I'll Be Right Behind You

Drip, drip, drip, drip.

Water seeped out of the cracks in the ceiling and then exploded onto the forming pool below it. The drips would indent; an echo cracked throughout the room, like amber being shattered across a surface, and then it would settle again, as calm and black as a cloudless night sky. The echo across the bathroom walls sounded more like a ricocheting plop rather than a drip.

Drip, drip, drip, drip.

Her knee-high socks were soaked and clung to her skin like Saran wrap. Every drop of water resembled a bead. The water would come over, a gentle wave, and go up over her ankles and the leather loafers she was required to wear, and go up her socks. The cloth drank it, a desperate, thirsty man in an oasis. She sank to the floor, sat in the puddle, the water coming up around her knees as if she were sitting in a claw-footed bathtub.

Drip, drip, drip, drip.

A thin layer of grime, almost like algae, stained the walls. There were Sharpie notes written on the walls. Notes like “call me,” and hastily written bible verses.

Ecclesiastes 9:5-6

Drip, drip, drip, drip

The tiles in the bathroom were black, making everything look like it was a swirling spill. The thin layer of film over the top of it is evidence of some contaminant; poison floating on top of black blood.

Drip, drip, drip, drip.

The girl’s hair was soaking wet, pressed up against the side of her head, and splaying out across pale skin like slimy black tentacles. Her shirt was wet, the white becoming see-through. She looked like a ghost; a paper-thin illusion.

Drip, drip, drip, drip.

Across from her was another girl. She was petite, wore the same school uniform the rest of them wore, her hair a mix between hazel and poppy. Her hands were behind her back, and she tilted her head, bouncing curls swirling in front of her face; they sprang out around her face in a halo. Despite being dry, she’s dripping.

“How old are you?” She had a thick American accent, unusual for London. Her voice was also soft, though, like a song rolling through the hills.

The black-haired girl stammered out: “F-Fifteen, miss.”

“You don’t have to call me miss; I’m not a teacher.”

Drip, drip, drip, drip.

“S-sorry.” Her voice always felt like molasses in her throat.

“What’s your name?”

“I-I don’t think it m-ma,” her voice glitches like static on the radio, interrupted by her teeth chattering together. “I don’t think it matters very much.”

“Well, if we’re going to die here together, I think I would like to know your name. Mine’s Mary-Anne. Where’s the door, even?”

The girl looked over, staring at the tiled wall. More graffiti sprawled out on the tile, but this time incomprehensible. Letters that are not letters, the grime turning into some sort of uncolor. There was nothing there but tiles that seemed a few millimeters too short.

She hadn’t noticed that before.

“The tiles are off.”

Mary-Anne bends over a little, putting her hands on her scratched-up, bruised knees. Now that the girl got a slightly better look at her, she could see that she was bruised and bloodied, like she had gotten into a fight with someone better and had lost. She stares at the wall, her eyes narrowing.

“How so?”

“They’re too short.”

“Short?” Mary-Anne looks over at the girl, and then says, “How do you know, honey?”

“They’re just too short.” The girl, still sitting in the water, points accusingly at the doorless wall. Her entire body shifts like a rocking boat, and she feels herself slip further into the pool of water, kissing her arms like a boy’s soft lips.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter.” Mary-Anne says, “Let me help you up there, love.” She offers a hand. She was wearing nail polish, something that wasn’t regulated by their school. Chrome, shining like the mirrors on the wall, but chipped, revealing nails that looked like she took a razor to them.

The girl pulled her knees closer to her chest. Her skirt was soaked through, and the cold had begun to creep up her spine. She pressed her chin against her knees. She didn’t take Mary-Anne’s hand. It wavers there, in the air for a moment, before Mary-Anne pulls it back towards herself and whips imaginary dust from her fingertips. She wades over to the sinks, the water moving in V-shaped ripples, and then she turns and pulls herself up onto the lip.

Drip, Drip, drip, drip, dripdripdripdripdri-

“Maybe,” the girl in the water says, “The walls are closing in on us, and we’re going to get crushed in here. M-Maybe we’re going to just become a slip between the world.”

“I don’t think that would be too bad,” Mary-Anne says.

The objection is out of her mouth immediately: “But we wouldn’t be alive; we wouldn’t exist.”

Mary-Anne starts kicking her legs back and forth, scuffed black loafers kicking the porcelain and sounding like a pounding throughout the room. It echoes across the water, the mirror, and the ceiling.

“Being alive isn’t necessarily the same thing as existing,” the dripping girl starts. She leans back into the sink like a showgirl in one of those tall martini glasses, her legs draped over the side of the lip of the sink, and her hair a cushion against the mirror. She bites her bottom lip for a moment. “Plenty of people don’t feel like they exist, but they are still alive. Isn’t that, like, how depression works?”

“D-depersonalization.” The girl says, stretching her legs out so her knees dip beneath the water. She almost thought she saw bugs dancing on the surface. “But those people still exist. You can touch them. This water exists; I can feel it. The bathroom clearly exists; I’m in it.”

