Bathroom Games
2017 © All Rights Reserved
She was always warned and the fear of consequence kept her away, but now she's curious to know if this warning was a wise old tale to keep children scared, or was it a true cautionary tale?
"Never heard of it," Jeane said, pausing for a minute to form a circular motion with her lips, blowing hot air to create a bubble with her gum only to have it deflate seconds later, "and trust me, I've heard just about every urban legend in the book. Are you sure your mom wasn't just messing with you because she wanted you to leave her alone for a few minutes? Or maybe your mom felt like you didn't need her so she scared the ever living shit out of you so you would need her to check for monsters or some nonsense like that? Some parents are like that. Sadistic but with loving intentions." Small pieces of the watermelon flavored gum stuck to the corner of her lips. Slowly it peeled off of her skin and fell to the ground below us.
I thought about her assumptions and a part of me would dwell on it, but knowing my mom, she didn't seem like the type to ever want to scare me just so she could tuck me in at night. At that age when she told me, she was already still tucking me in and kissing my forehead wishing for a good night's sleep. "No, my mom isn't like that. She's about as superstitious as you. Maybe even more."
Jeane's look warped from a complete lack of emotion to showing real feelings that took offense to my statement. "There's a difference between superstitious and paranoia. Your mom teeters on the bridge of insanity, so who's to say she was even in a sane state of mind when she told you that?"
Rolling my eyes, I paid no mind to Jeane's harsh words knowing they only stemmed from jealousy that someone could be more interested into the occult and all things alike than her. And partially because she had a point, my mother was normal but swayed into the dangerous parts of her mind at times, not so rare, but definitely not a weekly occurrence. "She wasn't always that way, you remember her from when we were kids." My memories went to back to the days where I never saw my mother leave her head for a few minutes or few hours. If there was ever a vote back then over happiest individual, I was sure my mom would win by a landslide.
"We were too young to notice those kinds of things. It could be that she used to be better at hiding things from clueless kids, now that you're both older, she's too tired to hide it as well and you're more observant than a young child. I used to think my parents were happy, now look at them. Divorced and bitter. Well my mom isn't bitter, she ended up with most of the stuff anyways." She said with a hint of venom in her tone. Whenever Jeane would bring up her mom or anything closely related to her, her voice would become a low muttering grumble and eyebrows would narrow as if she were concentrating really hard.
"At least you have them both." I remarked. It came off more jealous than intended, but when it came to the topic of parents, I became envious, wishing I had more time with my dad. "Mom just couldn't cope with my dad being gone. Doesn't make her senile, just struggling to deal with the fact that he's gone."
"Shit Mira, I sound really selfish." Her eyebrows relaxed as she lifted up her head. The bitter look disappeared from her face and she took the gum out of her mouth and played with it between her fingers. Something she did when she was either nervous or attempting to avoid an awkward situation. The moment her dark blue eyes landed on mine, I felt like she was on her way to make a huge apology. Before I could stop her, her mouth opened and I prepared to hear a long speech, "Hey look, why don't I spend the night and we try it? Come on, it's the least I can do."
Left shocked and relieved by her response, I was happy she didn't bother to apologize for something that she seemed to do a lot, if she had to apologize for each time I would eventually get tired of hearing it. For a moment, I was confused to as what she was mentioning in the first place. "Um." My mouth cornered to one side as I itched into my forehead hoping to dig out the information on what she was talking about. Urban legend, my inner voice whispered into my head, almost ghostly sounding. Sometimes I swear I have the mind of guppy. "Right. We don't have to."
"Are you scared? Is that what it is?" My best friend smirked thinking she could use reverse psychology on me, only the way she saw it portrayed in movies and books.
"No. I just brought it up, doesn't mean I actually want to participate in some weird bathroom ritual. It could be like Bloody Mary where you know nothing happens anyways."
"Don't knock Mary, I heard Jessie tried it once and ended up with cuts all over her body." Jeane tried to defend the old legend that scared children, but as we grew older it became more of fake entity of our past like Santa Clause or the Tooth Fairy.
