Tainted Water

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There is a monster in my bathroom.
A creature.
It has been there for a while now.
I don't know why it's there, but I know that I can barely stand to look at it.
It stands in the bathtub; an unwavering presence in my life.
I see the way it shakes and twitches, head bowed and back, hunched as it makes hoarse utterances across from me as I feverishly attempt to wash myself. It is a fleshy mass, superficially resembling a human being, but twisted and corrupted into something else entirely. Arms, legs, a torso and head are all present; it's just all wrong. It's as if someone took some flesh-colored plasticine and molded a crude version of a man, creating a sin-ridden mutation that shouldn't be alive. It's truly grotesque.
And it's next to me.
I see it convulsing. I hear it talking. I don't know what it's saying and I don't want to stay long enough to listen. It doesn't seem to be able to hear me, much less see me, when I leave the room. There's no sign of eyes or ears on that sagging, bloated flesh sack of a head. It just twitches when I pass by, unaware of the nervousness that I exude every time I go into the bathroom. But it is there when I brush my teeth; it is there when I urinate, and it is there when I shower.
I don't know what to do; I don't know what it wants. I can't go to anyone about this because what would I tell them?
"There's a monster in my bathroom."
They'd simply laugh, and tell me there's more normal ways of making your life more interesting.
They'd think I was joking.
Why me? What did I do?
It started standing there when I was fifteen. I'd been struggling with school; too many thoughts on my mind. Friends that no longer wanted to hang out with me, the prospect of studying, and fitting into the social ladder of high school were all plaguing me at the time.
I took to showering for longer periods of time to clear my mind of the heaviness I was dealing with, and for a time, it worked well. My eyes were closed under the warm rush of water cascading down my body. I remember how suddenly it appeared there, breathing heavily in the corner of my eye. It had slipped in behind me, startling me out of my serene stupor. I had left the door unlocked.
I was paralyzed with fear, unable to move, unable to speak. The creature had gotten close, that foul rancid hot breath penetrating my soul. Then it touched me.
I sobbed for hours once it was done.
And all the while it was there, watching me, it had no eyes.
It only continued to stand there with increasing frequency. No longer was the shower a place of respite. I was on high alert, dreading the thing's appearance as my nude body stood vulnerable. It began to touch me more often, that dreadful tongue snaking out as those fleshy stumps traced their way down my body...
...It's a disgusting creature, with no face to speak of save for a huge gaping mouth, repulsive and spittle-ridden.
I never want that mouth near me again.
It tries to get close to me sometimes. I see it as I shower; I have to keep on my guard or it'll succeed. I time myself to ten minutes or less; that way it doesn't have time to get me before I'm finished. I won't let it touch me. I won't. Anymore than ten, and I'm plunged into hell again.
No one in the house can see it, either. Not how I see it.
I've never told them about it because of this; they'd just tell me I'm making it up. Mom passes it by every day, but she never says anything. My brother has stared directly at it before, and yet he doesn't see anything awry. No one knows, and no one cares.
My quality of life plummeted after it first started standing there. I began to act up in class, get myself in all kinds of trouble, and I was even suspended once. My grades became Ds and Cs when I used to be a solid B student. The pressures of life were too much with the monster in the mix too. I still have the marks on my arm to prove that. My life is still difficult, but what kind of teenage boy doesn't have a monster? I can't be the only one, right? This has to be normal; it has to be, why would it occur otherwise? Nothing happens without a reason. My mother always did say God has a plan for us all. It all makes sense. I'll come out the other side and be a new man, a strong man. 
But I have an uncertainty. Something that has been plaguing the back of my mind from the start. A tiny little nagging feeling that I've ignored since the beginning, but it's too blatant to ignore now.
Recently, I've started to see it do more than stand. I'm seventeen now, and while it stands in my bathroom still, it's not just doing that anymore. I'm starting to see it walk and talk to the people around me, making more audible sounds that I can decipher. I've seen it get into a car, our car. I've seen it say hello to the mailman. More and more frequently, I've seen it doing normal things that my mom would do, like it's a person.
I don't understand how it can do that. How can it walk among the people looking the way it does? How can such an inhuman mutation go about business like everyone else? It shouldn't be able to do that, it's a monster! 
It makes me infuriated that this creature, this abomination can go about its life better than I can. I cannot even clean myself without dreading the consequences. I'm pathetic. I'm nothing compared to that thing. It's an undeniable fact; the power it has over me is utterly incomprehensible. None of my surviving relationships are remotely as close as they were, and I'm a nervous wreck. All because of that thing.
It's sad.
I think I finally understand why no one sees it, why no one questions that it talks and walks like them. I know why it told my mother that it would fix the broken door lock, but never did. And I know what I need to do.
The shower is warm and steamy, reminiscent of the tranquility it once had. I stand under it, my cell phone on the adjacent sink surface, safely out of the way of the stream, like it always is. I have the stopwatch feature turned on, counting down the time I have left. I've given myself some more time on this occasion, though. I want to relish in the heat of the water for a little longer today; I deserve that much.
It's here.
I see it once again, in my peripheral vision, standing there once more. I feel the familiar creeping sense of desperation that I have become so familiar with gripping me. I start to tremble, fearing the worst. But I can't let it consume me. So I turn to face it, eyes locked on it, no longer standing away in petrified agony.
For once, it seems to falter in its' twitching and writhing, ceasing to be an intimidating figure, just for a second. The thing stands there, its advance towards me halting. And as I stare with determined hate, that fleshy mass seems to morph before my eyes. Twisting and contorting into something else, sagging and rotting, bloody pulps of flesh becoming healthy skin. Brown body hair frames the weathered skin as monster becomes man.
He still towers over me.
Whether monster or man, my slight, rail-thin body is nothing compared to his. That colossally large set of muscles dwarfs me, controls me as he breathes heavily, an air of fury around us as his face becomes full of rage. I cannot beat him. I shrink back against the corner of the shower, unable to face what's in front of me any longer.
"You gonna say something, boy?"
But his words bore deep, and ignite the smoldering embers once again, one last time.
My hands dart to the shampoo bottle next to me, and it all happens so fast.
His hands go to constrict my body once again, but I rush forward, the cap of the bottle torn off; thrust into his face as the liquid splashes out over it.
He staggers back, utterly inhuman screams emitting from his mouth. I watch as he falls out of the bathtub onto the floor, holding his hands over his head in agony. He's truly writhing now.
I can't let this go on for much longer; it's too much.
I sit down at the wall farthest from him, and put my head down, drowning out the screams as best I can.
And then, after what seems like hours, it stops.
I look over at him once more, his still body sprawled with his head slumped.
His face is disfigured, corroded from the acid I threw at him. It's twisted and corrupted, like a bloated sack of flesh in the place of features.
My mother and brother will be home soon from their shopping trip; if the police don't get here first, the screaming will have caused the neighbors some concern.
Dzzt!, dzzt!, dzzt!
My cell phone lights up as the vibration sound signaling the end of the countdown plays.
My new shower routine has taken me twenty minutes.
I think I'm going to like this one much more.
Category:Mental Illness
Category:Weird
Category:ZugZuwang
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