The locker room door was closed. It didn’t have a doorknob, instead, it swung inward when you pushed on a steel plate about mid-chest high. It also had a metal splash guard on the door’s base. For some reason, it was painted red. I pushed it open, slowly. The room was about half lit. Max had set up the locker room with economy lights that turned themselves on and off based on a motion sensor. The half-lights meant that something had triggered them, just not something that was person sized.

“Hello,” I asked. “Anybody here?”

There was no reply, so after waiting a minute or two, I stepped inside. When I did so, the lights brightened automatically.

“Hello?” I asked again. “Anyone? Anyone?” I said, channeling my inner high school teacher. Still clutching my hammer and my bucket, I walked further into the room. The first part of the room was set up as a locker room with lockers that you could put coins in to lock along with wooden benches in front of them. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, most of the lockers were free. They didn’t have keys, you registered your combo when you paid the money. If the locker was free, a green LED was lit above the top, if it wasn’t, a red one. I ducked down and looked under all of the benches, but there was nothing there.

“Hello?” I asked again.

From the shower room, I heard a very faint squelching noise. The bathroom was the next part of the locker room. Individual stalls and some urinals, six stalls and eight urinals made up this section. Just in front of this section was the sink area. This was just a bunch of white, enamel sinks in front of a mirror with a steel shelf in front of and below the mirrors, useful for holding your toothbrush or shaving gear. For some reason, I started to feel like the blond in a horror movie. I figured if this was a movie theater, people would be hollering, “Stop! You idiot! You’re gonna die!” Of course, the reality of the apocalypse hadn’t really sunk in yet. I started toward the showers, making sure that I checked each of the stalls before I passed it.

Bam! Bam! Bam! I kicked open each stall door, holding my hammer handy. But nothing was there, although in the stall closest to the locker area there was a lot of water on the floor. It looked like someone had reversed the flushing action of the toilet. Fortunately, it was clean. I mean just water and, even that, was clean. I also checked out the waste paper bins, I was determined that nothing was going to sneak up on me.

“Hello?” I asked again.

Still nothing. Memories of some action movie came to mind and I moved to the wall next to the doorway to the showers. I’m sure I would have looked better with a gun, but I had my trusty hammer in hand. I sank down to my knees and darted my head around the corner and back. Nothing. I looked again, this time slower and still saw nothing. Finally, I stood up and stepped around the corner and into the doorway. The room was wet from the last trucker that had taken a shower, it might have even been me from my pre-shift shower. It smelled slightly moldy, like a locker room shower always does.

I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The room was a little bit foggy, not much but you could tell someone had run the water there not too long before. It was set up with four large metal poles that had three shower heads each spaced about a third of the way around the pole. Separating each of the shower heads into its own little cubical were some stainless steel walls. Each of the cubicles had a shelf to hold soap and shampoo and a couple of hooks to hold a robe and a towel. There were no doors, but they were spaced so none of the cubes was directly pointed toward each other, giving you a little bit of privacy. That meant that if I wanted to check them out, I had to circle around each pole.

I started around the first pole, the one closest to the door on the left-hand side. I made it completely around it, nothing. I started on the second pole in the back left of the room when something hit me in the head. It felt like someone had made a water balloon out of really sticky vinyl and thrown it at my head. Hard. And after a minute when my skin started burning, I changed the water in the balloon to acid.

“Holy Flip,” I half screamed, half mumbled. My mother had a thing about cursing and she had convinced me that my dad didn’t curse either, so … besides, it’s hard to scream when you’re on the floor of a shower trying not to pass out.

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I rolled over just in time to see this lime green ball bounce in place twice and then shoot towards my head again.

“Holy Crap!” I yelled and rolled over and under the shower partition. The little walls didn’t go all the way to the shower floor, they stopped about a foot to a foot and a half above it. I heard the ball thing slam into the partition wall and then it fell down on my left ankle which was still outside. I couldn’t pull it in fast enough. My skin immediately started to burn even through my blue jeans.