Mary-Anne doesn’t say anything, just quietly watches as the girl stretches her legs out from underneath the water, her shoes disappearing into the blackness.

“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it…” Mary-Anne trails off. “Have you ever heard of the hypothetical: if a tree falls and no one is around to hear it, did that tree fall? The tree still fell. Even if you can’t touch or see something, does that mean it simply doesn’t exist?”

“W-What do you mean?” She asks. She’s staring down intently at the water, trying not to make eye contact. Eye contact always makes her feel like one of the men who dares to see Medusa, a statue in the garden.

“The bathroom exists because you’re in it, the water exists because you’re in it, you exist because you’re here, but what if you’re not looking at the whole picture? You’re only looking at parts of the picture.”

“What?” She finally looks up, catches Mary-Anne’s honey colored gaze. Her eyes look like ancient amber, irises perfectly preserved bugs atop a redwood tree staff. They catch what little light there is, and they glitter. A star compared to the void. “I don’t get what you mean.”

“That’s alright, honey. Have you heard of the Principle of Totality?” The dripping girl asks. She swallows. The girl notices that Mary-Anne only really breathes through her mouth, not her nose. Every breath is slightly shallow, and it reverberates in the bathroom. Like she’s doing everything in the fast lane, and she’s trying to make even the processes like breathing quick ones: “It’s an ethical concept.”

“I-I d-don’t really like philosophy.” The girl manages, her mumble amplified by the megaphone acoustics of the bathroom.

“Really? I mean, we just had a whole conversation about philosophy.” Mary-Anne taps a finger against the porcelain sink. “It is a catholic idea, the Principle of Totality. It is the idea that individual parts of the body exist for the good of the entire body and may be sacrificed or altered to save the whole person. God owns your body; you do not own your body, and therefore you can only use your body in God-approved ways.”

“I don’t see how this is relevant.” She stammers out. “I don’t see it.”

“A finger can’t do anything unless it has a hand, and a hand can’t do anything unless it has an arm.”

“What about amputees?”

Mary-Anne lets out a carefree laugh, tilting her head back into a cackle.

They go quiet.

The girl lies down fully in the water, starting to count the ceiling tiles.

12.

Drip, drip, drip, drip.

12.

Drip, drip, drip, drip.

12.

Drip, drip, drip, drip.

11.

Just as the girl is about to point out the discrepancy, Mary-Anne speaks: “If a piece is broken or sick, surely you would want to fix it? Save the person?”

“I think my brain is sick; do you think it could be sacrificed to save me?”

The girl blinks, opens her mouth as if in understanding, a quiet, gaping ‘ah.’ “You could always let me have it.”

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. Her heart rate started to pick up, as though she were running on the track field. She felt herself blush a little. “Excuse me? My brain?”

“Yes. I’d love to take a look at it for myself. We can trade. I like your brain better than mine, anyway.”  

“What’s so interesting about my brain?”

Mary-Anne doesn’t respond.

Drip, drip, drip, drip.

11.

Drip, drip, drip, drip.

11.

“Why are you counting the ceiling tiles?”

The girl shoots up, like a vampire coming up out of a coffin, her clothes sticking to her back as though she had just run a mile a minute. “I wasn’t.”

“You move your lips when you count. They twitch.”

“I- I think that the room is shrinking.”

“And do you think we’re going to not exist?”

“I don’t quite see what you mean enough to agree or disagree.”

Drip, drip, drip, drip.

11.

“I wouldn’t do that to you.”

She’s a charmer, that Mary-Anne; she flashes a smile and gives a laugh. Maybe her accent is from the American South? “Let you disappear, silly? You’re too pretty to just disappear.”

“O-Oh, I’m not that pretty.” She waves Mary-Anne off with a quick flick of her wrist. She looks up.

10.

The girl’s eyes drop back down towards the water. It’s like she’s sitting in a void, slowly sinking in. The water was slowly creeping up to her chest. More and more and more filling the bathroom around them.

She stares at the black water, stares at the reflection of the tiles on the water, watches as they ripple.

9.

Her mouth was dry, and she was so extremely thirsty. She felt like a rabid animal, though, no longer wanting to sit in the water, because it made her legs feel stiff, and her ribs felt elastic around her lungs. She didn’t want to drink the water, because what if the water was poisoned? Sank into the lining of her stomach and stayed there like the grime on the walls.

There was the sound of something that could have been the old pipes churning from underneath her.

But the room could have been breathing.

For a moment there was nothing, no sound of Mary-Anne kicking the porcelain, no dripping coming from the crack in the ceiling, simply nothing. So complete and full that she could hear her own heartbeat in her chest.

The world almost looked like it was oil-washed with green.

“Well.” Mary-Anne kicks off a shoe into the water. It lands with a splash. She laughs a little.

The girl did suppose there was something a little funny about that.

“I think our time together is coming to an end.”

Drrrr-ip.

8.

She heard that noise again, but this time it sounded like disjointed syllables plopping down into the water. The pound around her hips was turning into alphabet soup.

“There were twelve ceiling tiles.” The girl says.

“Twelve?”

“There are eight now; that’s four less.”

