There are no chupacabras in the restroom [Octagonal Beasts]

Because there are no chupacabras in the restroom, she is relaxed and at one. This glaring absence of chupacabras makes it easy to open the door and walk in and even to be alone in there. They simply don’t exist, you see. And let’s say they did…

It’s quiet in here and minty in smell and minty is the light.

But look let’s just say that they did exist, it would be out in the country, where there are plenty of goats to suckle on. The only people who see them – who WOULD see them – are old cowboys, who see a lot of things, a lot of crazy things and only some of the things they see are real.

And these cowboys are very far away, also. Off in Sonora. Not in Tijuana.

Rosalita takes one shiny patent leather shoe and pushes the door of the cubicle open. It’s peppermint. That’s the specific mint. She has it.

She expected the door to swing wide open. It swings only about 20 centimeters before stopping silently.

She keeps her foot in the air. She is stuck in the moment of uncertainty. If she changes nothing, maybe nothing will change and eventually someone will come in the room and it won’t matter so much whether there is a chupacabra in there or not.

Won’t someone please just come and make things not matter?

Please come.

Her leg trembles like atoms.

A hiss comes from behind the door. A sucking hiss.

She turns and runs and hears barking, like if a donkey barked, and she hears skittering and she hears the sound of a big splash like a long tail thrashing into the toilet bowl.

Why is this room so clean? Why is the floor so clean and so slippery? Why does she run and run but go nowhere? Why are her legs so soft and numb. She is a dancer. She has strong legs. But they don’t move.

What they do is bend and she falls on the floor and she covers her arms over her head and maybe he will just chew her arms off.

He strikes.

The Hernandez sisters come in and find her. The Hernandez sisters are notorious liars and/or dreamers. There account is unreliable. Rosalita will have to tell people that again and again for the next few weeks.

Their account is that they came in and the room was empty except for Rosalita who was biting at her own arm and whose mouth was red like a tomato full of teeth and that’s why the blazer was ripped open.

Rosalita knows that she is ruining her life (again) but she tells the truth. It was a big claw that ripped her open and that the restroom window should not be open so how do you explain that, how is that explained?

After he sews her up they ask Dr Pacheco and he says, “What…do I look like Quincy?” and he acts like it is a big deal for him to explain that this is a TV show about a forensic pathologist who is more like a Sherlock Holmes but of course it is really just a great chance to remind everyone that he got his degree up in the USA.

The nuns come to visit her at home the next day. They come in full costume. They read their exorcism books the night before, but that was really more because even the life of a nun needs a little spice.

Really it is just a little chat about the devil in general and the chupacabra in specific and how they would prefer it if she could be more on the lookout for the devil and less on the look out for the chupacabra, which is just a scaly kangaroo and furthermore is not real.

She nods and receives the ghastliness of nun hugs in return.

She survives five more such attacks before graduation and – naturally – this changes her.

~ by yearzerowriters on November 7, 2011.

3 Responses to “There are no chupacabras in the restroom [Octagonal Beasts]”

  1. cool story. very strange but i like it

  2. Great stuff.

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