with his gout going up those stairs, but if Freddie takes forever in the second-floor bathroom, I’ll be OK with his prolonged absence.”
“Agreed,” Margaret whispered back in Hannah’s ear.
Mr. and Mrs. Dan gave the two whisperers a cool glare, not approving of the privacy of their brief exchange. The two looked back at them with a shudder.
Just a few more steps, Brad thought as he struggled to reach the third floor. God, my foot is killing me!
When his two feet were finally on the third floor, he let out a grunt of relief. He saw, at the end of the hall, a wide-open door revealing the bathroom. Now he just had to limp his way over there.
He got in, closed the door and locked it, then lifted the toilet seat. He unzipped his pants, took it out, and let out a long, loud sigh of relief as he began emptying himself in the toilet bowl.
That was worth the pain in my foot, he was thinking as his bladder got emptier and emptier. Maybe.
Now, completely voided, he gave it a shake, put it away, and zipped himself up. He let out another sigh of relief and washed his hands after flushing.
He groaned in pain as he shuffled his feet and left the bathroom. Going down the stairs wouldn’t be quite as bad for him as going up, but the damage had already been done by the three-floor ascent. He was not looking forward to returning.
If only they had a stair lift here, as we have at home, he thought as he, wincing in pain, limped back to the stairs.
“Hello,” he heard someone say in an exaggerated, sing-song voice, as if mocking him, from behind.
“What?” he said looking back and seeing no one.
“Hello,” the male voice said again, in the same mocking way. “How do you do?”
“That isn’t funny,” Brad said, grateful only that the voice was giving him an excuse not to keep moving on that painful foot. “Maybe you think it’s amusing, but it isn’t.”
He took another step, then one with his bad foot. He moaned in pain.
“I love you,” his watcher called in that sing-song voice again.
“What kind of an idiot are you?” Brad said.
“Fuck you,” the boyish voice said.
“Is that you, Freddie? You aren’t just an asshole to your brother; you’re an asshole to everybody, aren’t you?”
“Come in here, and find out if I’m Freddie or not.”
“I don’t think I want to waste my time with someone so disrespectful to guests. Besides, my foot can’t handle moving around any more than I have to.”
The door to a room right next to him in the hallway suddenly opened. Brad looked in and saw nobody, though the light was off and little could be seen. He heard a slight grunting sound.
“What’s that?” he said softly. An animal, or just that jerk making animal noises?
He heard the grunt again. If that was Freddie, or whoever, making the grunts, he was good at doing animal impressions. The pain in his foot was subsiding.
I like animals, and I’m not looking forward to going down all those stairs, he thought as he turned to face the opened door. What the hell–I’ll take a look.
In he went, wincing from his aching foot. He felt around the wall in the darkness for the light switch as he tried to find, in the dimness, the source of the grunts.
Just before he found the switch, he heard another sing-song “Hello.”
The light went on.
No animal.
No speaker.
Just boxes of things, stacked up all over the room.
He shuffled further into the room slowly, grunting with every movement of that sore foot. He looked around to see if the grunts were from an animal or from Freddie.
He heard another grunt, from behind some of the boxes. The space behind them was too small for Freddie, or anyone else, to be hiding there.
He shuffled closer to the boxes.
He heard another grunt.
He bent down by the back of the boxes.
The door creaked.
With his bad legs and his awkward position, he wasn’t able to look around in time to see if Freddie, or whoever that was, made the door creak.
He saw no one in the room, but the door was now swung all the way open, instead of half-open, as it had been when he went in. Freddie, if it was him, had to be hiding behind the door, in the corner of the room opposite from where Brad was.
He heard another grunt.
He looked behind the boxes. It was a cat with ginger fur. Now it began meowing.
“Aww,” he said, reaching out. “C’m’ere, my little sweetheart.” He picked it up, then straightened up slowly with a groan from his stiff back. “What were you doing back there?” he asked while stroking its back and enjoying the sound of its purring. “You little silly–“
“Hello.”
He turned around and looked over at the door with a glare. Alright, asshole, he thought as he began limping toward the door, always stroking the cat. What nonsense do you have planned for me behind there?
Though he was impatient to get over there and find whoever was behind the door and get this nonsense over with, his sore foot was still slowing him down.
He inched closer and closer.
There was total silence.
Now, he would have preferred to hear another hello.
Finally, he reached the door.
He grabbed it, ready to swing it the other way.
As he did, he said, “Alright, asshole, what’s your–?”
No one was there.
“Mmm?” he said.
The cat was fidgeting in his other arm.
“Oh, I guess you wanna be let go.”
He let the cat drop from his arm, its feet tapping the floor.
“Good evening, Mr. Sandy,” the hoarse voice of an old woman said from behind him.
“Oh?” he said, startled, then turned around.
His eyes and mouth widened.
Before he could scream or process what he saw, an axe came chopping into his face, cutting his head almost into halves and spraying his blood everywhere. In the split second that he had to take in who had killed him, he saw Freddie.
The rest of his body shook for a few seconds, then it fell to the floor with a thump.
The cat meowed again.
“Come, kitty,” Po said through Freddie’s mouth in Chinese. “Run along back downstairs. I have a mess to clean up. At least his foot won’t be troubling him anymore.”
Infinite Ocean 