"Wasn't Jessie also the girl who swore she saw Satan in her macaroni and swore it told her that Jacob was going to die in a car crash that weekend? Jacob is still alive and kicking to this day." Jessie, high school delusional girl. She was fairly normal or at least good at hiding her insanity in freshmen year, but as time went on it seemed like she was possessed by a horrible mental illness that caused people to stay away or play with her mind and go along with the delusions like it was some child telling you an obviously fake story but playing pretend with them anyways.
Jeane threw her head back with a scoff, "Still, it could be real. What I'm saying is that it's worth a shot and it's not like we have anything interesting going on in our lives tonight anyways, right?"
I could see the pure determination on her face, this wasn't going to end until I agreed. Her persistence could be purely a gift, but also in a pain in the ass if she was working against you. Jeane's mind was already made up, the gears in her brain going at full speed producing thoughts and scenarios on how the night could end. Just a disappointment or a work of supernatural forces that seemed to actually be true. The side of her lips curved upwards, a dimple on her left cheek showed just faintly. If she weren't my best friend, I would have swore the smile was nothing but pure malice.
The clouds began to break away from the sun, harsh beams of light forcing down onto the top of our heads. Summer, only nice if you had a swimming pool. "Wonder when the sun is just going to give us a break one day and not cook us to death."
Jeane laughed, a small part inside hoping she would soon forget about our conversation but her memory wasn't short, far from it. When her mind was set to something, she wouldn't stop and would never forget. "Nice try."
"What?" I tried to act dumb, a play I used a lot and never worked to my advantage. One day I just hoped she would toss me a bone and let it go, but I don't think that was ever programmed into her personality.
"I'm staying the night because your mom loves me and would never say no to me despite whatever you say and tonight will be the night we prove your mom is either insane or all the more knowing of the spiritual world than I am."
A snicker couldn't help but slip from my lips as I bowed my head in an attempt to protect my eyes from the sun, "This isn't about the game and you being curious, you just want to prove that you know more about something than someone else." I smirked at her as her eyes narrowed at me in a playful way, "It's so funny how jealous and defensive you get over the smallest and not so important things."
She held her hands up in defensive, her palms facing towards me. I could see the small beads of sweat were falling down to her wrists. "Okay maybe my pride is hurt, but I'm always up for a new game."
I felt a slight sense of anxiety that came with new things, especially ones to curse or harm you in any way if possible, but as usual it soothed down quiet enough that in the back of my mind I knew it wouldn't work and if it did, I wouldn't be a part of it by participating. It was fictional like the boogeyman and every other urban legend out there, but there was always a part inside me that wondered if there would be one, just one to be true to lore. Not something that scares you into thinking you saw or felt something. "Okay, but I'm allowed to back out if I want to, no questions asked." I smiled knowing this was the only way we could both be happy.
Jeane rolled her eyes in the same way she always had, not perfect and mostly closing her eyes but I knew the intent behind it. "Alriiight." She dragged out her word in a whiny tone. "Now go tell your mom I'm staying the night before she leaves for work."
My eyebrows raised, creating three creases in my forehead as it slightly crooked to the side, one of the attempted versions of trying to look bitchy enough to intimidate but never worked as intended. "Excuse me, you want to stay the night. You ask. Besides, she'll always say yes to you no matter what.. so you need to ask." Inside I was smiling while keeping a calm demeanor on the outside, now that was a line I had learn to perfect. Jeane was too determined to let this opportunity slip from her little grasp, there was no way she would want it ruined in anyway.
Jeane grunted and got up from the grass, her tiny frame rushing eagerly to the back door. She disappeared through the back door and I enjoyed my possible minute of freedom, if I was lucky enough.
The sun once again hid behind the clouds as it slowly began it's descent downwards, in no time the sun would be setting but the air would still be humid. It was the time of day where most parents would be getting home, forcing their children inside the houses for dinner time. The time of peace, quietness, and tranquility. The perfect moment to come lay out in the grass not having to hear anything but nature itself. Birds calling out to their loved ones or making noise for no reason, the sounds of the wind dancing with the leaves in the trees, and the small steps of squirrels as they chased one another.
