The bathroom looked like it had been thrown up after an overdose of music videos. The smoky grey floor contrasted with a blazing enamel ceiling in which a row of small bowl-shaped crevices harboured dim bulbs. The walls were panelled with black marble run through with brilliant white veins that extended their thin crooked reach across the room. A row of neat cubicles with wood-pattern doors stood along one wall. The other wall was divided in half. The far end was taken up by half a dozen urinals like the lids of a pharaoh’s sarcophagus. Six feet of stocky white porcelain grinning in a mouth-model’s row; angular gums of black marble dividing them. The near-end of the bathroom contained a row of square, porcelain sinks accented in steel, sitting before large rectangular mirrors that reached for the ceiling. Stout steel legs supported the squat square tables they sat in. Next to them, a bathroom attendant lounged against a wall.
He took a urinal near the end. In a stall behind him, someone inhaled deep through their nose. He stood and stared at the wall above the urinal for a while after his piss had finished sloshing down the drain. The cubicle toilet flushed. A guy in a green blazer and gelled orange-flecked blonde hair walked out, ignored both of them and headed straight through the door. The bathroom attendant coughed. Caleb pulled himself away from his own mental noise and realised he was standing in a public bathroom staring into space with his dick in his hand. This probably looked fucking weird. At least the attendant hadn’t offered him cologne yet.
In the mirror over the sink he scrutinised himself. The bruises from being knocked around trying to get out of the train station were mostly faded, he’d done a bad job with some concealer, but they were downplayed well enough.
“You’d think,” the guy by the sink drawled “that a guy on his salary would have a better grasp of basic hygiene…”
Caleb nodded vaguely as water splashed over his hands, “Yeah.”
“Do you know how many dirty bastards wander through here on a daily basis? Piss or shit, and then just walk out like germs don’t exist?”
It was a weird opener as far as bathroom attendants went. “I don’t” he said, pumping the soap dispenser, not looking over at the guy.
“A lot. I wonder if any of them get sick…”
“Hopefully.”
The bathroom attendant let out a short hollow laugh. “Hopefully.”
Caleb moved to the dryer, bracing for the inevitable line about smelling good and getting his dick wet, or how every contribution helped. But, looking out of the corner of his eye, there was no haphazard assortment of knock-off cologne.
“You want a line…?”
Not a bathroom attendant, then. Caleb ignored him, finished drying his hands.
“You want a line?” the guy by the sink asked again.
Caleb looked over at him. He was pale, coal black hair in a sculpted slightly messy style, he was cultivating the image of having just rolled out of bed at any time. Bloodless lips in an ironic lopsided smirk. Wearing small round black shades. A loose white shirt, a casual red blazer. A delicate silver chain draped around his neck, disappearing into his shirt. His shoes were somehow simultaneously understated and gave the impression of being extremely expensive. He smelled like cinnamon.
“You look like you need it,” said the guy.
Caleb looked at himself in the mirror again. The bags under his eyes and dry skin gave him a comparatively drawn appearance in comparison to the other attendees. He might have been a weirdo hanging out in a conference centre bathroom, but he wasn’t wrong. “Nah, not tonight, thanks.”
“Sure?” the guy said. “It’ll help.”
He thought about it. “I’m sure.”
Outside, he headed back towards the balcony, and stopped before a set of double doors that led to a large empty room he didn’t recognise. Shaking his head,
he turned and retraced his steps back to the bathroom door, and past it the other way. He took two turns he didn’t remember taking and stopped again. He considered turning back, but that hadn’t helped the first time, and so he pressed on, taking a left at a junction and then another left at a crossing. When he came to a third T-junction he stopped and span in a circle. The empty grey corridors stretched out into the monotone distance. He pressed on, his shoes clapping on the enamelled gloss floor like a judge’s gavel. He looked at the walls for sign posts or directions, but they were bare. He flicked a dry tongue across his lips and turned back. He took a breath, started back the way he’d come, made ten paces and stopped again, turned back and retraced to his first point.
The image of the submarine in the psycho-identity of the public consciousness is curiously reflective of its conceptualisation as a mechanical apparatus. In its submerging beneath the waves, its perceptual role is mirrored, passing broadly unconsidered until surfacing from the unconscious.
