3_____________________________________________________________________________

Strange noises were coming from the Bathroom. Not for the first time. Not for the last.

Baz finished eating his sandwich while disinterestedly shopping for robotic vacuum cleaners on his tablet. He would never buy one. the expense would be too great and as he understood it one had to clear the clutter of the house in order to give the robot a clear path. With Ron around this was an impossibility.

Baz heard another whimper from the bathroom. Sighing deeply, he rose and knocked on the door.

‘You alright?’

More whimpering, this time a startled whimper.

‘Have you fallen or something?’ Baz was remembering the mingled odours of weeks before, when he was half sure he sensed the smell of new death and half sure the smell was of fresh groomed Ron. ‘Should I call an ambulance?

Silence.

Baz rolled his eyes. It wouldn’t be the first time Ron sulked in a locked room like a jilted princess, which was most likely a fair description of him at the moment, Well, at least the jilted part. Tonight’s prey had probably called off their date thought Baz, and it was too late to find another. No doubt he was crying and masturbating whilst the porn he had running on his telephone competed with his image in the mirror.

Inside the bog, Ron was indeed experiencing a moment of sexual torment. But not the one simulated in Baz’s imagination; Ron was in a darker place.

Ever since he could remember Ron had prided himself on never getting an erection that he did not put to good use. From danger wanks in the back seats of busses or his parent’s car, to his undignified habit of leaving parties with the last, least attractive remaining single girl.

This was different though. Baz had awoken a mighty desire in his loins, but like most men who turn up the collars on their polo shirts and don hair gel and cologne recommended by famous footballers when venturing on a night out, Ron was unfashionably homophobic. He would never admit it of course, let alone allow these sentiments to colour his conversation, but nonetheless the surprise of his flatmate turning out not to be magically transformed into a woman, but instead transferred into a transvestite hammered at the foundations of his being.

Ron couldn’t cool himself down. What troubled him was the fact that Baz with tits had a penis, a fact he found on a conscious level repulsive, in no way cooled his lust.

At last it ended the way it always did in contests between Ron’s brain and his balls. The balls won out. He stared red eyed into the mirror, leaning with hunched shoulders on the counter top, Again he was aware of behaving in a cliche’d manner while on his own in a bathroom. He made up his mind. He would try to get his newly attractive flatmate to give him a blow job. But he would not in any event reciprocate, and if anal sex was involved, he would be the one doing it and he would politely decline any request for a reach around. Ron completed the Hollywood cliche by splashing yet more water on his face, drying it with a towel in an exaggerated downward motion then he boldly opened the door.

Now that he had made a decision Roy had regained his purpose. His confidence. His yang. He strode with confident masculinity again into the kitchen to finish the job he had earlier begun.

Baz was frying an egg and what passes for bacon at their local shop. Suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder gently but irresistibly turn him around. His instincts, honed from years of bullying in his formative years, caused him to drop to the ground instantly, covering his head as he fell. After a brief moment, having received no verbal or physical assault, he recovered from this protected fatal position and looked un to se Ron backing away from him in fearful confusion.

‘Jesus Ron, you know I’m jumpy. Could have spilled my supper. Could have burned myself!’

‘But… you were…’ Ron trailed off. Before him was a Baz with no tits. He was again cast into confusion, but this time it was a short incapacitating shock followed by a dullness in which he could function, rather than the extended crisis he had experienced earlier.

‘You were a bloody lady boy five minutes ago. What the fuck!, you playing dress up?…Where did they go… But you had tits Baz, TITS!’

‘Get ahold of yourself Ron.’

At that Ron felt again a feeling of cinematic cliche not dissimilar to the feeling of deja vu sweep over him.

‘You were crying in the bathroom again. You’ve been stood up. Don’t make it my problem.’
Baz was clearly rankled by this incident and, seeing Ron’s confusion for once was taking the offensive in this confrontation.

‘Maybe you should have bashed your brains out on that sink the other week.’ Baz added.

“Maybe it would have been best if it’d been you under that bus!’

The two flatmates glared at each other angrily for a moment then something extraordinary happened: A look of realisation spread across Ron’s face and as Baz gazed still angrily on, his licentious flatmate for the first time found the plot before he did.

‘Baz, last time I saw you, you were a trannie. You had tits Baz, and nice ones… then I go back into the bog and out I come and it’s the same old you!’ Ron was now staring at Baz with the expectant half grin of a trained dog awaiting it’s reward.

‘I was making eggs Ron.’

‘No, it’s like the other week, remember when I though you were dead? when I heard the purple bejumpered yellow legged man had spilled that bus? Then you were back! this time, you were half girl, now you’re back!’

Baz was about to put an end to this but two things stopped him, firstly, Ron had returned to form, in other words an unstoppable force, and as Baz was by no account unmovable object he began to accept that no mater how crazy it was he would have to feign agreement with Ron’s ravings.

The other reason he stopped is because he remembered the smell. The scent of death he had felt balanced with Ron’s unique choice in cologne. He though of Ron’s story of how he had hit his head on the sink that morning.

If Ron had died there would have been a smell,

‘My tits’ said Baz ‘What were they like?’

‘Fantastic’ said Ron earnestly.

‘Did I tell you that I smelled your corpse the day before you thought I got hit by a bus?’ That was when you hit your head in the morning. It smelled like you died in the bog, but when I opened the door and saw you it was gone’

Roy furrowed his brow and for a moment was silent. He had always been a zealously selfish man, if he could kill himself as a gesture of fealty to himself he would gladly commit the act. However, unlike Odin, the killing of himself would be just that. Therefore, he ignored Baz’s implication that whatever was happening involved him too, and concluded the whole mess must revolve upon his poor ineffectual flatmate.

‘Baz. I think the Bathroom is trying to change you.’

‘No, Ron, listen. I think it’s anything that goes in there. But last time you went it, you came out and I’d changed. And you went back in and I’d changed back. But the other week, with you’re newscast about the bus hitting me, and with me smelling you dead, it was the bog were everything went all wiggly. It goes both ways don’t you see?’

Ron grabbed Baz by the shoulders and looked him in the eye. Baz looked back and recoiled as he saw the madness within them. He shuddered... and sighed in resignation. he had seen this before.

‘Do you know what this means? we have to test it Baz. We have to put someone in there.’

Baz did not like where this was going.

‘I can still meet my tinder. I’m going to bring her back here Baz. We’re going to have a lot of fun, but at some point she’s going to use the bog. And we’re going to see what happens.