Who: Eric and Astrid with a brief appearance of Mae What: Astrid is convinced the sewer cryptid is in her bathroom When: Backdated to 3/14 Where: Astrid’s place Warnings: Nope
Eric glanced at his late lunch and shoved it to the corner of his desk with a shake of his head. All this talk about toilet cryptids and grey secretions really did wonders for making his appetite go away. Not like he had time to eat even if he wanted to. As disgusting as this new development was, he was curious to see what was breaking into people’s homes and better yet finding out why it was stealing medicine and medicine alone. Was it some strange primal instinct or was it sentient and had plans for everything that it had stolen?
When one of the interns mentioned it being in her bathroom, Eric jumped on the chance to go. As promised, he left his office and headed for the university to meet up with her. Before heading out, he looked up her network profile and had to take a second look at her name. Astird. That couldn’t be right, could it? It had to be a mistake but on the off chance it wasn’t, he decided to stick with her last name. No sense in making the girl feel bad over something she had no control over.
“Ms. Rhee?” Eric leaned over to open up the passenger door for her and motioned for her to hop on in. “When did you start to notice something odd in your bathroom?” He’d read over the other entries and one of them mentioned strange sounds coming from the plumbing and Eric would take a guess it was the cryptid moving through the pipes. “Have your pipes made any gurgling noises?”
“Ummmm,” Astrid thought out loud as she slid into the passenger’s seat and shut the door. “Kind of? It’s kind of like blub, blub, blub?” She mimicked the sound to the best of her ability. “Or maybe like glub, glub, glub? Or like gleb, gleb, gleb? It definitely is like an -ub sound, though. Is that too different from gurgling? That’s kind of what gurgling is, right?”
It didn’t occur to Astrid that maybe he didn’t need to know exactly the sound her toilet and pipes were making, nor did it occur to her that he would probably hear them himself when he was in her bathroom. A student of science, Astrid was of the belief that more information was better than not enough; the more detailed, the better.
Perhaps that’s why she talked so much.
Eric’s eyebrows slowly moved up as she described the sounds coming from her bathroom. It was more detail than he’d asked for but he appreciated her eagerness to be as helpful as possible. “I can’t say whether that’s the same kind of noise the others heard before their bathrooms were broken into but noise did seem to be a factor.”
He drove out of the parking lot and followed the directions she pointed out along the way. “Has this been going on for long or something you just noticed this morning? The posts haven’t given much information on the time between hearing something and then finding their medicine cabinets raided and grey slime coating the toilet and sink.” If at all possible, Eric wanted to find out how long it took the cryptid to swipe what it was looking for.
“I noticed it last night! I don’t think I heard it before that.” There was a brief pause as Astrid wracked her brain. “Our pipes make this high pitched whine when we use the hot water sometimes.”
She paused to point to the left and give Eric some additional directions to her shared house with Mae.
“But,” she continued, “It’s been doing that since before we started getting reports of the cryptid, so I don’t think it’s related.”
Last night to at the very least this morning. That was longer than Eric would have thought but it was possible the cryptid was waiting for the right moment to come out and steal what it wanted. It wasn’t as though noise coming from the pipes made anyone think to check for a sludge monster.
“Probably not,” he agreed. “But since you heard something last night, we’re likely going to find grey slime and your medicine cabinet empty.” With Astrid in school and her house empty, the cryptid had to have made its move already. “On the upside, we’ll finally have a sample of it.” That got his spirits up. He was eager to finally study the infamous grey slime.
He parked his car on the curb right in front of Astrid’s house and grabbed his kit from the backseat. It was the same one he usually used to collect samples from bears and would do in a pinch. “Lead the way, Ms. Rhee.”
Astrid led Eric to the door, fumbled around in her backpack for her keys, and opened the door to find her roommate in the living room.
“Oh, hey!” In hindsight, maybe she should have given Mae a head’s up. “This is Dr. Keen,” she gestured over to Eric with her thumb. “I work with him at Temperance and he’s here to look at our bathroom in case…” - she chose her next words carefully - “there’s something going on with our pipes.”
Astrid turned to Eric. “Dr. Keen, this is my roommate, Mae.”
It was hard to tell from behind Mae’s slightly Hannibal Lecteresque Korean beauty pancake mask, but the look she gave Astrid was one of betrayal. She was still sitting on the couch, eating cereal in ratty gym clothes she wore in middle school while watching One Punch Man on Netflix. The theme song made for a fairly awkward soundtrack to her humiliation.
Keeping her arms and cereal close to her chest, she forced herself to smile (awkwardly) and wave at one of her father’s annoyingly hot co-workers.
“Hi! Nice to meet you.”
Eric only just managed not to wince when he caught sight of Mae. It wasn’t the face mask or the clothes... well it was actually both. He understood wearing comfortable old clothes at home but like most people, he wore them knowing that no one else would ever see him in them. Some random stranger barging in likely wasn’t part of Mae’s plan.
“Nice to meet you, heard a bit about you from your dad.” He flashed her his own forced smile. She didn’t have to say anything but Eric felt the tension in the room. Not wanting to prolong the moment more than he had to, he gentured ahead to Astrid. “We should go to the bathroom and check on those pipes.” The sooner he got his sample of slime, the sooner he could get a better picture of the cryptid they were dealing with.
