Max pulled over to the run-down gas station. The moon stood high in the sky as he stopped the car. He doubted that they were even open but he was bursting to use the bathroom and the next gas station wasn’t for another 10 miles so he had to try. He clicked open the door of his car and stepped out into the cold crisp air. He took a deep breath before closing the door and locking his car. He looked in through the window, the lights were on and the sign on the door read open but the place looked abandoned. Dust was thick on the counter and mould had long since claimed the perishable foods.

He was just about to leave when he noticed a bright illuminated sign reading “Bathroom”. His gut dropped as he saw the sign but something was just so alluring about it that he found his legs moving unconsciously towards it. He pushed the door open and the lights flickered to life to illuminate the grizzly sight before him. 5 or 6 corpses lay on the floor, each in various stages of rot. 2 wore the uniforms of gas station employees while the other were dressed in regular clothes. The only similarity between them was that their faces were horribly disfigured and drenched in clumps of black, dried blood. He felt the fear in his body be forcibly repressed as he went to the urinal and began to use it, stepping over many of the bodies to get there. The sickening smell of the corpses seamed to repress his fight or flight response. He finished using the urinal and walked over to the sink.

All but one of them was shattered, the last one was covered in blood and had “break” and “shatter” written along it as he walked over to it. As he looked in the mirror he felt a pain in his head, like something trying to get out as he looked at himself in the mirror. He saw words written all over the cubicles behind him, all scrawled in blood. Phrases like “Smash it” “Bash it open” “Open your mind” and “give in” covered them. He began to see something moving in his forehead as his muscles seamed to instinctively try and move forward. He tried to fight the impulse as a voice began to chant to him from his mind. It spoke in a whisper, saying “bash your head in” over and over and over again. It began to chant faster and faster and the impulse got stronger and stronger.

The lights flickered as he lost control for a moment and threw his face directly into the mirror. It cracked from the force as his nose broke with a visceral crunch. He leaned back slowly, seeing his twisted nose in the cracked glass before he threw it right into the mirror again, feeling the mirror and his skull shatter in unison. He began to get more violent, bashing his head into the mirror again, and again, and again, and again and again and again. Until he collapsed on the floor, his brains were splattered across the shattered glass of the mirror that lay next to him, his blood coating the glass, sink and floor. He smiled as the life left his body. His corpse joining the pile of corpses. Awaiting the buildings next victim.