Crawlers

7:52pm

There. Ben's maroon school jacket was going to need a visit to the dry cleaner's and he was giving off a strong whiff of vanilla, but at least he'd managed to get the worst of the goop out of his hair. He took his head out from under the hand-dryer and looked in the mirror.

He was standing, alone, in a gents' toilet on the Barbican foyer's lower level - the nearest washing facilities he'd been able to find after his dripping and ignominious exit from the theatre. The yellow-shaded fluorescent strip lights buzzed overhead, flickering.

Look at this place, Ben thought. Even the toilet walls were made of concrete - great panels of it, looming inwards, making the space seem narrow and claustrophobic. What with this and the impressions he'd had of the rest of the Barbican so far - the pulsating carpet, the empty corridors deadened into silence now the performance was underway - the whole situation was beginning to remind Ben of something. It took him a while to work out what, but when he did, he forgot about the ice cream and smiled.

Games. The place reminded him of games: specifically, old-school first person shooters - the ones where you're running down corridors and being attacked by monsters. That was what walking around the Barbican felt like. Ben's grin widened as he let his imagination run with the idea.

If this was a game, your classic survival horror type, the room he was standing in would have a monster in it. Something or someone would be lurking in the cubicles, would crash through the door or drop from the ceiling and try to eat his face, or-

His grin froze. The washbasin mirror was wide: in the corner of the reflection in front of him he'd seen movement.

Ben turned. He stared. He blinked. But he saw nothing.

Idiot, he told himself. He turned, pushed open the heavy swing door and stepped out, his thoughts going back to the gorgeous girl in the theatre.

Behind him, something moved again.