Thirteen Miles Away
Uploaded by lulabelle on Nov 09, 2001
Nat slowly reached for the tap. The shiny silver colour was smothered with large fingerprints. Before her fingers touched the tap she covered her hand with her sleeve. She turned it stiffly. Water trickled out. She observed her sleeve, noticing dark grey dust. She placed her hands under the running water. Red liquid appeared in the grey, smeared, filthy sinks. Stepping back she looked at her wet hands. No red liquid remained. She looked closer for a wound. A cut. A scratch. Anything. The tap stopped dripping.
Looking around the dead grey toilets, she could see smears. Smears of red, brown and grey. Looking closer she realised that the smears were not part of the design. She noticed red fingerprints. Grey handprints. The tall thin metal doors had dents and scratches of obscenities. Threats were scratched into the doors. ‘DIE BITCH DIE’ was repeated several times. The doors were ajar. Not being able to see behind the doors, she lightly tapped them to open them. The moaning, creaky, rusted hinges moved slowly.
In the first cubicle there was a large drawing on the wall at the side. It looked like an outline of a body. It was the type of outline seen in a murder scene, where detectives draw an outline around the dead body on the ground. It seemed to be drawn on with black wax crayon. The outline of the body was black, but there were other marks within it. Red marks around the throat, stomach, and chest areas. Words surrounded the drawing. ‘KILL, DIE, BITCH, HELL’ were scratched with red crayon around the drawing.
“Dear God…” Nat said aloud. She quickly turned around to walk out, but was distracted by something dripping from the ceiling. It looked like the same red liquid that appeared from the taps. She looked up. The red liquid was splattered on the ceiling. The toilets had a vent with a fan inside it at the top of the wall. Loud sounds emerged from the vent. It sounded like vibrating, but each buzz it made sounded heavy, like a tonne of thunder hitting metal. The fan blades were coming into contact with something, which they shouldn’t have. You could hear the friction sounding like fingernails running down a blackboard.
The floor was made of dark red/brown tiles. They looked filthy with brown smears, and black dust. Trying to think of an explanation for the...