The Loo
D.G
The road was endless.
No lights.
No signs.
Just dark sky and desert dust, the kind that clung to windows and lungs.
He hadn’t seen another car for hours.
When the gas light blinked, he pulled over at the only place left on the map, a nameless station squatting in the dark like it had been abandoned mid-century and hadn’t realised it yet.
The fluorescent above the door buzzed but didn’t flicker. It hummed steadily, like it was thinking.
Inside, the air was still and thick. Shelves of ancient snacks, a cooler humming too cold. Behind the counter, no one.
He needed the loo.
The clerk’s bell didn’t summon anyone. He waited, then followed a cracked sign at the back: RESTROOMS → The hallway was longer than it should have been. The walls narrowed. The air changed.
He opened the door. It was clean. Too clean. Stainless steel, white tile, one stall door closed. No smell. No sound.
He tried the stall next to it, empty.
The closed one had no feet beneath it. But it wasn’t locked.
He reached out.
Paused.
Then knocked.
Nothing.
He opened it.
There was a toilet. That’s all.
But the bowl… it wasn’t porcelain.
It pulsed.
Slightly.
Like a throat.
He stepped back. The door slammed behind him. Lights off. Then the hum returned. The toilet flushed itself.
The sound wasn’t water. It was breath. He reached for the door. It didn’t move. Something scraped the floor.
He turned. The stall was open again.
And something was rising.
No eyes. No shape. Just motion. Just suction. A spiral pulling memory. Pulling sound.
He screamed.
The loo inhaled.
And the door opened for the next visitor.
No clerk ever came.
But the loo was always clean.