"She said yes!" Jeane came skipping out the backdoor with as much excitement as a dog has when their owner comes home, just with less jumping up on you.
And the peace was ruined.
I didn't hate my best friend or dread her company, I liked it. But there were moments where I could be alone and completely content with it, silence would bring me calm in the times I feel I can't breathe or deal with anything, but too much of it and I'm sure I'd be sent down a rabbit hole of loneliness.
I didn't looked surprised whatsoever, "As expected." I answered.
"Your mom said she would be going to some guy's house after work so to make sure the door is locked." She said as a last thought, almost like she had forgotten momentarily.
"Mitchell, I think his name is." The new guy in my mom's life. Didn't know too much about him in the one hour I spent time around him at lunch in the local buffet we had when mom had dragged me to meet him. All I could remember was his age, 45. And that he had no kids.
"Maybe he will be the lucky winner." Jeane said with faith on behalf of my mom.
I couldn't help but chuckle thinking about it, "You're too hopeful for your own good." Most of the time it wasn't the men themselves, it was that my mother was way too picky, she could make the littlest things out of nothing, but I always assumed it was her protecting her own heart that I'm sure shattered when my dad died. When I'd bring up settling down with one of the guys I'd actually taking a liking to as a father figure, she would hesitate and fiddle with her fingers to distract herself, and then somewhere along the line I'd hear her reason- no, excuse as to why they wouldn't work out.
"She can't be alone forever."
But she can.
The path she's been leading had led her by herself and pushing away anyone daring to get close, sometimes including me.
Jeane was staring at me, I could feel it as I pretended to be distracted by something in the sky when really, I was trying not to cry. "Lets go inside." She held her hand out to me and picked me up off the ground. "So exactly how do you do this ritual?"
I looked up her with eyes slightly glossy as we walked to my room, "First we run the bath water. You wait until it's full, but not too full because you don't want to it to spill over. You shut the light off with only a candle to be your light. Doesn't really matter which one you do first. You climb into the bathtub then you close your eyes and start whispering some sentence, I can't think of it off of the top of my head. If you start to feel a presence in the room, do not open your eyes, keep them shut until you are done repeating the sentence ten times. After you're done, open your eyes and you'll feel a sudden urge to cry. Don't hold back, let your tears hit the water until you can't cry anymore. When you're done, get out of the bathtub, blow the candle out and say your goodbyes to the spirit." Then a small piece of information my mother told me came to me, almost like a light bulb buzzing bright above my head, "My mom said that if you ever get scared or feel a hand touching you, think of someone you love and care about, almost like a guardian angel in your life and it will protect you from anything bad happening further to you."
Her head nodded in understanding. "What if I can't cry?" Jeane asked, her interest peaked at this moment.
I shrugged, "I guess it doesn't work then and your pride is restored and my mom is just bat shit crazy like you always say."
"What happens if it works?"
Her questions kept on coming and I tried to answer to the best of my ability. "They say it's bad luck to cry in a bathtub and when you let your tears fall into the tub, you let some sort of evil spirit in your life. Something bad will happen, but I'm not completely sure, I never really sat down with my mom and asked her what will occur. Maybe you'll have bad luck for like a week or maybe be haunted forever. Who knows?"
"Well I've always wanted a spooky sidekick so maybe this be more like a blessing and less like a curse." She joked, though I could see in her eyes all of the possible situations that could come out of it, good or bad. In her mind, the worst thing that could happen is nothing.
