Fiction — Bath story
Sunday, July 9th, 2006These posts can be tagged in various ways: links, pictures, photos, etc. I’ve made a new category: fiction. Here is the first of those.
The woman lay in the bathtub, almost entirely submerged.The water was the perfect temperature: not so cold to induce shivers; not so hot to make her sweat. With legs crossed at the ankles and hands on top of her head, she was able to hover in the water, barely touching the floor of the tub. Only knees, elbows and face broke the surface.
At first there were distractions. Air caught in the hair at the nape of her neck escaped, the bubbles slowly curling around the back of each ear as they crept toward freedom. The slow random drips from the spigot echoed underwater, then diminished. Her thoughts roamed, each topic tucked away into sealed mental compartments as her mind quieted.
Finally all was still. She was blank, hearing only the beat of her heart. She vaguely wished that noise would cease too.
Five minutes later she stood up, stepped out of the water into a waiting towel, and left the room to meet the rest of her life.