Serializer...2

He saw his desk, the broken bleeding pen. Ah. A moment away from resuming his position in the chair, his bladder shouted up to him. It was full, achingly so. When was the last time I went to the bathroom? Or had anything to drink, for that matter? His answering throught was vague on the subject; he couldn’t recall a single specific memory of doing either one.

So, moving over things littering the floor as if he’d memorized their positions, he stepped into the little bathroom and sighed, dropping his pants. The seat was cold on his old flesh, and his bones had creaked mightily as he’d dropped all of his weight onto it. It irritated him, having to sit down to pee, but as old as he was he supposed it was a miracle he could still pee at all. The feeling of relief from the fluid’s exit was impossibly great, and Crim’s brows furrowed in consternation. He’d not noticed his bladder five minutes earlier, when he’d been getting the door or when he’d been sitting in front of his…his work. His hand twitched and impatiently waited for his urine flow to stop. I need it. I need to be sitting there, writing. Because something happens…to me. Something amazing. He drummed his fingers on the side of the toilet bowl, directing his gaze everywhere around the little bathroom. A tuft of white fabric got his attention. It was in the bathtub, floating toward the top of the water. That’s odd. The bathtub isn’t supposed to be full. Presently his urine store dried up, and he found himself free to indulge his curiousity.

What he found in the tub doubled his consternation. The head of a mop, without its pole, plugging up the drain. The whole tub filled almost to the rim.

“Marjorie! Did you put this mop in the bathtub?” He waited for the reply, the little footsteps hurrying toward him to make certain she knew what he was talking about, but they didn’t come. The store? She must be at the store. Shrugging, he reached his arm into the tepid water and gripped the mop, pulling it away from the drain. But it held fast, the suction of the drain overpowering Crim’s efforts. He tugged three times, each time harder than the last, and was a little surprised when his tugs yielded only a knocking sound. A rock striking the porcelain of the tub? But he could see nothing but the head of the mop and he gave one final heave, ripping the fabric and seperating the portion stuck in the drain from the rest. The water drained slowly, its exit hindered by the fabric still lodged in the opening. Crim knelt by the tub, panting. When Marjorie gets home…She must be getting senile, throwing mops in bathtubs.

His hand twitched again, and he stopped thinking about the mop at once.

Before he pulled a fresh notebook from the pile, he dropped the broken pen onto the ground and opened the drawer, gettting a new one from the stockpile he’d created. Then he leaned in and let his eyes skim over the last things he’d written.

The man behind the door behind me was not going away. And already the joy of writing was fading. I frowned; I wasn’t supposed to be interrupted. So I put down the

Where the word “pen” should have been was an inky mess.

A minute later the old man’s hand was working again, and his face had molded into an enormous grin.