Art I like Ground floor toilets
The door opens onto a small, dusty closet. It doesn't have anything inside. Not all mysteries have exciting answers.
You quickly do your makeup. The result is spectacular. Looking good!
Carefully, you use the paper towels to eliminate all traces of water from your hands. When you've done, you successfully dispose of them in the rubbish bin.
Despite everything, it's still you. And you look good!
You make your way over to the basin, then give your hands a short wash. Before long, they are sparkling clean.
You quickly go about your business in the completely conventional stall. That was easy.
For thousands of years, the twin lodestones, the double pillars, the dual diamonds, the binary barometers, of Western society: Jerusalem and Athens have achieved great things. War. Slavery. Oppression. Racism. Discrimination. But unfortunately, all things that are good must come to an end. And this injurious restroom is a symbol of the good thing that is Western civilisation coming to a complete standstill.
Soon, the West will be destroyed by the uncultured hordes. Cancel culture will cancel culture. The very concept of the West will be thrown down the memory hole (alluding to noted conservative George Orwell here, in a very original and creative move). Literally. They'll start making compasses with three points.
This thought is too great to bear. The end is coming near...
The cleaning staff soon arrive and chuck you in the trash where you belong.
Surprisingly, this bathroom is completely conventional. You know - your normal bathroom. Toilet stalls. Sinks. An drying apparatus. Floor. Roof. It's all there.
The mirror is foggy from the jungle air. You can barely see anything, let alone apply the correct products to the designated regions of your facial surface.
You use the provided paper towels to dry your hands.
Taking care not to slip on the floor, you make your way over to the basin. Before you know it, your hands are in immaculate condition.
With a single swing of its hands, the monkey scampers up the wall and out of your reach.
Unsurprisingly, the monkey resists all attempts at capture.
The climb is long and tiring, but you reach the top eventually. It seems to open onto a familiar sight: the museum lobby.
The trapdoor is surprisingly easy to reach. An access ladder pops down from the roof, hitting the floor with a thud.
You walk to the south. The access path seems to end suddenly, giving way to more sewage. Stiff luck. Well, until you notice the trapdoor mounted on the roof.
You arrive back where you started. The current of sewage seems to smell as unpleasant as ever.
You walk northwards. What a pointless effort. Your way is blocked by a metal grate. A rusted sign is attached to it: "WARNING! Alligator habitat".
You jump down into the stream of sewage. As much as the globules of waste seem profoundly unappetising, this is probably the quickest ticket out of this situation.
It seems like a particularly ferocious alligator disagrees though. She (it's the women's bathroom, after all) seems to think that you are the quickest meal available in this situation.
Flushing a monkey down a toilet bowl is no easy task. Especially when the monkey has noticed you trying to do so and removed itself from the toilet bowl. And even more so when said monkey has just flushed you down the toilet.
You arrive in a cavernous sewer. Fortunately, it seems to be made for human passage. Fluorescent lighting is mounted on the curved brick roof, and you seem to be sitting on a concrete path that sits beside a fast-moving torrent of sewage. Unfortunately, it still smells though.
The toilet seems to be polished to an extent hitherto unknown to mankind - especially when there is a jungle above. It is cleaner than the concept of cleanliness itself. Before long, the deed is done. All is good in the world.
... then suddenly, a howler monkey lands in the toilet bowl.
The bathroom seems to be the Atlantic Ocean - in a purely metaphorical sense. Large puddles of soapy water are all over room's various surfaces, and mops and rags are strewn around the floor. Nobody seems to be using them for anything though.
In fact, there's not really any mess to clean up at all. The only real thing that needs to be dealt with is the conspicuous lack of a roof.
For some reason, the top of the bathroom opens onto a humid jungle canopy. Other than that though, the bathroom is perfectly usable. On the left, there's a row of stalls, and to the right, a line of sinks.
The bathroom door appears to be marked with an "out of order" sign. Presumably, it is in the process of being cleaned.
It appears the female bathroom is out of service.
You try to climb out. It seems to be an impossible task, even if you use the handbasins as a stepping stool.
You climb down into the bathroom. It seems to be a conventional female lavatory, aside from the lack of roof.
As soon as you stick your hands into the water, you are torn into the current. Before you can drag yourself out of the soggy situation, you pass out.
You only venture through the rainforest for a bit, before it quickly gives way to an extremely rapid stream. You have no hope of crossing it, but it may still be of use.
You try to climb back up. At first, it seems pretty easy, but it soon turns out to be a hopeless endeavour. It appears you are stuck down here, as unwise as your past choices may be.
The howling doesn't abate, nor do the monkeys do anything else. Presumably, they can't distinguish you from an actual simian. Impressive!
You can't seem to go that way, as a massive panoply of vines blocks your path.