I pulled my leg the rest of the way inside, screaming while wailing away at the now attached green lump around my ankle. Each time I hit it, I saw a little flash in the corner of my eye. I also saw my health was decreasing – rapidly. After I figured out that I could display the HP or health of other folks, I decided to do the same for me. Also mana points and Stamina points as well as Qi Points. I wasn’t sure about what the last one was yet. When I looked at the green ball, I saw that its badge said, Acid Slime, Level 6, Hit Points 65/80. But even looking, I was pounding away on it.

I looked at my health and it showed no numbers, except the red bar, was over half gone and was dropping which came as no surprise to me since I could feel that slime eating my leg.

I stood up, turned on the water and started bashing the slime into the wall of the partition. The partition rumbled like thunder from the blows and the steam from the shower water slowly started to reduce the visibility. I was yelling now, pretty non-stop, “Oh God! Oh God! Oh Crap! Oh God!” With each yell, I’d smash the slime into the wall. I saw its health dropping and finally, when its health reached 40 points, it let go and I punted it with all my might out of the cubical. I think the running water was diluting its acid attack. My health wasn’t great either. I was down to about a quarter of my health bar.

I ducked back in the corner farthest from where I’d punted out the slime and panted, really loudly, really quickly. My chest felt like it was on fire and my leg felt, even under the water, which I had turned all the way to cold, felt like someone had taken a power sander to it. “Argh!” I yelled. “God Bless It! Argh!” I was really regretting my decision not to cuss about then. My bucket had fallen and rolled up next to the partition. I spied my blue Dr. Love gloves and grabbed them and pulled them on. And put on a face mask too. ‘You can’t be too careful,’ I thought.

“OK, alright!” I said. “You can do this!!” trying to psych myself up. I picked up the plunger in the hand that was empty and peered around the corner of the partition. No slime. I stuck my head completely out and looked around, but it wasn’t here anymore. ‘Slowly,’ I thought. ‘Slow and careful wins the race.’ It’s amazing what crap you can think of when you’re trying not to panic.

I inched out from the partition, ducking and swaying, trying to find the slime. “Here, slimy, slimy!” I said under my breath. “Come to daddy! I won’t hurt you!... I’ll fricking kill you!” But no slime appeared. I made it completely around the shower room and nothing.

Meanwhile, the apocalypse counter kept spinning down. It now said 00:52:56.

“Monsoon!” I heard Tanya’s voice from outside the bathroom door. “You alright in there? We heard some yelling!” she said.

“I’m fine. Stay outside! I’m trying to track something down. Get something to protect yourself with!” Just then I heard the squelching noise from the locker room area. “Get away from the door!” I yelled as I ran toward the noise.

I finally saw the slime. It was moving toward the bathroom door. As I ran through the bathroom, it bounced and slammed against the door, probably expecting it to open, but the door only opened inwards, so it hit and fell back onto the floor. As I ran closer I saw that it was starting to pour itself under the bottom edge of the door. There wasn’t much space, maybe about an eighth of an inch or less due to a metal and rubber scraper that had been installed along the bottom of the door to keep in odors and steam. The front edge of the slime was slimming down while the back edge was buckling up. Inside of the fat part, I could see a clear-ish blob, almost the size of a walnut.

“Oh, no you don’t,” I yelled as I heard both Tanya and the new girl, I was never good with names, yell, “Oh my God! What is that thing!

I dove across the floor, and slid into the door, slamming it into its frame, dropping the plunger with my left hand and grabbed the slime’s fat body section right around where I saw the walnutty blob. I started squeezing with all my might, while pulling on the slime and pounding on it with the hammer.

“Ahhh!” I yelled again, but not in pain. The gloves were working, the acid didn’t penetrate them.

“Are you alright?” I heard Tanya yell again. “Monsoon! Monsoon! Are you alright!”

I didn’t answer. I was busy bashing the slime and squeezing it like I wanted to make orange juice out of it. I finally felt the walnut-like section kind of pop and with that the slime quit moving, quit trying to climb up my arms toward my face and kind of dissolved first into a watery mess, then into nothing as the mess just seemed to vanish, leaving only, of all things, what looked like an iron skeleton key.