Some minutes later he wandered down another identical corridor, and stopped in front of a pale grey door. He looked through the thin rectangular window set into it. It revealed a patternless blue carpet, a grey blank wall on the immediate left and a similarly blank wall running along the back that stretched off to the right beyond his vision. Three rows of plain utilitarian desks stood in front of ranks of uniform chairs. It was empty. He tried the large handle, pushed but the door clicked against its lock. The walls either side of the door were unmarked. Frowning, he turned back to the corridors.
Studies of autonomous physiological responses to media revealed scenes involving submarines emerging from the ocean triggered a spike in body temperature in the average viewer, with a five percentage-point increase in female over male viewers. Follow-up studies utilising infrared thermal imaging revealed localised patterns of heat in the cheeks, chest, and genital regions. Physical responses consistent with mild arousal were noted in a quarter of participants.
At another T-junction there was a row of plastic strip signs on the central portion of the wall. The first fifth was shaded over with baby blue, the rest stark white. They were all blank. He chose the right hand hallway, passing more rows of faceless grey doors. He pulled one half-heartedly as he passed, but it was also locked.
On Placement that morning, someone had been convinced that people needed to test the drinking water. They were convinced that there were drugs in the water that had been deliberately introduced to it in order to pacify the population. They’d made a long string of posts, interspaced by seemingly random photographs of a derelict building with crumbling ceilings and mould-streaked walls.
Dr. Elliot Hedges completed a meta-analysis drawing together the data from boat injuries resulting in hospitalisation. The data indicated a heightened response and memory relating to location of injury in the respective watercraft. Patients were less likely to feel trauma if their injury occurred above deck. The bow of the craft suggested a lower severity of negative response related to physical trauma. However, patients who suffered injuries below deck were correlated with higher prevalence and severity of negative response to similar injuries. The prevalence and severity of response increased in intensity in those participants who were injured below decks and towards the stern of a watercraft.
The path branched a second time, he took another right turn and unexpectedly came to a stairwell. There was another blank plastic sign stuck too high up one wall so he had to crane his head to see it. Descending, he found himself inexplicably uncomfortable. Some imperceptible nuance of the construction set his teeth. The walls seemed too close, the stairs too shallow and not tall enough, there seemed to be twice as many steps as necessitated by the space. One steps at a time was awkward and so he tried for two at a time and that was equally as bad. He descended four flights found himself facing another faceless T-junction. With no reason to break the pattern he went right again.
Dr. Angela Mason et al. studied previous research and fabricated a new series of tests, studying the overlap between media response and nautical trauma. She constructed a set of nautical injury simulations and an accompanying set of short five-minute videos presenting a range of nautical-themed trauma scenarios. Dr. Mason had subjects watch the videos while monitoring heart rate, body temperature, and brain activity. Participants were asked to fill out a multi-choice questionnaire directly after each video, accompanied by a short written exercise in which they described their thoughts and feelings regarding each piece of the media.
It occurred to him, as he rounded the corner of a hallway that turned pointlessly back on itself, that he had been wandering for a long time and hadn’t seen a single other person. Surely the building couldn’t have been that large? He slowed his pace a touch, took deeper breaths, trying to stave off the pervasive sense of unease that dogged him. The air tasted like floor polish.
Across all participants, responses to simulated injury below deck and to the stern correlated with higher scores across heart rate, temperature, and brain activity. Of note, two male participants experienced spontaneous orgasm while watching the provided media. The first, File 3A, and the second, File 8H. Subsequent participant questionnaires also indicated a significant increase in positive response, correlating with a significant increase in inclination towards positive answers across the board. Participants displayed an increase in positive answers overall. Participants also displayed a greater willingness to add detail and personal notes in the written portion. The written responses were an average of one hundred words longer in below deck stern-activated participants.
He didn’t see the abrupt stairwell as he followed the corridor into a sharp left, preoccupied with look for any indication of direction or location. His foot missed the top step, landed awkwardly on the lip of the second, his ankle buckled and twisted. He yelped. His body lurched after his spasming leg, he threw his arms out, fingers clawing silent air. His stomach performed ballet as he flopped like a burst bin bag. The walls merged with the ceiling. The ceiling slid into the stairs. The stairs slid into him the way a freight train slides into an abandoned car, and he slid into nothingness.
Words and Chaos 
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