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There’s A Monster In The Bathroom!

John Darling

    “911Operator—what is your emergency?”
    “Hurry, hurry, send cops, lots of them, with guns, big guns...”
    “Please state your problem sir; I can’t roll cars without knowing.”
    “There is a monster in the bathroom, hurry!”
    “Sir this line is for emergency purposes only...”
    “Does it sound like I want Chinese takeout? Roll those cars on the double!”
    With that the 911 Dispatcher heard grunting and groaning on the other end of the line followed by a loud slam as if a door had been forcibly shut.
    “Sir, are you still there?”
    In answer to her question, the Dispatcher heard a metallic bang before the man’s voice came back on; he sounded as if he was some distance away from his phone now.
    “Are the cars rolling? I had to put my phone down in the drinking fountain behind me so I can hold the door with both hands; you’re on speaker. The damn freak is strong as hell, I can’t hold on much longer...”
    “Why are saying he is a monster, sir?”
    “Why are you asking me questions, get me some help here or I’m dead.”
    “But sir...”
    “I walked in to pee and he was on the floor, changing, then he chased after me, I closed the door on his...hand, no not a hand, a claw, or a paw, it was in between man and...”
    Just then the Dispatcher heard more grunting, then a loud growl, followed by a howl, and again the sound of a door slamming.
    “Is it a wild animal, sir?”
    The man, panting and sounding exhausted, replied, “Yeah, yeah, a wild animal, if you want to think that and if it will get the cars moving, then that’s what it is...”
    “What kind of animal?”
    “How the hell would I know, I’m not a zoologist! It’s whatever you think it is and it is going to kill me soon unless I get help. Anyway, I am through talking to you, you dumb bitch. If I have to fight it alone, I will. I have my box cutting knife out and I am going to put it between my teeth so I can hold the door with both hands. If they find my dead body here in the morning, they will know who to blame.”
    The Dispatcher decided this was too much work to be a joke, so she sent an all units message out to any car in the vicinity.
*********************************
    Drago listened to the Unit Dispatcher.
    “A wild animal” he said to his partner, Anderson, “what are we now, dog catchers?”
    “Hey” Anderson responded, “it could be a bear or a mountain lion. Maybe we can get a trophy?”
    “Whatever. The Mentor Building is just a few blocks away, let’s roll on it.”
    Drago picked up the hand set and said they were responding to the call, Code Three.
*********************************
    Anderson rang the Security bell hoping to wake old Joe up so they could be let in. After three attempts, he tried to door only to find it open. Drawing his gun, with Drago doing the same, they entered the building’s reception area.
    “Joe”, called Anderson. No response.
    Walking quietly forward to the Security Office they came upon old Joe who had been with the company for 37 years, which was long before either man had been born. What was left of him made him look like he’d been put through a meat grinder; Drago turned away and threw up.
    After he composed himself, both officers stood silently, one looking in each direction. Drago was about to speak when Anderson motioned to him be quiet and indicated to him to listen. Soon both men detected a soft moaning sound coming from up ahead past old Joe’s body; stepping carefully so not to foul the crime scene any further, they moved down the hall.
    Around the next corner, laying face down was a large powerfully built man outside of the men’s lavatory. He held a bloody knife in his hand. He must have been the one that killed and mutilated old Joe. Drago stood over the man with his gun trained on him, fighting against the urge to shoot the puke and call it resisting arrest. Anderson stooped down and turned him over.
    Both officers jumped back at what they saw. Though the man was breathing, his shirt was shredded and his chest muscles were clawed as if a wild animal had been at him. The knife and the pure size of the man must have been what saved him from the same fate that had befallen old Joe. But where and what was the animal?
    Anderson called for backup and an ambulance. In the meantime, they tried to stop the man’s bleeding. As they did so, he woke up.
    Mumbling, just above a whisper, he said, “Did you get it? It ran down the hall, heard screaming—horrible—and then it came back here, I don’t know for sure, killed me, I think.”
