Because I used to be afraid of the bathtub drain

I was sitting in the bathtub, staring at the moldy ceiling, as the lavender-scented bubbles of my bubble bath deflated. They weren’t popping with excitement or abruptness, just deflating slowly and sadly and melting back into the oily water. I melted among them, too cold to remain in the tepid water but also too cold to get out and walk across the bathroom for the closest towel.

            

When I finally summoned up the courage to get out, I reached forward and yanked the plug before I could chicken out. The bubbles around me sighed, and then I heard a strange sound. It began as a faint whining noise and got louder and louder. No, not whining. It was like someone speaking underwater, you know that gargling sound that isn’t really a voice but pretends to be. Goosebumps blossomed across my skin. I wanted that noise to stop.

My courage shrank as the tub filled with cold air. The water and all the corpses of the sad bubbles swept past my legs and down my toes into the gaping drain.

I couldn’t take my eyes off that drain, that black hole, that toothless mouth. The more water that went down it, the louder and more high-pitched the sound became. I clapped my hands to my ears, but the sound was still there. I sang a loud version of “God Bless America,” but I could still hear it.

At last, the drain cleared, and through my clenched fingers, I finally recognized the sound. The drain was screaming—a high-pitched scream that told of beached whales and drowned ships and tortured people lost in dark depths. A scream that started in the deep black of ocean trenches and ran all the way up, past ancient wrecks and bloated monsters and rotting limbs, through the river and the water table and out my drain.

I couldn’t take it anymore. My whole body shivered with cold and dread. In one swift motion, I slammed the plug back into the drain. The screaming stopped immediately. I stared at the drain one minute longer, then got out and grabbed the towel. Its frayed red threads dangled around me like tentacles.

Short Fiction from a Writing Prompt

Carolina walked into the rain and didn’t look back. That was the last time anyone ever saw her.

But it was also the first time they had seen her, so they took some comfort, as they rolled their pumpkins back home, that some people come and go, some people are just passing through. The old Filipino proverb had never been proven wrong: if things are meant to be, they will never happen. Fate has a funny way of denying herself a future.

Carolina may not have looked back, but Katie did. She did not join the rest of the village in their long walk back home. She stayed there, holding the torch so high that the flames licked against the feet of the crows swooping over her head. She stayed there and she watched the darkness envelop Carolina. She watched the rain fill Carolina’s footprints so that the next morning wild foxes and daring cats would lap up a cool draught from the rainpools. She watched, knowing that life would go on even if fate did not.

Finally, when the rain had stopped, and the moon had set, and the fog of a new day was beginning to settle, Katie lowered her torch. It had stopped burning, stopped steaming, hours before, but Katie had not noticed. She had not noticed the dark or the cold or the droppings from the angry crows. She had only noticed the absence of the strange, tall girl—the girl who had been fated to be her friend. Betrayed by a fate that could never happen.

So Katie walked into the rain and only briefly looked back. That was the last time anyone ever saw her.

Flash Fiction

My widow's family does not like having me around, no matter how hard I try to get close to them.