by Steve Gergley
I arrive at your office at 5:43 a.m. and sit in the walnut chair in the north-northwest corner of the room. The room is exceedingly warm. Oily sweat drenches every centimeter of my $12,222 Brioni business suit. You clomp through the door at 1:22 p.m. and usher me into your luxury bathroom. There you hose me down with icy water and smash a hole in the concrete floor with a sixty-pound sledgehammer. For the next 173 minutes, you tug me down the steep, wrought-iron steps of the spiral staircase hidden under the floor.
At the end of this dizzying descent, the staircase terminates nine feet above the ground and spits us into a twenty-one-foot pool of clear, warm water.
Spotless porcelain tile lines the walls and ceiling. I swim in throbbing exhaustion toward the silver ladder on my right, but you grab me by the belt and pull me in the opposite direction, toward a clawfoot bathtub standing beside a glassless, floor-to-ceiling window. I beg you not to take me there. In my dreams I’ve seen a horrific, alien figure inside that bathtub. But you ignore me. You pull me out of the water and roll me onto the tile. You peel off your dripping pantsuit and unfold a basalt-black towel. You wrap the towel around your saturated head and heave me into the bathtub underneath you.
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Steve Gergley is the author of a bunch of books and a lot of weird writings of an indeterminate nature. His most recent book, There Are Some Floors Missing, was published by Bullshit Lit on February 20th, 2026. He tweets @GergleySteve. His fiction can be found at: https://stevegergleyauthor.wordpress.com/. He's also the editor of scaffold literary magazine.