"I'm going in," Farooq said.

"Give him a warning so he's decent," Smooshy cautioned.

"F decent," said Farooq, "Dude's been in there for an hour."

Viral checked the hotel rooms clock radio. "More like 35 minutes," he added.

"Space-contorts in direct proportion to my sphincter when I got to go," Farooq said.

"On the count of three we're coming in there!" Alan shouted. He tried turning the knob on the bathroom door. Locked. He shrugged. "Worth a try," he said to Smooshy.

"Plank, this is your final warning!" Smooshy shouted.

Viral had a bad feeling creeping along the back of his neck. "What if he's not all right?" he asked.

Smooshy, Alan, and Farooq shared a look; Alan scratched behind his ears. "Should we call for help?" he asked the others.

"I don't see how that would serve anyone's interest more than me kicking in the door frame," Farooq said.

"Well, for one," Alan said, "V and I would still be able to poop with a degree of privacy. You know, if we kept a door that functioned."

"Drastic times," Farooq offered.

The tingling sensation at the base of Viral's skull wormed its way between his ear canals. The mustard seed of an idea began to sprout. "Schroedinger's cat," he said to himself, beneath his breath.

Alan looked at Viral. He was about to speak when Smooshy stopped him with a hand on his arm. "What do you mean?" Smooshy asked.

"I don't know," Viral said, scratching at his psoriasis. "But something about this scenario seems prophetic."

"It's literally just an Italo-American bogarting a John," said Alan.

"You guys, I'm turtling," Farooq offered.

"Shhh," said Smooshy. "I was feeling something, too."

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Carnitas?" Alan asked, pointing at Smooshy's stomach. Smooshy, touching her abdomen, wondered.

"Gas makes a sound as it moves through our intestines," Viral said to himself, aloud. "We can't see it, but we can hear it."

The four of them kept quiet and heard the running of water in the bathroom. "Is he showering?" Alan asked.

"Maybe he slit his wrist," Farooq suggested.

"Maybe he's done both," Viral said.

"Or neither," Smooshy added. Viral knodded.

"Are you two doing a bit?" Alan asked.

Viral walked toward the window. The black of night had fallen on the distant scene of outer Wilmington, but the dim parking lamps of the Ramada lot cast an orange haze over the hotel's surrounding block. In the shadows Viral could see the skeletons of pushers, users, suckers, and Johns skulking like spirits across the Styxx.

"A virus gives no evidence of its tenure in a cell until neutrophils give rise to symptoms," he said thoughtfully.

Moving toward the gravity of his thought, Smooshy approached his reflection in the window. "Like bombing atoms with neutrinos to see what may come out," she said.

Viral turned to see her nearing. Her eyes were big, her expression open, welcoming. He felt encouraged to continue; the thoughts were no longer only his. "If we break the pieces of the capsid," he began...

"Then we can see what's inside," she finished.

"Or hear," Viral added. Smooshy smiled as the realization of their shared conjecture landed in her head, unwrapped and bouyant like a river safely landed on a far-flung distant planet.

Alan looked toward Farooq. "It's definitely a bit," he said. But Farooq's face had gone full plum tomato; his senses had turned completely inward to balance the calories burned by his exhausting restraint. The dam had broken. It was time to shit, get off the pot, or kick the motherduckin' door in.

"Hiya!" he screamed as he thrust his fists into the air and pulled his elbows hard and fast into his waistline. Alan bucked involuntarily as Farooq's weight tipped backward on to the heel of his right foot. His left knee nearly reached the tip of his downward curling nose before erupting with the coiled extension of the barrel of a Beretta.

Just in time Alan raised his hands before his face and turned away as Farooq's flying foot sent splinters of formica and wood spraying throughout the hotel room.

Viral barely heard Smooshy's shriek beneath the echoing implosion of the door into the bathroom. Steam ushered forth like the mouth of a geyser, an ancient Pharaoh's tomb unearthed and spewing forth its curses. Wrapped in fog, Farooq vanished, Alan rushing in behind him. Smooshy fanned the air before her face, while Viral watched frozen.

Moments passed before the steam dispersed and Farooq reappeared in the bathroom's doorway.

"What is it?" Smooshy asked.

Blankly, Farooq said, "Nothing." Absently, he walked toward Alan's queen-size and say, massaging his swollen ankle. Viral brushed past Smooshy's shoulder as he passed and peered into the hazey white that lingered in the bathroom. Alan looked around as if searching for a lost appendage amid shell-shock.

Water began to flow over the edge of the bathtub. Viral turned the faucet to stop the rush. Alan poked the detritus of the bathroom's broken doorframe with the toe of his LaMello.

The bathroom was empty. Farooq was right. The sight betrayed nothing. Plank was gone. If he had ever really been there at all.