I stopped in my tracks, the door shutting softly behind me. In a single moment the bathroom had gone from dirty beige walls and cracked and brown-white floor tiles, to crimson-red wallpapered walls with two thick tan lines running horizontally across them and on the floor, shining, black tiles with white hexagonal indentations. The overhead lights glowed a soft yellow, hidden behind thick, plastic panels. The ceiling of the bathroom, I observed in shock, was reminiscent of the Sistine Chapel; bodies, both clothed and naked, stood, sat, lay, flew, or leaned; some stretched wistfully towards each other, others embraced with intertwined, marbled legs, and others in battle, blood and silver rising over a myriad of twisting and broken bodies.

I felt the blood rushing from my head as I struggled in vain to grasp what had just happened. Was it an illusion? Was this part of the theme park? I stepped back, still facing the restroom. There were no longer, as there had been before, urinals lining the wall to my right. Instead there was a phone-booth. And opposite the wall with the phone-booth, where there had once been several stalls, there were now two, small tables that sat at odd angles, two chairs tucked in underneath them. The chairs had high, wooden backs with gold lacing running in blooming, curving designs.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

"Sir?"

Something touched my shoulder and I spun around to find a short, squat man in a tight-fitting uniform; the uniform consisted of a red, velvet coat, black charcoal pants, shining, polished dress shoes, and the most intriguing of all--a large, black insignia that was squarely embedded upon the front of the man's coat. It resembled the star of David (I later came to realize), except at the tip of each point there were two circles that sat on top, intertwined with both the point of the star and each other; at the middle of the star there was the side-profile of a face, a sharp, beak-like nose that bent downward, a prominent forehead, a sharp, jutting chin, and several horns protruding upon its head.

The small, rat-like eyes of the man searched my own. "Are you well?"

I tried to stammer out a response, but there was something in the beady eyes that caused me to fall silent. They were the eyes of a predator.

He looked me over from scrunched eyebrows. "Are you from the Squelich District? You're dressed funny."

"Yes," I said finally.

He nodded slowly, eyes on my feet.

I was wearing sandals, which was, I think, the appropriate footwear for a long day at the theme-park. "Are you with the park?"

He moved his eyes back up to mine. "The park?"

"An employee," I stammered, "with the theme park."

He smiled. "Yes. Yes, I am. Won't you come with me? The restroom is currently shut down due to maintenance."

I looked over my shoulder. "There aren't any toilets."

"Yes," agreed the man. "Thus the reason it is currently unavailable. Won't you come with me? I will take you to the restrooms we are redirecting others to."

Something about the man unsettled me--no, it wasn't something, it was how he spoke without moving, almost without blinking. He stared, only his lips moving and not a single bone in his body. "Just tell me the general direction and I'll find them."

He pursed his lips and finally blinked. "Of course, sir. Just follow me and--" suddenly the man leapt forward, almost impossibly so! Something hard connected with my left temple and I fell to the ground, my vision shaking violently and blurring. The glinting eyes of my attacker loomed large in my vision as the man crouched next to me. I felt a cold hand reach behind my ear and a ripping, rippling pain flew through my head and I knew nothing more.