I looked out of the window with opened curtains in my room and I could see the empty driveway. Mom was gone and who knows when she would return in the morning. Sometimes it was before I woke up, sometimes it was after. I guess it depended on how her night went. "You seem excited so why wait?" I walked to the side of my bed and pulled a crumpled up paper out of my side table filled with things I didn't want to throw away but couldn't quite find a place in my room for it. On the paper was the sentence that needed to be repeated, one that plagued my mind when I was a child. For weeks I could remember repeating it to myself over and over in my head until I fell into a deep sleep, only to let it take up my sleep. There was pitch black space surrounding me, I didn't know where it started or ended or even if it did end, but all I had to accompany me was a voice whispering and echoing as if I were on top of a tall mountain screeching to a vast sky the same chant I could remember my mom speaking of when I was a little girl. It seemed like I would never get rid of the repetition, it soon became a background voice until I no longer acknowledged it.
I feel your pain, I will take some, and with these tears our pain will be shared.
It was an odd sentence I could remember young me thinking, but as the years gone on I found a reasonable interpretation of my own.
"Is that it?" Jeane pulled me from my long, ongoing thoughts. Over my shoulder her head peaked at the little white piece of paper.
All I had to do was move my head a few inches to the right to be face to face with her. The scent of her garlic bread and spaghetti she had earlier to eat pushed through my nose as she breathed into my face. "No, it's a love note that my second grade crush wrote to me that I keep in my bedside and read daily to feel loved."
"That's pathetic and sad."
"You know what's also pathetic and sad? The realization that you actually believed it. Please, I'm not that lonely yet."
"Yet." She repeated one of my words back to me as if she could see future Mira doing the exact thing I was just joking about.
I shook my head with a smirk, "Lets go to the bathroom." As we walked across the hall from my bedroom, she entered into the bathroom. Only this time it didn't feel like your usual bathroom break, because it wasn't. It was as if something had already been awaiting for this moment. Call it paranoia, maybe I was but sometimes just the thought of intent of inviting spirits or something otherworldly could bring in something darker than you could ever intend. "You remember what to do? I can leave the door open just a crack if you want me to. I don't think there's anything against it."
She looked back at me, the smiles gone and replaced with the look of her taking in the gravity of the situation and with a little bit of resistance she nodded her head back at me, I closed the door until there was just a little crack big enough for me to see through.
On the counter awaited her an ocean breeze scented candle, halfway used from the frequent times my mom loved to relax in a bath with lights off and the candle flickering, burning the sides of the glass and giving off the scent of a nice day at the beach and a hint of smoke when blown out. Jeane picked up the cheap green lighter and flicked it with her thumb three times before a flame was in front of her. Lighting the candle, she looked at me one last time before she shut off the light. The bathroom filled with orange glow that blinked constantly, casting a shadow of her leaning over the tub to turn on the water. The tub water was tinted a dark yellow color as it filled to the perfect spot. Jeane's eyes watched the water as it become still and calm before she disturbed the peace. The water waved back and forth across the tub, splashing slightly against the sides having little droplets of water escape.
Her whole body was faced towards the faucet with her right hand resting on the edge of the tub with a delicate grip while her other hand rested in the water. Her lips parted after she cleared her throat. Was she stalling or did it really take her this long to do something? Maybe it seemed like ages because of what I thought I was nervously anticipating to happen. A few seconds passed and she began to speak.
"I feel your pain, I will take some, and with these tears our pain will be shared."
Her soft voiced bounced off the walls.
"I feel your pain, I will take some, and with these tears our pain will be shared."
She repeated with less hesitation this time around.
"I feel your pain, I will take some, and with these tears our pain will be shared.
I feel your pain, I will take some, and with these tears our pain will be shared.
I feel your pain, I will take some, and with these tears our pain will be shared."
Her voice started to echo louder. Her right hand gripped harder onto the bathtub.
"I feel your pain, I will take some, and with these tears our pain will be shared."
Jeane's face became noticeably fearful. What was she feeling or thinking?
"Dad, protect me." She whispered to herself, her voice sounding ghostly.
"I feel your pain, I will take some, and with these tears our pain will be shared."
Her knuckles were turning white while she gripped her hand harder against the white bathtub.
"I feel your pain, I will take some, and with these tears our pain will be shared."
