Chapter 2: The Familiar Lick

Sleep was not a refuge; it was a series of feverish, disjointed nightmares. Alex hadn’t even tried to use his bed. He’d spent the night on his threadbare couch, fully clothed, staring at the closed bathroom door as if it were the gate to hell itself. Every groan from the building’s ancient plumbing, every distant siren, sent a jolt of pure adrenaline through him. The phantom cold spot on his calf throbbed with a memory his mind desperately tried to reject.

He must have dozed off at some point, because the grey light of dawn was now filtering through his grimy window, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the thick, humid air. His body ached. His head pounded. The oppressive heat had only worsened overnight, turning the apartment into a stagnant swamp. He was sticky with a film of sweat, and the thought of putting on his work clothes in this state was nauseating.

He needed a shower. The thought was both a desperate craving and a source of profound dread.

“It was nothing,” he whispered to the empty room, the sound of his own voice startlingly loud. “You were exhausted. Heat exhaustion. It causes hallucinations.”

He repeated the words like a mantra, a shield of flimsy logic against the encroaching madness. He’d spent the week in an over-chilled office, then walked into a furnace. The sudden temperature shift, the fatigue from the trip—it was the perfect recipe for a sensory misfire. A pressure change in the pipes had probably pushed a clump of hair or some other gunk against his leg. That’s all it was. It had to be.

Fueled by this fragile self-deception, Alex forced his stiff limbs into action. He walked into the bathroom, his heart hammering against his ribs. In the flat morning light, the room looked mundane, almost pathetic. The cracked tiles, the rust stains, the faint smell of mildew. There were no monsters here. He knelt, his knees protesting on the cold linoleum, and peered at the tub.

The drain was just a drain. A simple circle of chrome, dulled with soap scum, its small holes offering only darkness. He reached out a trembling hand and touched the metal. It was cool and solid. Nothing more. He felt a wave of relief, so potent it left him dizzy. He had imagined it. It was the only explanation that didn't shatter his understanding of the world.

He was a rational man. Alex Mercer, data-entry clerk, lived a life governed by spreadsheets and predictable outcomes. There was no room in his world for solid things to emerge from drains.

He stood up, a shaky confidence returning. He was going to take a shower, get ready, and go to work. He was going to reclaim his routine, his normalcy. He would conquer this fear with the sheer, boring power of the mundane.

He stripped off his sweaty clothes, dropping them in a pile, and stepped into the tub. He positioned himself deliberately at the far end, as far from the drain as possible. His eyes remained wide open, fixed on that dark circle of metal. He reached over and cranked the cold tap, flinching as the pipes gave their familiar, guttural groan.

Water sputtered, then gushed from the showerhead. It was cold, sharp, and blessedly real. Alex let it run over him, his tense muscles slowly beginning to unclench. Each second that passed without incident was a victory. He was fine. See? It was all in his head. A ghost of a smile touched his lips. He was just an overworked, overheated guy in a crappy apartment.

He reached for the soap, his eyes never leaving the drain. He began to wash, his movements quick and efficient. He wouldn’t linger today. Just get clean and get out. The water sluiced over his skin, the familiar sensation a comforting anchor to reality. It was working. The fear was receding, being washed away with the grime.

Then it happened again.

It started at his ankle. A flicker of contact, so light he almost dismissed it. But it wasn't a flicker. It was the beginning. It wasn’t the solid, cold press from the night before. This was different. Warmer. Softer. And it was moving.

A slow, deliberate drag began to slide up his skin, tracing the curve of his Achilles tendon.

Alex’s breath caught in his throat, a strangled, silent scream. He couldn’t move. He was paralyzed by a terror so absolute it felt like his veins had been filled with ice. His meticulously constructed wall of rationalization didn't just crack; it exploded into dust.

The sensation was horrifyingly, sickeningly familiar, yet utterly alien in this context. It was wet. It was yielding, but with a horrifying texture. It was like coarse-grit sandpaper and wet leather, rasping against his flesh. It moved with a confident, exploratory laziness, inching its way from his ankle up to his calf, to the very spot it had touched before.

The water from the showerhead beat down on his head, but he no longer felt it. The entire universe had shrunk to that single, violating point of contact. His mind, scrambling for a comparison, for any frame of reference to make sense of the impossible, landed on one with a sickening lurch.

It felt like a tongue.

The realization hit him with the force of a physical blow. A long, broad, impossibly powerful muscle was methodically, possessively, licking him.

A raw, animal sound tore from Alex’s throat. He fell backward, his limbs flailing, his back slamming hard against the tiled wall. He scrambled wildly, trying to get away, his feet slipping on the wet porcelain. He crab-walked backward out of the tub, his legs tangling in the cheap plastic shower curtain and ripping it from its rings with a series of sharp cracks.

He collapsed onto the damp bathmat, naked and shivering uncontrollably, his body slick with a mixture of water and cold sweat. He stared at the tub, at the drain, his chest heaving with ragged, panicked sobs.

The water was still running, drumming a steady, indifferent rhythm. But the drain was no longer just a drain. It was an orifice. A mouth. And the pipes that ran through the walls of his apartment, the building he lived in, were not veins of copper and lead. They were a digestive tract. And he was just a morsel, being tasted by something vast and ancient and utterly, unspeakably hungry.

His spiral into paranoia was complete. This wasn't a hallucination. It wasn't a trick of the mind. It was real. A living, breathing entity was in his pipes. An entity that could reach out and touch him. An entity that had just tasted him.

He lay there on the cold floor, the ripped shower curtain draped over him like a shroud, his mind a whirlwind of terror. He was alone. Utterly and completely alone with this impossible secret. No one would ever believe him. They’d call him crazy. They’d lock him up.

The feeling of isolation was as terrifying as the lick itself. He couldn't do this by himself. He couldn’t live like this. He needed help.

With a surge of desperate energy, he crawled out of the bathroom, away from the sound of the running water, leaving a wet trail on the floor behind him. His eyes fell on his phone, lying on the small end table by the couch. His hands, shaking so badly he could barely control them, reached for it. There was only one person he could call, one person responsible for the building, for the pipes, for the thing living inside them.

Mr. Henderson. The landlord. He had to believe him. He had to.