The Horror (Part 2)

My shower is non-traditional by western standards. On a good morning I'm 6'2" and can sit in the tub with my knees pulled up to my shoulders. The water head is connected by hose to a spigot-switch on the bathroom sink: 12 o'clock for shaving, 6 o'clock for bathing. Now the tub itself rests above the plastic floor by a half hand or so and what I hadn't ever wondered was "How'd they run a drain pipe under there?"
They didn't. Not in the design. Rather, the sink and shower terminate into a narrow trough beneath the tub and run without benefit of a slope to a covered drain in the middle of the bathroom floor.
Enter the gnats. It's a perfect food-filled cave that will never, never see light: exposed hair tangles, mushy flesh, fingernail clippings, spreads of gooey mold and all the damp, festering rot. You can't clean it. There's no access door or angle to breach the narrow gap by the floor. To run bleach down the pipe only routes a thin line to the drain like a clean stream amidst sprawling, rotten banks.
I called the landlord: "Are the gnats seasonal?", "Do you have a special kit to clean this out?", "Is this the same mold that condemns buildings?"
"You should be fine. The gnats will die off when it gets colder and the molds not a problem because it's always there."
I hung up the phone, forgetting to ask if he wanted to check his science on that last one, and turned to the bathroom. Now, standing at the sink, I'm afraid that my foot will slip underneath the lip and I'll toe a mold slick. I would retch and, even after the foot was cleaned, think back to that gooey rot and scrub at it again like a MacBeth, "It just won't come off. It won't come off."
On those nightly toilet trips I'll pause at the door and check the tub first before going all the way in. It's ridiculous but sometimes I imagine that what's been growing underneath has slowly backed up and filled the tub. I think of Ghostbusters. When Dana was undressing Baby Oscar for a bath and behind her the tap quickened to a slime. It grew while they weren't looking and reared up in a slick mouth-arm, sucking after them. It was supposed to be a safe place. A place where things were made better by washing all the bad down a drain.
In the movie, Dana and Oscar escaped and Bill Murray made everything okay again. Maison Jeunesse #303's going to be okay too. But now I know where the trash really goes.