    “You’ll live buddy” said Anderson, not at all sure if that was true. Where was that damn ambulance?
    As if in response to his thoughts, he heard sirens in the distance and men running up the hall. One of them let out an anguished scream, telling Anderson that they had found old Joe. From around the corner ran Sgt. Dickson, looking as if he had seen the Devil himself. His partner, Doyle, followed sporting a face white as a sheet.
    “What in God’s name is going on, Anderson?” the sergeant shouted.
    “I don’t think God is in this picture, Sergeant. We rolled on a ‘wild animal’ call and found all this. We have only been here a few minutes.”
    With that the Dickson drew his gun and motioned to his fading partner to do the same.
    “So whatever it is still roaming around.“
    “No” came a faint reply from the man on the ground, “in there again, I think” he said as we waved his hand towards the men’s room door.
    Dickson looked at his three inferiors, knowing what he had to do. He stepped over the prostrate man, and pushed the door open.
    A loud roar and a snarl greeted him. As he jumped back, tripping over the downed man behind him, a “monster” jumped into the doorway. It was a man, of sorts, covered with hair; he had gnashing white fangs and claws that were both streaked with blood, rags of a business suit hung from his body. From where he fell, Dickson started shooting with all the other officers firing as well. At first the thing just stood there as if nothing were happening, then with a lurch, he fell back in the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.
    Doyle continued to pull his gun’s trigger though it was empty. Dickson stood up and took it from him.
    “What in hell was that, Sergeant?” asked Drago who stood rigidly with his back to the wall.
    “Something from hell is all I can guess, Drago, something from hell.”
    Just then the paramedics arrived to treat the wounded man.
*********************************
    “We couldn’t get much out of him, Lieutenant Fry” said Dickson pointing to the man on the stretcher, “he said his name is Leos, Jacoby Leos, he is a contractor here working on shipping paperwork from the warehouse to an offsite storage facility.”
    The Lieutenant walked over to Leos, examining him as if he were a corpse.
    “You the one who called 911?” he asked.
    Leos shook his head in the affirmative.
    “We thank you for that, son, without you holding him a bay, that crazy man could have gotten loose in the city and killed a lot more people.”
    Leos shook his head in the negative.
    “Monster, not man,” he said.
    The Lieutenant looked over at Dickson, who just responded with a slight shrug.
    “Well, if that man could fool four trained officers into thinking he was some kind of demon, I guess it is no surprise the he fooled you too.”
    Leos shook his head in the negative again.
    “Well this is the way it is Leos,” responded Fry as he kneeled down next to him, “you can tell people that a monster attacked you, killed old Joe and threatened my men if you want, but the fact is that when we went in the bathroom all we found was a half naked man with 16 bullets in his body. His carcass is off to the morgue where our investigators and trace evidence folks will examine him to see if any of the blood on him belongs to you or old Joe. We think it will. If that is confirmed then we have our killer. Case closed. You’d look like a damn fool to say otherwise since we identified him as none other than Oliver W. Manning, the man who owns half of this joint. He just got back from an overseas business trip to the Balkans and his partner figured he came by to check in on business. What drove him nuts, we don’t know yet but his partner said he’d been laid up for a while in the old country, Manning alleged he was bitten by something, someone’s pet dog, so he said. He wasn’t real free with the details. We figured he hooked up with the wrong lady and caught a dose of something that would be bad for business. That something must have been what drove him mad.”
    Leos just looked away and stared up at the bright, shiny, full moon that gazed down on him.
    The Lieutenant motioned to the paramedics to load him into the ambulance. As they did so, jostling him from one side to the other, he felt the box cutting knife in his pocket where he had slipped it after the shooting was over.
    They could say what they want, but he was going to have the knife examined to see what kind of blood was on it.
    More importantly, he wanted to find out what species of animal had left the clump of hair wedged at the bottom of the blade.

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