I’m a convention photographer
To preface, I’ve only been doing this for about 6 months. Every month I go to about two or three conventions for groups of old ladies that have nothing better to do than spend their husband’s money. So, not Comic Con or anything fun like that. I stay in fancy hotels and then go stand in rooms taking photos of said old ladies having lunch or talking for hours on end. I promise it sounds way easier than it is. It's a good job, and I love it. It can just drag on sometimes.
The day I first saw him was a normal day. Same as every other job I had done. I sat at my little black table amongst my printers, order forms, and photo cards as I drowned in the amount of photos me and my boss, Jay, had taken of the same event, of the same things, and of the same people. The familiar sense of monotony had my brain on autopilot.
It was no surprise when I had to use the bathroom after I downed a whole 20 oz bottle of Dr. Pepper. Sugar kept me from passing out since we were always on our feet so I made sure to always have a sugary drink of some sort on me. I’m also very small in stature and anemic so staying conscious is top priority.
I excused myself and made my way around the corner of the hotel hallway and to the ladies room while Jay took over for me. It was only about 10 feet from our table so I was sure I wouldn’t be gone long.
At first, It was as uneventful as a bathroom break could be. I did my business, washed my hands, and checked my appearance to make sure I was still within the dress code of ‘womens business casual’ and not ‘exhausted 24-year old photographer who would rather be watching paint dry’.
I fought with my hair pin for the third time before something moving underneath one of the stalls caught my eye. It wasn’t necessarily strange but I was noisy and something about it wasn’t quite right.
Firstly, I could see the person in the stall’s shoes. They were men’s shoes, which isn’t necessarily spooky or scary. It was 2024 and women could wear what they wanted. But it was a bit out of place since the ladies that frequented these conventions tended to be more conservative in values. Only every now and then would you find the occasional tomboy or lesbian at events like these. Either way, something didn’t feel right. Especially if I turned out to be wrong.
But I, keeping an open mind and optimistic outlook, returned to grooming myself in the mirror. Who was I to judge? In my free time I dressed like something straight out of a Tim Burton novel. I had no room to make assumptions of someone else's lifestyle based off-
Was that blood?
Not on the floor or leaking from the ceiling in the haunted, horror-movie style you were expecting, instead it dripped slowly and languidly from my nose and onto my dress.
I gasped and quickly snatched a paper towel to catch anymore blood falling from my face.
Why the hell did that happen? I never got nosebleeds. Ever. I couldn’t remember a time in my life that I had ever gotten one without an explicit reason.
“Fuuuck!” I exclaimed in anger. Of course this would happen. Of course some weird universal anomaly would happen to me right as I have all this work to do. Jay was probably wondering why I hadn’t returned by this point. Goddamnit!
I wiped hard at my dress with a wet paper towel in hopes to not have a stain. The dress was primarily black, but had white stripes that would definitely make the blood noticeable if someone stared hard enough. And I was around enough people for someone to notice.
“Shit! I can’t deal with this right now!”
CRACK
I jumped in fear as the loud, unexpected sound echoed through the large bathroom. What the fuck was that?!
I turned quickly, my eyes immediately searching for the source of the sound. It was a quick and easy find as the source was the same stall where I had seen the shoes only minutes ago. I stood frozen for a moment as I realized the door had been split in half and both pieces hung by the hinges and the door lock specifically. It was like crude, wood-splintered saloon doors had been installed.
I waited for a moment, unmoving as the hair on my arms rose. I felt like a rabbit waiting and listening for something. I didn’t really know what, but something.
My empathy outweighed my better judgement as I quietly called out into the now deafening silence. “Hello?”
I got no response. Just more silence.
“Are you-… are you alright?”
More silence.
I wanted to leave.
I should have left.
I should have turned on my heels and run.
But I remained there until something possessed me to move towards the stall.
One trembling foot in front of the other.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Hesitated step.
I then came to stand right in front of the stall, taking a deep, slow breath to prepare whatever I was going to see only to be met with-
Nothing.
