Close to Midnight by Mark Morris

Author:Mark Morris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horror; gothic fantasy; supernatural horror; flame tree press; speculative fiction; short stories; anthologies; horror short stories
Publisher: Flame Tree Publishing
Published: 2022-09-13T08:51:47+00:00

The Floor is Lava

Brian Keene

Mark was bleeding again. He knew that if he wiped and then checked it, the white tissue paper would be red with blood. But he didn’t need to do that. He could feel the wetness on the back of his balls and the inside of his thighs. He was pretty sure it was from his haemorrhoids, but Marsha thought he had an ulcer. Every time it happened – and he bled when he pooped about three times a week – he’d hop in the shower immediately afterward, spread his ass cheeks, and watch the red-brown water swirl down the drain until it turned clear again. Then he’d apply some ointment and wince until the burning and swelling subsided. The problem was, Marsha knew what those impromptu showers meant, and then she’d get after him to have a doctor check him out.

“You’re not a young man, anymore,” she’d say. “You’re almost sixty! You should be getting colonoscopies and prostate exams on a regular basis.”

And she was right, of course. Mark knew that. His father and his paternal grandfather had both had prostate cancer, and his maternal grandfather had died of colon cancer. But the latter had also had diabetes and the other two had suffered from early onset dementia, and there was no sign of either of those things in him. Every time Marsha brought it up, Mark complained to her that he hated the doctor, but promised that if it kept happening, he’d make an appointment. Then they went back to their lives, both enjoying their first full year of retirement, and Marsha would let it drop until it happened again.

Mark wasn’t lying when he said that he hated going to the doctor. He did. But he wasn’t being entirely truthful, either. Since turning fifty, he’d developed an all-encompassing fear of the doctor. He knew it wasn’t reasonable, but the emotion persisted just the same. He was afraid of what the doctor might tell him. Afraid that those genetic ailments might be present in his own body. Afraid of his own mortality.

But that fear was nothing compared to the terror and panic he’d been experiencing for the last half hour.

Ever since the bathroom floor had become lava.

Mark hadn’t pondered an explanation, because there was none — at least, not anything that followed logic or reason or science. Marsha had left the house for tea with her friends, and he’d finished his coffee, then come upstairs to use the second-floor bathroom. He preferred this one because they’d recently remodelled it, and the new brown tile was soothing beneath his bare feet. But at some point, after he’d sat down on the toilet and opened his TIME magazine, that new tile had turned red and orange and molten.

The first thing he’d noticed was the heat. Suddenly, he found himself sweating profusely, and felt his eyes and nose drying out. When he looked up from the magazine to check the baseboard radiator to his right, he’d discovered the change.

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