The Shower

I know she’ll be in the shower when I get home. I called when I left work 45 minutes ago and she said she was just about to leave on her run. Because she loves it when I remember all the little things she tells me, I’ve been paying extra attention lately to all her little stories about what she does during the day. How someone manages to fill a whole day with working out, doing laundry and shopping for groceries I’ll never understand, but I listen to all her stories anyway. I happen to remember that on Tuesdays she only runs 3 miles, so I figure it’ll take her 5 minutes to get out the door (or maybe more since she is pretty flighty and gets distracted pretty easily), then I figure about 10 minute miles. So after 40 minutes she’d be back to the house stripping off all her running clothes and immediately getting in the shower, since she hates to be sweaty for too long. She never waits more than five minutes to take a shower after every time we fuck. At first I thought she was one of those crazy Catholic chicks who thought sex was a dirty sin, but then I found out she didn’t believe in God (thank god), she’s just a priss.

As I’m waiting for the gates to our community to slowly creep open, I get an idea. Maybe I’ll give her a little scare. She says she hates it when I sneak up on her and scare her, but I know she really loves it. I know I leave her alone a lot in our big empty house when I’m off on business (about 3 weeks out of the month lately), but I think she sometimes exaggerates the whole jumpy paranoid bit. She somehow talked me into spending 2 grand on a security system a month ago, but to tell the truth when I leave in the morning and she’s still in bed I forget to lock the doors and turn it on about 90% of the time. A couple of weeks ago I crept up on her when she was in the closet with her back to me and I scared her so bad she started crying. But she was laughing at the same time, so I know she really got a kick out of it.

So I decide to be really stealth this time and make it an even better scare than that one. I’ll make this one go down in the books. I park outside the garage and don’t open it, even though I know she wouldn’t hear it since the master bed is on the second floor and the opposite end and our place is pretty big. I sneak quietly in the front door and take off my shoes so I won’t make any noise. All our floors are tile and I bought these gay sounding Johnston&Murphey shoes that click when I walk like I’m wearing some fucking high heels. I start sneaking through the hallway, which I notice is green today and there's still tape all over the crown molding. “We” started remodeling two months ago and pretty much every day I come home lately there’s another room that’s been painted some wacko color by our now practically live-in paint crew. I creep through the brown dining room, the beige and black kitchen, the maroon living room, up the as-yet-unpainted spiral staircase and down the short hallway into our room (tan). I hate that I know the names to all these colors.

I get to the door of our bathroom and it’s slightly open so I can hear the shower still going. Perfect. I glance in and see her through the glass doors of the shower. Her back is to the door and she’s got her leg propped up on one wall shaving it. She keeps complaining about how our shower needs a ledge to prop her leg up on but she never does anything about it, or never tells anyone else to do anything about it to be more accurate. I open the door just enough to sneak through and she still doesn’t hear me. Good move getting a steam shower with the glass all the way to the ceiling. I sneak closer…and closer…until I’m right up against the glass. And she’s still got her leg propped up on the wall. I think maybe for a second that she knows I’m there, so I go for it. I yell as loud as I can and bang my fist against the glass door. Her head flings back so fast and I start to crack a smile, but then her foot slips and she starts to fall. I try to jump and catch her but my fingers just jam into the glass. So she keeps falling. And then her head hits the tile and it bounces off like a basketball. Three seconds and she’s slumped against the wall facing me, the razor still clutched in her hand.

This would be when I would start laughing, but her eyes aren’t looking at me. My mind goes blank for a second like my brain just hit the B key. Then I get my focus back and I see the blood creeping along the floor of the shower. The water catches it and starts to wash it down, but it’s so thick that it just looks like a red flood hurling down the drain. The sound of the shower still steaming down suddenly rushes in and occupies my brain. I stand there staring at her. Right into her glazed eyes, which are wide open in shock, but as blank as a mannequin’s. I look down at the blood and its now completely covering the tile and surrounding her like a bath. What the fuck just happened. I start to throw up. I throw up all over the beige rug in front of the shower and then I look back up at her. All I see is red. Then I feel like I might pass out, but I fight it with all of the sanity I can manage. There’s no option of thinking clearly. My brain is filling with blood. Her blood, it feels like. I feel like I’m staring so hard into it that my eyes are actually absorbing it. Then I look into her blank face but my eyes keep coming unfocused. I take a step back. Then another. Then I turn for the phone, but I feel like her eyes are sucking me back to her, forcing me to stay there staring at her. I drag myself to the phone and dial 911.

“I just got home…My wife must have slipped…I just found her…still in the shower…” I hang up and immediately forget what they told me. Did I really just call? I imagine they told me not to move her. I go back to her and open the shower door. I can smell the blood…but I don’t even know if blood has a smell. I know it has a taste, and I feel like it’s filling my mouth. I’m choking for breath and I put my hand over my mouth as I turn off the water. I step back and let the door fall shut, never taking my eyes off of hers. I can see her contacts floating on her blue/gray pupils. I look at her hand still clutching the purple razor. Her hands are sunk into the bright red water filling the bottom of the stall. I can’t look at her any longer. I feel like her blank eyes are drilling holes through my chest and I can’t stop coughing. I turn and walk out of the bedroom, back down the stairs, back through all the colorful rooms, and out to my car. I have to concentrate so hard to keep breathing. I pull out of my driveway and start driving. As I pull out of the neighborhood I see an ambulance at the gate, lights wailing, waiting for it to creep open. I pull out, onto the main road. I slam my foot down on the gas and start driving through the fog, through my coughing. I spit out the imaginary blood I feel clogging up my throat. I don’t know where I’m heading. To Mexico...Off a cliff…I don’t know yet. All I feel are her blank gray eyes pulling me back to her like a rope tied around my neck. It’s pulling so tight I feel like it will snap in two. But it just keeps getting tighter.