Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 79253 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 396(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79253 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 396(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
He taps at his chin “So we’re looking for writing that is…eating something?”
“We might be at a dead end.” I sigh and pocket my phone.
“Not necessarily.” Harrison examines the lock of the first stall, turning it to ‘occupied’ and back. He then looks at the second one for a few seconds before moving on to the third.
There’s a knock on the door. A woman’s voice I don’t recognize. “Hello? Is the bathroom closed?”
I swallow. “Just a minute. There was an incident. We’re doing some cleaning.”
“Is that Bianca in there?”
“N-No.” I lower my voice. “But how sweet of you to think I sound like her. It’s…Hilda, the custodian. I’m cleaning up. Someone got sick in here.”
“Oh, heavens. How long will it be?”
“At least ten minutes,” I say. “Maybe you could use the men’s restroom.”
“Not on your life. I’ll go ask Rouge if I can use her restroom in her office.”
“No! No! Don’t do that!” I think quickly. “If you can just wait a few minutes, we’ll be open momentarily.”
“Okay… I guess I’ll wait.”
“Great. Thank you.” I turn to Harrison. “Can you hurry it up?”
“I think I might have found something.” Harrison exits the leftmost stall, the one against the wall. “Look here.”
I cross. “Make it quick. We’ve got someone waiting.”
“I heard. But look.” He turns the lock on the stall to ‘occupied’ and points. “See here? Could these be little teeth?”
I point. On the right side of the ‘occupied’ end of the lock, there are a few tiny triangles. Hardly noticeable unless you’re looking for it.
“And these aren’t on the other two stalls?”
“Correct. If the word ‘occupied’ has these little teeth, then it kind of looks like it’s eating the word ‘vacant’ when you turn the lock.”
I blink. “The writing is…ravening.”
“Indeed.” He grins.
“Oh, my God. Did we actually figure it out?”
“I don’t know, but we should check this stall out from top to bottom.”
“And quickly”—I glance toward the bathroom door—“before Ms. Whoever outside decides to call Rouge for help.”
“Right.” He gets on his knees and looks around the toilet. “Anything odd?”
“No,” I sigh. “It looks like a regular toilet to me.” I look it up and down, from the bottom of the toilet to its bowl to its tank on top. I even remove the top to check the flushing mechanism on the inside, but everything looks like it should. “Maybe we were seeing things with those little teeth.” I rub at the back of my neck. “It seems like every time we get some momentum, we end up right where we started. Maybe this is all a wild—”
I stop as I examine the lever in front of the tank. I’ve never noticed before, but in tiny cursive writing it has the words “Flush Me” on it. I check the other toilets. They don’t have the writing on the lever.
I walk in and flush the toilet, expecting something crazy to happen.
And the toilet simply flushes.
Damn it. Just like I said. Every time we…
But of course the nothing would be revealed if you flushed the toilet the regular way, by pressing the lever down. Then every single woman who came here and did her business would open some secret door revealing all of Rouge’s deepest secrets.
I squeeze my eyes shut and think.
And the cool voice of my sister floats through my brain.
Here at Aces Underground, we pride ourselves on the weird and wonderful. Here we believe that turning the known upside down reveals the hidden.
My God. It’s not just a motto. It’s a clue.
An ordinary person would push the lever down to initiate the flushing mechanism. But an extraordinary person, who, as my sister would say, would thrive in this environment, would flush by pushing the lever up.
I do so, and a second later a groan echoes from the wall behind the toilet.
“Holy shit!” Harrison exclaims. “I think we figured it out!”
The walls give way to reveal a hidden crawlspace above the toilet, small enough for one person to go inside.
My heart pounds, matching the rhythm of the twitch of my eyebrow.
What we find in this crawlspace is going to change everything.
Just like the lever on the toilet, everything will be turned upside down.
I’m terrified…and excited.
“Looks like there’s only room enough for one person to check it out,” Harrison says. “You figured out how to open the door, so why don’t you do the honors?”
I swallow down my nerves. “All right.” I turn on the flashlight of my phone just as there’s another knock on the door.
“Will the bathroom be open soon?” The same woman as before.
“Yes!” I call back. “Just five more minutes.”
“All right! Thank you.”
“Better make this quick.” I hoist myself onto the top of the toilet and Harrison helps me up into the crawlspace.
It’s dark, so I shine my flashlight around. The crawlspace leads to a small room, maybe five feet by five feet. Concrete walls, and the only object in the room is a small table. I look it over. It’s a regular folding table, the cheap kind that would stick out like a sore thumb in the delicately furnished environment of Aces Underground.