As you climb, you lose all sense of time and place. Soon, you tire of the idea of life itself. You have no energy left, and no choice but to release your arms and plummet to your certain death at the bottom.
Climbing the cliff seems like a really stupid idea, but you decide to give it a shot anyway. Just as you start hauling yourself up the rock face, a large boulder tumbles down the cliff.
In front of you is a towering cliff. As it is on a diagonal, your way is blocked: you can only really head north or east from here.
You start to get lost, and can't seem to find your way back. Just as you start to lose hope, you see a light in the distance.
The trees thin out dramatically, then disappear completely. Taking their place is row upon row of stumps. You have wandered into the middle of an illegal logging operation.
Before you can react, a man starts violently attacking you with a handsaw. You've worn out from traversing the forest, so you can't fight back, no matter how hard you try. Just as you pass out, you hear him yell a few words. "¡Oye! ¡Hay un árbol extraño en el claro!"
Sitting below you, submersed in the ground, is what appears to be a women's bathroom. Nobody's in there - actually, it looks like somebody was in the middle of cleaning it, but left for some reason. The exit seems to open into hallway that looks remarkably like the one you were in a moment ago. Given how unusual everything has been so far, you wouldn't be surprised if you learned it was the same place.
Slowly, the ground starts sloping downwards as you continue your hike. As you come to a flat patch of ground, you spot a bright yellow-white light in the distance. No matter how hard you try, you can't make out what it is.
The terrain begins to slope upwards. Before you can gain your footing, you slip and fall into a cavern. You attempt to get up, but it is of no use.
Around you coils a massive boa constrictor. It's too late to do anything, and you quickly lose consciousness.
As you walk, trees start thinning a bit. The sounds of the howler monkeys cease, only to be replaced by that of running water.
After walking for what seems like ages, you arrive at a particularly thick section of jungle - so thick that you have absolutely no way to get through.
Trekking northwards barely seems to change much. There's just more trees.
You arrive back where you fell. Now it's time to choose a better plan of attack.
Surprisingly, you land without issue, not sustaining any injuries beyond a few scrapes.
Beneath the towering foliage, the jungle is dark as night, and hot as hell. You can barely see where you've going, and turning on your smartphone light barely helps. To make things worse, you eardrums are under constant assault by what seems to be the screams of a thousand howler monkeys.
There's no chance you'll make it out of this rainforest.
You relieve yourself. Much better... until you realise that there's nowhere to wash your hands.
You attempt to do so, but it is a fruitless effort. The parrot can move in many more directions than you can. As you make one last pathetic humanoid attempt at grabbing it, you slip down into the jungle below.
You stay and listen. The bird is a great performer, a true virtuoso, and several of its avian friends come to watch. When it finishes, they clap using their wings, then all fly away. You cannot help but clap as well.
The bird shakes its puny feathered head. Seems like it won't listen to your human requests. Instead, it starts singing Mozart.
You try pummel the bird with your fist. Foolish idea. The bird has far greater freedom of movement than your hand. Just as you attempt to leave, it nips your elbow. Immediately, you pass out, as little to your knowledge, the bird is carrying an extremely potent blend of several deadly pathogens. Well, deadly to you. The bird doesn't seem to be at risk of dying.
"It was just a joke, you dunce", the bird responds, with irritating emphasis on the last word. You suddenly feel like a... dunce.
The bird responds. "Wow! A talking human!"
You exit the bathroom and go home. You've had enough of that stupid gallery.
When you sit down, you realise that you haven't really noticed anything else out of the ordinary. You decide to leave things be for now - hopefully, you won't experience any more symptoms. But there's a nagging voice in the back of your head that tells you that what you saw back there was real.
So...
You go through eight - maybe nine - different dream checks, but everything seems perfectly normal. Quickly, you realise that you aren't dreaming after all...
You try to remember techniques for exiting dreams. First, you look down at your hands. They look exactly as one would expect. Since you don't have a body of written text to read, you check your phone. Everything on it looks perfectly normal. Just as you come to the slow realisation that you aren't dreaming, a tropical bird quickly passes by your head. It whispers into your ear: "You've not dreaming!"
There appears to be a leak coming from one of the pipes on the roof. Unfortunately, this has rendered the room unusable: it looks more like the Amazon rainforest than a restroom. In a literal sense.
Tropical plants adorn granite formations that form the walls, with vibrantly coloured birds hopping between them. As for the floor, it is nowhere to be seen. In its place is a hazy swathe of jungle resting around ten metres below. You can't spot any bathroom fixtures though - unless you count the aforementioned pipe, which seems to be the only man-made thing around here. You don't know what to make of the situation.
Surprisingly, four different doors stand in front of you. Three seem to lead to a conventional restroom, being labeled with a respective gender, but the fourth is simply labeled "Mystery". No symbol, or any other indication of its purpose, adorns it.