Total and complete nothing.
The stall was empty. No man or woman in shoes. No absolute destruction of the stall or anything surrounding it.
Just nothing.
Nothing but the doors hanging on for dear life were evidence of what happened here. I once again froze. Despite the nothingness, I was still filled head to toe with terror, and it was worse now than ever. It was as if I had found something. Like I was standing face to face with Jeffrey Dahmer or the Exploding-Women’s-Bathroom-Stall-Door Slasher.
The terror left, but I remembered that I had my phone in a fanny pack around my waist and I quickly pulled it out. I don’t know why, but I took a photo and immediately booked it out of there. My feet carried me out so fast that I almost slammed into the photo table.
“We need to call hotel security.” I told Jay breathlessly. I held onto the table as if it were going to fly away “We need to call them now.”
Jay looked confused, looking in the direction of the bathroom “Are you alright? What happened?”
I tried to catch my breath and speak at the same time which only caused them to cancel each other out “There’s a- there’s a something that- I don’t know?! Something-!“ I struggled to articulate a sentence in fear of sounding stupid, but I knew I would already sound insane so I just went for it “There’s a something that blew up a door!”
Jay looked even more confused now “Excuse me?”
I groaned in admittedly misplaced frustration. How the hell could he know what I was yammering about “There is a thing- a person? And they blew up a door in the bathroom. Like, blew it in half!”
He shook his head, trying to put the pieces together and failing “Um, ok… he blew up a door. How?”
It was my turn to be confused “What? Didn’t you hear that?”
Jay’s eyes darted back and forth the way one does when a crazy person is talking to them “No.”
“How the fuck-“ I felt my frustration grow. I wasn’t angry he didn’t understand, but I felt like I was crazy and that I was getting crazier by the minute. I pulled out my phone and pulled up my last photo, immediately showing it to him.
Jay’s face fell and his eyes widened “Holy hell. You’re right. Someone split that thing right down the middle.”
I smiled in relief. So I wasn’t crazy. It did happen.
I let out a small laugh to release the tension in my chest before looking at the photo myself.
And the tension quickly returned.
I inhaled breath so quickly that I choked on my spit and began coughing. Why hadn’t Jay said something?
The photo that I saw was not the same as the one I thought I was showing Jay. In the photo I saw, there was blood covering everything. The stall, the toilet, the toilet paper, the tiled wall, everything. Everything was covered in blood. And standing right in the middle was a man that looked as if he’d been flayed. His eyes were black and bulging and his teeth were closed. It looked like they had been tightened shut. The muscles of his body were covered in both fresh and heavily coagulated blood. And on his feet were those same Brown leather boots. He wore nothing else.
Jay called hotel security, and they called the police about the situation. They searched security cameras for any sign of a vandal, but came up with nothing. They even questioned the woman that had been in the bathroom prior to me, but cleared her very quickly since she was in her 70’s and bound to a walker. Then, they questioned me since I was the only real suspect at that point.
I told them the truth from start to finish. From the moment I left the photo table to the moment I showed Jay the photo. They also looked at me like I was on one and even did a once over to make sure I wasn’t high. They cleared me though since I was 100 pounds soaking wet and a young woman. Sexism for the win I guess?
That night, Jay and I went out to eat like normal, except we didn’t really say much to each other. Despite being 30 years my senior, we usually talked a lot. We would banter back and forth with all the inside jokes we had accumulated over the months and laugh about it. But instead this night was quiet.
I laid in bed, my headphones in as I kept thinking about the situation. The nosebleed, the stall, the photo, the blood, the man, the fear. I realized that the whole time I stood in front of the stall: he stood directly in front of me, completely unseen and only a foot or so away. I felt like I was gonna vomit. Jay was across the room on the other bed, peacefully sleeping.
I finally was able to begin falling asleep around 1 am and turned on my side. My eyes began to close slowly and were almost fully closed when I felt the cold, dreaded feeling of blood dripping from my nose and onto my white pillow.