Mime Time

Jacob, as he often had to do at 3 in the morning, needed to pee. He threw the soft comforter off his body and swung his pajama covered legs over the bedside. The carpet was soft against his bare feet, and his ankles were cold in the wind coming in through his bedroom window. His feet actually had a strange flow of cold air swirling across them. He stepped up, and stretched out his arms into his dark bedroom, and began feeling his way through the dark air. He could never see a thing on his nightly escapades, so he had developed a flawless movement system of muscle memory to navigate his blind vessel through the hallways to his bathroom. Ha, I've gotten quite good at this, Jacob thought to himself. That was until he bumped into a wall. The wall tonight, however felt warm. It's placement tonight, along with its shape, were equally irregular. Did the wall jut out or something in the middle of the night? Or are you just losing your touch? Jacob pondered as he continued to move silently through the darkness.

The apartment was remarkably quiet tonight. Normally, Jacob's dog, Biscuit, would be stamping up and down the halls with his pitter-patter feet, but tonight it seemed like he had turned in earlier than usual. "Oh Biscuit?" Jacob clasped his hands together as if he was yelling, but he whispered instead to avoid disturbing the other tenants. Just on cue, he felt something licking at his leg. "Oh, that's a good boy, just making sure you're alright."

Jacob had finally made it to the living room. He felt a cool breeze on his neck as he entered, the rhythmic flow of the wind caressing his face and neck in chilly air. The bathroom was down the hall, only a few paces away. He had grown accustomed to weaving through the furniture in the darkness, scuttling around chairs, and expertly dodging the stool he kept in the middle of the room. Jacob counted his paces in his head, timing the beats. He lifted his leg over the stool as he continued counting, feeling the circular top brushing against his foot as he sleepily dragged it over. Then Jacob felt another stool. Not even two paces away he felt another stool with similar shape, height, and size hit against his shin, sending a wave of discomfort through his body. He only owned one stool, and any other object would not create the same sensation, and he knew because he had bumped into both of them. They were both stools, or at the very least, something of an oval shape with a rounded top and going approximately up to his knees. But the stools were not copycats, they had distinct differences. That's what made Jacob start to sweat. He kept going, focusing on the task at hand. That being taking a piss. He stepped into the bathroom, and felt the floor against his bare feet. He fumbled for the light switch, throwing his hands around until he heard that click and light filled his retinas. The click came eventually, but it was still black as night. The floor was also wet, being equally strange. He thought it was water from a shower, but then he remembered. He hadn't showered since yesterday morning. The liquid was something else. Then licking at his feet came again.

The bathroom was smaller than normal. Jacob could feel the claustrophobia seeping into his pores, oozing into his blood, and crossing into his mind. Jacob walked over to where he remembered the toilet being, but he moved with fear and hesitation, doubtful of not only his perfect system, but his own home. He pulled off his pajama bottoms, and relieved himself. Jacob tried to hurry himself. The bathroom was cold, cool air circulating rhythmically in a way that the A.C. couldn't imitate. The floor was wet, with a substance that was thick and smelled sickly and diseased in a way that water in an apartment like his never did. So Jacob hurried. But then he stopped. He heard the toilet swallowing. Tearing through the air like a bullet was the sound of something licking its lips and swallowing, panting along to Jacob's nightly ritual. Right where Jacob's toilet should've been. Jacob shit himself. Right onto the floor. He dropped a whole deuce right onto the linoleum. And that's when his linoleum started to squirm.

Jacob felt the irregularities in his flooring with a greater precision now that it was moving and shaking with a disgusting flow. Moving and shaking, it was like a whole earthquake relegated to just his floor. His feet were soaking wet with what Jacob now assumed was blood, being in the freaked out mental state he was in. He sprinted across the apartment floor in the dead of night, too terrified to call or scream for a neighbor. If he even had any left. But, his worry of crashing into a wall was quickly put to rest. Because he tripped. He felt his foot sinking into the floor, a wet and slimy hole in whatever surface he had been treading on. His foot was caught in a vice-like grip between two serrated edges, and a long, strange mass of meat hitting against his toes, cleaning out between the grooves. His foot was getting wetter by the second. Soon, his hands got the same treatment, getting soaked in the strange pits that have since risen out of the floor, and turned into strange, intangible shapes. His hair was wet. Streams and jets of liquid covered his body. His whole form smelled putrid at this point, sickly sweet and oh so warm. Then, like a miracle, the lights came on. But Jacob wished they hadn't.