Next her breathing started to become shallow. Shivers started to take over my body like I had been thrown into a cold shower. The hair on her arms stood up straight and she cringed as she arched her body forward as if to stop an unwanted touch. "Dad." She whimpered.
"I feel your pain, I will take some, and with these tears our pain will be shared.
I feel your pain, I will take some, and with these tears our pain will be shared."
Her eyes flashed open quicker than I anticipated, they were completely bloodshot. Her body relaxed and tears started to pour down her face heavily. Jeane looked straight at me through the crack in the door and cried, "Why do I feel like my heart is being ripped from my chest?" More of her tears dripped into the bathtub until they suddenly stopped like a light switch had been flipped. She wasted no time jumping out of the bathtub and throwing a towel around her soaked clothes. With one breath, she blew out the candle and mumbled a small goodbye to whatever she had left in the bathroom.
Jeane headed straight for my bedroom and didn't look back, not even a single glance towards my way. I walked in behind her with a simple question in my mind.
"What happened?" I asked.
"I don't.. I don't know." Her eyes looked anywhere but me, like she was afraid to. "I felt someone trying to touch me, I could feel such a sad but powerful presence, I could actually feel it in my heart. It was a heavy weight that I couldn't shake and all I kept doing was thinking of dad and it just seemed to get worse." She shook her head like she was trying to rid her body of all the horrible things she was experiencing. Sadness radiated from her eyes. It worked, it actually worked. I sat there in disbelief. I sat and watched my friend as she rifled through my closet to put on some dry clothes. After a few minutes of debating over which top she should wear, she threw on a black plain t-shirt with paint stains and sweatpants. Over in the corner of my room, her phone vibrated. Jumping on my bed, she reached for her phone on the night stand to see her brother calling her. Something in her face changed as she answered with a questioning, "Hello?"
She had the same look, the exact same look in her eyes I remembered seeing when I was little. "What do you mean?"
I was playing with markers drawing on my carpet even though I had enough blank sheets of paper around me. Faintly I could hear my mother's voice and quickly tried to hide my mess until I realized the tone was steady, it wasn't getting farther or closer to my room. And like the curious little human I was, I investigated. The door was slightly cracked to the bathroom and I remembered peaking in. "I feel your pain, I will take some, and with these tears our pain will be shared." Where I had originally heard it from. "Keep me safe." She squeezed onto the locket around her neck, it was a picture of my mom and dad inside, she was talking about him.
Eventually I walked back to my room desperately trying to clean the marker stains to no avail. I heard my mom walk out of the bathroom and to the room where my dad had been working on a project for work. And that's when I heard it.
Jeane screamed into her phone, "No!"
Just like my mother.
"He can't be dead." Like a saddened puppy dog she whined, "He protected me." Her voice trailed off.
Just like my mother.
My dear friend looked up at me, her eyes even more red than before. "My dad.. He um.. he just collapsed and died." She said it like she was trying to convince herself.
Just like my dad.
It worked.
All I could dwell on was the past years of friendship with Jeane as she laid her head in my lap and I carelessly caressed her hair. I thought of all that we had been through together. Some good times mixed in with harsh comments towards my mother's sanity and dad's death. For being a friend, she poked at the things that tore me down. She never knew what true sadness felt like. What loss felt like. What it was like to have a parent one minute and have them gone in the blink of an eye. Now I could see the real heaviness weighing on her like it did with my mom and with me as I grew up to understand what happened. I looked at the genuine tears flowing down her red cheeks, her eyes narrowed downwards and her lips in a constant pout I wasn't sure would go away for a long time. It was like her face had been in a state of drooping downwards. The salty liquid from her slightly closed eyes that had been shed from real feelings started to soak into my blanket. I stared at that stain as it grew larger and that's when I knew.
It worked.
Author's Note: So along with a new book I've been working on, I decided it was time for another short story. How'd you like it? Who's side are you on in the situation? Sorry for the lateness of uploads, I moved and I'm currently four and half (maybe a little more) months pregnant with my first kid and it's a girl. :) Thank you guys for your patience and support! You truly are the best.