I pulled the mop up out of the murky soap-water, wrung out the excess, and sploshed it onto the ground. Some people must not know what the rugs just inside every entrance to this building are for. Muddy footprints and gunk smeared all over the yellowing linoleum of the bathroom make for an ornery me today. I push the mop back and forth across the ground as the strands of yarn slowly pick up the mess.
I place the mop head back into the bucket and push it down the hall.
One bathroom down, one to go.
I knock on the wall outside the men's bathroom, wait for a somebody's in here, but get nothing. I venture in, pushing the mop bucket in front of me. I immediately notice the floor, it looks like somebody dropped a couple of red velvet cupcakes on the ground, poured some water on them, and stomped and smashed and danced around in the mess with their mud-caked irrigation boots. I didn't even know we made red velvet cupcakes anymore. But what else could have made the mud this color?
I walk in further, I look up to evaluate the rest of the room, and how long it will take me to clean it. I stop in my tracks, my stomach does a front flip, and I furrow my eyebrows in utter confusion. The wall, the sinks, the counter, the mirror, the soap dispensers, all speckled with blood. Or what looks like blood, no, I'm sure its blood. I stand there, completely still, my ears pricked and my eyes wide waiting for some masked murderer to jump out from behind the door, slit my throat and leave me for dead. But the room is quiet, I turn my head to the left, and to the right. No one else is in the bathroom. No corpses in the stall. So what the heck is this stuff all over the place? I stand back to observe the room in its entirety. It looks to me like somebody dipped a brush in watery red paint, stood back about four or five feet and just flicked, flicked, flicked, spattering red blood-esque dots all over the wall.
I think, if I were to come up with an excuse to not to my job, this would be the best one. But the bathroom must be cleaned--and it is my turn. Ugh.
I pull on three plastic gloves over each hand--just to be sure--and grab my spray bottle full of cleaner. I spritz the whole room over, twice, every square of tile, every inch of linoleum, and the great glass mirror on the wall. I grab my towel, and scrub out all the blood from inside the cracks, stuck to the caulk around the porcelain sinks, and speckled across the soap dispenser. I wonder what exactly happened here. I think about all the different scenarios and events that could have happened to result in this disgusting spray of human juice, and I scare myself into thinking every person who opens the door is a cutthroat criminal out to butcher me and stuff me into the paper towel dispenser. But then again, there's no key to that dispenser, there hasn't been a way to open it in a month or so. Still, the villain might find a way--
I realize of course, that a vicious murder couldn't have been committed in this bathroom without anyone knowing or hearing it. There's a man at the desk down the hall, there are people eating lunch just outside. I realize I'm only being dramatic. I want to go home as soon as possible, so I buck up and stop messing around. The bloody-muddy floor is the last thing on the to-do list. I pick up my mop, wring it out, and thrust it underneath the sink where I scrub back and forth. I still wonder though, what goes on around here. And if it was nothing, who in their right mind, as a responsible adult, would leave their gore all over a public bathroom? Back and forth, back and forth. I draw the mop out from underneath the sink, and stuck between the strands,
a single blood-soaked Bugs Bunny band-aid.
Yeah... who knows what happened today.
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