Matt Greene

Seth wished a lot of things.

He wished he could go a week, a day, even a god-damned hour, without something in his house needing adjustment, repair, or replacement. He wished he had remembered the teflon tape when he had gone to the hardware the first time, considering that the tape was the entire reason he had gone in the first fucking place. He wished he had thought to eat something before he left the house (though, in his defense, the errand was rapidly turning out to be twice as long as he had originally intended; so that threw off his schedule more than a little, turning a breakfast time problem into at least a brunch time one…though, let’s be realistic, it was going to be a lunch-time one if he were lucky). 

Seth wished multiple trips to the same store in the same day wasn’t so familiar an event for him. He was a familiar sight at the big box hardware store, and would no doubt get a comment or two about ‘forgetting something.’ Between his faucet frustration and his hunger, his social battery was dangerously low.

And, of course, he needed to use the bathroom.

He tromped through the store, grabbing the teflon tape from the end cap of the plumbing aisle. Naturally, the restrooms were positioned in the absolute opposite corner of the store from the item he needed; it was simply that kind of day.

And yet

There were two doors with the familiar bathroom placards at the end of the kitchen appliance section.

Two doors that Seth had never seen before.

Two doors that he would swear on a stack of bibles hadn’t been there the last time he was in the store (which, for those keeping track at home, had been roughly twenty minutes ago). He would have noticed. There’s no way he wouldn’t have noticed. He was right here last time. It was the filter for the refrigerator’s water dispenser that had thrown him off course. He had been right fucking here.

He wasn’t thinking of a different store. 

He wasn’t too hungry, frustrated, tired, or burnt out to notice. It wasn’t possible. He had been in this store, in this section, probably hundreds of times in the last few years (regrettably).

These were two new bathrooms. They hadn’t been here before.

But they didn’t look new. In fact, they looked anything but; paint peeling on doors, dents visible even from the dishwasher area, where Seth stood, dumbfounded.

There were two old bathrooms. They looked like they had been built a few years before the store, if anything. He imagined two free-standing bathrooms in a field, waiting patiently for the occupation of orange-vested clerks and frazzled DIYers.

It somehow gave him a slight headache to look at these bathrooms. It made sense in the abstract. They were just worn down enough to be unassuming, giving the sense of ignorability. It seemed plausible that someone could have overlooked them; there were no signs announcing them, save for the universally understood pictograms on the doors. They were sort of tucked between the water heaters and the whole house water filters. They were begging to be missed.

But no. 

He would have noticed the bathrooms. There was no fucking way he simply hadn’t seen them before.

But that didn’t make sense.

Seth had been standing there, flabbergasted, for nearly a solid minute, before his bladder overrode his confusion. He would figure this out after he didn’t piss himself in front of the Samsungs.

These doorknobs didn’t even match, he realized. The one on the women’s room a Pinterest-worthy cut crystal, while the men’s room had a tarnished and weary-looking brass pull.

What. The. Fuck? He thought as he walked to the door.

It didn’t matter. He had to piss. He could be confused afterwards.

Some small part of his awareness was screaming in protest as he approached the door; hand extended to the brass pull. This faint call of alarm was easily ignored in light of his discomfort, and in fact ceased immediately and completely the moment his hand touched the metal.

The metal, surprisingly, was unsettlingly warm to the touch.

The door swung open as if propelled from within, and then closed almost immediately with a short but brilliant flash of light.

Five minutes later, as a frustrated first time homeowner stood before the water filters, wondering what type of filtration he needed (and what, exactly, was a micron?), he could swear he heard a noise coming from the next shelf over. A high-pitched whine of some sort.

He was glad he wasn’t buying a water heater. Sounded like they were leaking or something