“It was good to see you, Mae.” He did wince a little at that.
“Yeah,” Mae responded quick, forced smile still in tact as she climbed off the couch and immediately retreated towards the stairs. “You too! Thanks for checking m- thanks for checking out the pipes! Good seeing you!”
‘Shame’ wasn’t in Astrid’s vocabulary, thus she remained blissfully naive to the awkward shift in the room. “Okay, I’ll talk to you later!” she called out to Mae before turning her attention back to Eric.
“It’s this bathroom here,” she led the way to a door down the hallway. Opening said door, Astrid welcomed Eric into the messy, shared bathroom of two college girls too busy to tidy up after themselves following each use - hair and skincare products littered the countertop, flecks of dried toothpaste stained the sink, a towel was draped haphazardly over the shower. Astrid pointed at the toilet, which seemed fairly innocuous, save for the low water level. She pushed down on the handle and the water rose in the bowl before slowly draining with, indeed, a blubbing sound.
“Yeah!” she exclaimed, “that’s the sound. Weird, right, Dr. Keen?”
The cheer in Astrid’s voice didn’t go unnoticed and Eric stared in a little surprised amazement at the back of her head. She hadn’t really noticed? He shook off the thought and expression when she turned her attention back to him. Time to look at, hopefully, some grey slime.
He set his kit down when he entered the bathroom and frowned when he saw the sink. It wasn’t clean but it wasn’t covered with slime either. He really thought the cryptid would have made its move already. He walked over to the toilet and watched as Astrid flushed and… Eric let out a slow silent sigh.
He was disappointed and maybe a little amused at the fact that she thought a bad flush and a burbling noise was the cryptid. He rubbed his chin and waited a beat before shaking his head. “Not that weird, Ms. Rhee. The good news is that the sound isn’t the cryptid so your medicine cabinet is safe. Bad news is your toilet sounds backed up. If it’s nothing worse, a plunger should help.” He offered her a small shrug, plumbing wasn’t exactly his specialty.
“Whaaaaaaat? No way!” Astrid had been so sure that the origin of her mysterious bathroom sounds had been paranormal in nature - though why she had convinced herself of such was unclear. Maybe she wanted to be helpful. Maybe she had hoped to see a cryptid. Maybe she just wanted to feel involved.
She looked from Eric to the toilet, as if something would change. As if some gray sludge monster would suddenly burst out of the toilet and crawl toward her medicine cabinet.
“Maybe the cryptid is backing it up?” She asked, almost hopefully.
Eric was pretty good at telling people no or why they were wrong but with Astrid, it was harder to do when she wasn’t being stubborn just for the sake of it. He almost wanted to agree with her because of her painfully earnest expression but then he’d just be wasting both of their time. He paused for a moment then looked around the bathroom.
“Do you have a plunger? If it’s something normal, it should fix the problem and if it’s the cryptid we’ll hear it moving.”
It was the closest compromise he could come up with without outright agreeing with Astrid or telling her no again.
Astrid was visibly placated, nodding excitedly and looking around the corners of her bathroom until she found the plunger. “We actually do!” She went and fetched it for him.
“We accidentally flushed a tampon down there during the summer. Everything was flooding out and it was a mess.” She added, completely unnecessarily. And continued talking- “Is it weird that I kind of hope it is the cryptid? It would be kind of cool, right? To see one in person? It’s so fascinating the stuff the caldera can do - You know, making monsters and giving people powers. It’s like we’re living Teen Wolf, but it’s better because it’s real life.”
Eric took the plunger with a quiet thanks and rolled up his sleeves. “It’s not weird,” he said as he lifted the toilet seat, getting used to Astrid's chatty nature. It was a lot to take in but better than the perpetual cynicism some of the other kids her age had going for them. She wasn’t jaded and shit on everything. It was strangely refreshing.
“Teen Wolf? Like the Michael J Fox movie?” He had no idea it had been adapted as a show and barely remembered watching the original movie. “And if we have any luck, we’ll find the cryptid. Either here or somewhere else.” He didn’t want to get her hopes up even higher.
He put the plunger in the toilet and steadily started working with it. The little bit of water that was in the bowl sloshed around the rubber end but other than that, he didn’t hear any sounds coming from the toilet or pipes. He worked it until the water drained away even further inside.
“Moment of truth.” Eric pulled the plunger out and flushed the toilet. The water flushed down like normal then filled up the bowl like it was supposed to with no sludge monster in sight or sounds of movements coming from the pipes. “Sorry, Ms. Rhee. It’s just a backed up toilet.” He gave her a sympathetic look. “But it’s good that you’re staying vigilant. Better that you think it's a cryptid than not and get caught off guard.”
Astrid looked crestfallen at the un-extraordinary cause of her toilet mess, but pulled herself together rapidly with Eric’s praise. “That’s okay, Dr. Keen. Thank you so much for coming by to take a look! I’ll keep an eye out for any other sign of the cryptid and definitely let you know if I hear anything else.”
She took the plunger from him and returned it to its completely arbitrary corner. “And thanks for fixing our toilet! That was so super nice of you!”