The Showers

Delaying, that’s all she did. She had already taken a shower in her house but she made herself felt that she needed to be at her absolute clean state before the inevitable. It was getting dark. She turned on the white lights.

It was a large square room. Every step or so, there was a shower spray connected to the wall with a small lever below it. There were no windows and the ceiling was unreachable to her. After strolling for a while, she returned to the entrance and locked it.

She chose a random place and pull the lever. Water first came cold, and then she could sense it getting warmer and warmer. She took off her clothes and put them far away from where water would reach. She sighed and let herself be cleaned again.

She had never felt a more exquisite, pleasurable shower. The water was warm and delicious, relaxing and soothing; her body let itself be drawn by that sweet aroma she always sensed in water with its vapor. She closed her eyes, her arms folded around her, her legs moved swiftly and naturally around the spray. She gave out a little laugh. The thoughts of the days, of the weeks were but a dream. For now, she was a free woman. Not guilty. Clean.

She did not know how much time she had been there. Perhaps minutes, an hour, or two but she did hear a sound. She opened her eyes and saw that one of the showers, the one next to her, was spraying water. She blinked a few times and tried to examine the shower closely since its lever was not down. Must be broken, she thought. But then the shower next to that one began spraying, then the next, and the next, and the room, the room of showers, was filled with the endless sound of millions and millions of drops of water pounding fiercely into the tiles.

“What a mess,” she said to herself. They were broken for sure. Just like everything was broken. “One last gift for me.”

She carefully strode in between showers. Each of them was warm and refreshing. The vapor began covering up the room. Her clothes were surely wet now. She laughed again thinking that this was her last crazy adventure, getting wet, dancing around naked under the showers, shouting, hiding her tears, perhaps slipping, breaking her neck, slicing her head in four pieces.

The room’s lights disappeared. She did not realize when this had happened; she didn’t remember.

She was not scared, though.

She had never been scared of the dark.

She knew that no one could enter through the door without her noticing.

She realized that no matter where she went water would be caressing her. The blackness surrounding her made it impossible to determine their origin. Water, shower, water in her hair, in her arms, her legs, her chest, her neck. She went around in circles and she was continuously getting wet.

She felt a form next to her. A shadow, her shadow, putting her arms around her, holding her, telling her nothing. She couldn’t see anything but she felt it closer and closer and she was not there. She thought maybe she was far, far away, with a new life, a new face, these showers were no prison of hers. She sensed the body watching her and she did not move again.

She felt tickled on her shoulder followed by another and another, and every hit burned more painful than the last. The door was on the other side of the room. Her clothes, too. She ran with each burning drop burning her skin, making her yelp in pain, a body watching her run and doing nothing.

She slipped and fell on her back, drops falling and pouring more and more furiously, boiling, getting hotter and hotter. Melting her feet, melting her arms, melting her face, melting her skin, her bones and her lips. Screams drowned out by a melted tongue and melted teeth. What became of her draining away; a body hiding into the shadows, at las forgotten, changed, or mutated; a pending trial; a melted soul, transformed mist.