“Brava, mademoiselle, basic subtraction!” Mary-Anne starts to kick again, and it becomes a steady drum pulse.

“So, I’m not allowed to call you Miss, but you are?”

Mary-Anne bites her lip again, leaving it plump and red. “Is that what that means?” It’s more to herself than the girl now.

Someone from the outside says the girl’s name, her voice starting to fade in: “... Sammy...We’re going to get you out now, sweetie, we’re sorry that the door got locked on you…” She forgot she had a name.

“Sammy’s a pretty name,” Mary-Anne says aloud. “But it’s not the name that I would have picked for you.”

Sammy tries to get up off the ground, staring at the shrinking tiles on the walls. There’s an outline of something in the Sharpie, something that almost looks like a swirling ink handle of a door.

She moves through the now knee-length water. Sammy pauses, nearly stumbling as she turns to look at Mary-Anne again. “What name would you have picked for me?”

Mary-Anne thinks for a moment. “Love.”

Sammy blinks. “That’s a name for a dog.”

“It can be a name for a person, too. Names are just something we call someone.”

Sammy nods once, stares down at the black water, and then nods a few times again. She turns, having nothing more to say.

She can hear Mary-Anne shift behind her, the rustling of cloth on the porcelain matching the butterfly flutters of Sammy’s heart. Mary-Anne drops down into the water. She’s peeling through it, shuffling through it, and the water beats up against Sammy’s legs.

Sammy watches as a door materializes in front of her, the tiles slowly stretching again, elongated as they accommodate the extra space.  

 “I promise that I’ll be right behind you.” The songbird voice echoes through the bathroom.  

Sammy reaches for the handle of the door. It’s hefty, solid, smooth. It’s black, matte, with not a single scratch on it. There aren’t any locks either, so there’s no need for Sammy to try and draw a key.  

She throws open the door, and she’s staring into the light of heaven. Soft white lights and the old, yellowed hallways of the building of her private school. The door bangs against the wall, sounding like the gunshot from a movie. She can hear Mary-Anne flinch behind her, the water hitting the back of her legs again. The water starts to seep out around her legs, leaking into the hallway, trying to expand its territory. She’s dripping on the floor now, but there’s none of the drama that comes with the echo.

“Sweetheart, why are you wet?” The teacher holding a key ring asks. Her hair is tied up in a straight, gelled bun.

The kid who locked her in the bathroom laughs-- that’s right-- like a jackal: “She probably went and stood in the toilet! Because she’s a fucking weirdo!”

Sammy looks over her shoulder to stare at the girl standing on the other side of the bathroom, still in front of the sinks. The girl motions for her new friend to come and follow. She said that she would be right behind her.

The teacher looks at her, her hair like rolling curls. “Sweetheart… what are you motioning at?”

“There’s a girl there.”

The teacher looks up, and then down. There is no flicker of recognition in her eyes. Her lips just go a little thin. “Sammy, you’re a little too old for imaginary friends.”

The kid laughs again: “Sammy’s schizophrenic! Sammy’s schizophrenic!”

The teacher glares at him. “James, I will be calling your parents.”

James didn’t really seem to care.

“There’s a girl there!” Sammy repeated, trying to toss some steel into her voice. “Her name is Mary-Anne, and she was strange.”

“That’s like the pot calling the kettle black!” James laughs.

The teacher hesitated, her fingers tightening into rigor mortis. “James, go away… and… Uh.. Sammy, how about you get back to class?”

There was something wrong in the teacher’s black eyes, something that looked like a sack filled with something, and the contents threatening to break out and spill out all over the floor. She reached her hands up and rubbed at her temples.

“What’s wrong?”

The teacher gave a long, tired sigh. She suddenly looked older than her age, like she had stepped into a role she had played on a stage one too many times. “Just go back to class, sweetheart. I’m sorry that James locked you in the bathroom. We’re going to have a word with his parents.”

“Can I go to the nurse and get a change of clothes?”

“Yes, sweetheart.”

“Okay.”

Sammy and the teacher both stand there in utter silence, the teacher still rubbing at her temples. She kept shifting on her feet, looking really uncomfortable. It’s clear that she can feel Sammy’s eyes on her; there are goosebumps running down her arms, and her eyes dart over for just a moment before darting away.

She sighs again: “There’s no girl named Mary-Anne at this school.”

Sammy stares at the ever-growing puddle on the ground. “I find that really hard to believe. Lots of people are named that.”

“Not in Britain, sweetheart.”

Sammy expected to be met with some kind of warmth on the outside of the bathroom, but she still felt cold. Something was seeping past her skin and into her bone marrow. She imagined it was Mary-Anne, reaching inside to try and carve out the rotted parts of herself.

“... There was a transfer student from the States named Mary-Anne. She doesn’t go here anymore.”

“Why?” Sammy asks.

She wondered if Mary-Anne was carving out her heart, reaching into her brain and pulling out all the rotted parts of her grey matter.

“Because she died four years ago, Sammy, before you ever came to this school.”

Sammy sort of saw that one coming.

She hoped she could be fixed.