A Town Called Wellness

The van pulled into a small empty public car park with a public toilet and the group piled out, Fay and Sara raising their hands and blinking in the sunlight. Mark wobbled a little as he stepped out of the van and by the time he had turned around from shutting his car door, Fay and Sara had already disappeared off into the ladies bathroom. Mark shrugged and walked over to the small building after them, leaving Isaac behind to have a smoke.
The interior of the bathroom was just as you’d expect public toilets to be. Dirty, wet, and the strong smell of chemicals and urine hung like a fog in the air. It was a small room with very little lighting apart from that which could penetrate the grime on the skylights. On the opposite wall sat a battered old condom machine, and the scrawled message “This is the worst chewing gum I’ve ever tasted” could just about be made out written on the machine in felt-tip pen. Out of the three toilet cubicles that were present, only one of them was available, and so naturally Mark walked into it. It was the middle cubicle, of course, which meant that he’s be forced to sit wedged between two other men and try hard to poop as quietly as possible. This was it Mark, your chance to prove yourself. A cockroach scuttled from the next cubicle and into the one on the opposite side, forcing Mark to double-take as he pulled down his jeans. He didn’t even know that cockroaches existed in this god-forsaken country. He’d seen one in Spain once but… Nah, it wasn’t a cockroach.
He plopped himself down and made himself as comfortable as he could against the cold plastic seat, which wasn’t very. As he sat there, another small skittering noise disturbed him and then another. Mark looked down and saw another cockroach, slightly bigger and fatter, this time, pause in his cubicle and then skitter on again. That was definitely a cockroach, no matter what country they were supposed to live in. He wasn’t scared of cockroaches at all, in fact, he found them kind of cool, but something about these creatures popping up in this bathroom wasn’t right. If it had been a spider then it would have been a different story, he’d have been out and back across that car park to the van before he’d even had time to pull his jeans back up, but the situation wasn’t that desperate just yet. He finished his duty and washed his hands, the scuttling annoyingly persistent in the background.

“Guys, that bathroom was-“
“Disgusting, yeah, we know.” Sara yawned disinterestedly and leant against the front of the van. “Also there was some creep of a janitor in there fixing the skylight. Ew, is all I can say.”
“Did you see the cockroaches?”
“Nope. Blargh, trust the men’s room to have them, though.” Sara rolled her eyes and looked over at Isaac. “You not going to go? I’m sure they won’t bite.”
Isaac threw his cigarette on the ground and extinguished it beneath his boot. “Nah, I’ll find a tree or something when I need to go, I’m not desperate.”
“Suit yourself, man.”
He sniffed and nodded. “You didn’t happen to notice the name of this place as we entered, did you?” Everyone shook their heads. Isaac smirked and gestured towards the small old church that was opposite the car park. A large sign sat above the heavy wooden doors that read “Wellness Community Church” in metallic lettering.
“Wellness?” Mark said, not hiding his amusement.
Fay smiled. “I hope the rest of the town is an improvement on the toilets, then. We need to get snacks.”
Isaac snorted and locked the van before carefully tucking the keys into an inside pocket of his brown leather jacket. “Somehow I doubt it.”

The group walked together out of the car park and onto the baking pavement of the high street. The sun was still attempting to prove its might, and the people on the street walked with a droop not unlike what an ice cream would do in the same situation. The road was long and straight, and to the left side were a number of shops selling souvenirs and sweets, broken up by a few side roads leading to the small pebbled beach of the loch. To the right of the high street, however, besides the church, was a small village shop, a pharmacy, a very small train station, and the entrance to a large strangely modern-looking housing estate that really didn’t seem at home in a village such as this. The station, shop, and pharmacy were all a part of a small excuse for a village square with an old-looking well in the centre.
“Huh, at least we know where the “Well” part of the name comes from now…” Mark mumbled as he looked around.
“Yeah, a pretty s****y one at that.” As if to demonstrate Sara’s point, a slate tile from the “roof” of the well slid off and shattered on the ground as a football bounced against it. A few schoolchildren that had been playing on the grass looked at it in mild concern for a few seconds before returning to kicking the ball around. “Urgh, kids.”
The group turned into a small souvenir shop and looked around at the terrifying amount of stuffed highland cows and loch ness monsters on display. It had been at least three hours since the group had been outside the van, and they were going to make the most of it. Mark walked over to the whisky while Sara absent-mindedly browsed a stand full of wristbands. Isaac and Fay looked at the stuffed animals.
Isaac leant towards Fay subtly, trying not to draw the gaze of the small Asian woman behind the counter, and whispered. “They do realise Loch Ness is at least 30 miles away, right?”
Fay giggled lightly. “There have been sightings this far away. They think that there are underwater tunnels connecting all of the lochs in this area, they’re left over from the Ice Age, because when the glaciers carved out the valleys and stuff the ice went down into the soft rock an-“
“Yeah, thanks, Fay, I get the idea.” Isaac snorted and rolled his eyes, but smiled at her anyway.
She went quiet and blushed slightly. “It’s not even Nessie, it’s a Plesiosaur…”
Isaac shook his head and laughed.