Black maggots

There are many buildings, and parts of buildings, that go unused or are abandoned on the campus of EMU. Some of the buildings have been derelict for quite some time, and there are portions of others that just aren't meant for human habitation. Dark and lonely places underneath the bustling ground about. These were the places I would wander.
While working for the campus I was given keys to a good many of these buildings and while opening doors and crawling over obstacles I would find even more hallowed spaces. One weekend day I was doing just such an expedition around an old dormitory. This five story building once housed the brightest students on campus but now lay hidden under unkempt trees and tall fences. I had already climbed the fence once to gain entrance to the large center garden, a huge area of open grass with five hardwoods over a century old each. A tattered, grey rope hung from one tree's branch higher than the second floor with what might have once been a swing seat but was now lightning bolt shaped shred of wood. In this secret garden the turn of the century majesty of the building was much more apparent. Hand placed bricks of slightly different colors gave the walls a patchwork quality like priceless Native American blankets. White marble and sculpted plaster around every window and staircase, partially draped with dark ivy.
I walked around for several hours trying fire escapes and staircases in hopes of one being unlocked or old enough to force open. Looking in smoky, dusty, dirty, and opaque windows baked by decades of ultraviolet I could make out silhouettes. Each glimpse inside further cemented my resolve to gain entrance. I came down from the last staircase ventured and searched all the partially overgrown windows of the basement/ground floor. Handles and locks were in such states of disrepair that it looked like some metal had fuzed. Window after window. Lock after lock. From the Northeast corner all the way to the Southwest I moved sticks, grass, rocks, bugs, spiders, and wind blown garbage trying to open something. After an hour I had almost completed the circuit, some 60+ windows and doors when a half-sized window opened easy as a breeze. I laid down on my belly and slid in far enough to clear my head and shoulders. It was a public bathroom replete with stalls and mop bucket. Alas, having spent much of the afternoon exploring and finding an entrance the light was fading and I didn't bring a light. I closed the window and resolved to come back the next day.
Over the fence and back home I went with a boy's sense of excitement for something new. I'm sure I dreamt of what I'd find in there the next day. Perhaps even thought of some forgotten treasure or pirate's booty.
Ha! How am I kidding?
I don't remember waking up. Taking care of business, or why it took me almost to midday to get back to the abandoned building but I remember laying on my belly and opening that half window again.
As I pulled myself in through the window passed my chest I looked around. Dirty stalls and dark tiles like any you would imagine in a scary movie. The stall I have hovering over was about three feet below me and the toilet was white like a skull but the bowel was black as midnight. The door to the stall was missing so I could look right in to the rest of the bathroom, which is why I saw the mop and bucket. I laid there for a minute to listen for any noise, making sure I was alone to explore.
Not a peep.
I backed out of the window and flipped over so I could go feet first and slowly drop down to the floor below. I grasped the outer walls and lowered my feet down to the toilet bowel and made a successful landing with both feet, careful not to plunge in to the abyss of the toilet. It looked like hell. After I made contact with the rim and felt solid I limbo'ed the rest of the way in and stood on top of the seat quietly making sure again I was alone. As I stood there in the silence a new sound came to my ears. A stood frozen listening to the sound of movement.
Soft.
Moist.
The sound of walking over wet leaves. Stirring a bowel of pancake batter. Mashing your tongue in your mouth.
My mind raced for a moment with imagination. A squid beast loose in the building! A zombie eating some flesh!
No.
It was close. The sound was right on me, by me, under me.
I stepped down from the toilet and stood in silence for a moment as I looked around for the source of the sound and looked down in the toilet bowel. The blackness wasn't a stain. It was a thousand black maggots wriggling in some filth of a liquid. After my eyes adjusted I could see their scaly skin as each one crawled over the other in multitudes. My eyes must have been the size of half dollars. Like Frodo in the swamps of misery my head was slowly pulled closer to the black hole of maggots despite the rest of my body desperately trying to pull it back. The closer I came to the mass I saw something that brought new horror enough to force me back.
Just below the rim of the toilet seat were a series of fine spider webs. As the maggots matured and gnats flew out to freedom they would be ensnared in the web. Not all of them mind you, as there were thousands of maggots and hundreds of gnats, but enough to keep the spiders fat and happy.
I shuddered looking at the whole scene. The horror of living in that kind of dystopic habitat?
I stepped away from the toilet I had just moments before perched on and looked around my new found land. Hallways lined with appliances, furniture, refuse, clothes, boxes, boxes, and creatures that go bump in the night.
I wasn't all that comfortable walking onward but that's exactly what I did.
The horror.

The horror.