Winona Morris always knew she wanted to be a writer when she grew up. When it became apparent that she was never going to grow up she decided to become a writer anyway. After sharing her multi-genre fiction on various free blogs over the years she has finally decided to become a "real" writer and is currently working on her first short fiction collection.
She currently lives in coastal Georgia with her husband, 2 kids, and 8 pets. When not writing or working at the full time retail job she's kept for nearly 2 decades, she likes to read and live vicariously through other people on social media.
OTHER WORDS FOR WATER
by
Winona Morris
They had taken a trip to the beach at least once a season, for as long as she could remember. Some years, her bad years, they went more often than that.
“I have to get my Water-bug to the Ocean so the waves can sing her soul to peace.”
It started raining the night he died, and it rained through the graveside service. Other people huddled under their umbrellas, whispering and muttering as she stood unprotected by his coffin, the rain plastering her hair to her head, her dress to her body, and rivers of black mascara down her cheeks.
She walked home in it, kicking off her heels and carrying them in one hand. Somewhere along the way, she dropped one of them but didn’t stop to pick it up. It didn’t matter. Nothing much mattered anymore anyway, except her cat. Besides, wading barefoot through the puddles kept her from floating away, kept her grounded.
Her fiance left her not long after her father had gotten sick. She had taken to spending hours at a time in the bath. Sometimes 3 or 4 times a day. She worked from home and still got her work done, still got the house clean, and even had a meal ready for him when he got home, but it wasn’t enough.
“I’m a Cancer,” she said when he confronted her about it, holding a very judgemental intervention of one.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I’m a landlocked water sign. I need the water.”
“That’s shit. I’m a Leo and I’ve never felt the urge to immolate myself. You need help.”
That was also the night she looked at the pads of her fingers and saw they were all pruned up, even though she’d been out of her last bath for hours.
It was like her body soaked up the water for keeps.
Later that week, while she was visiting her father at Hospice, he came in and cleared out his things.
That was the night she accidentally cut herself while cooking. She was on a mostly liquid diet by then but was chopping green onion for a broth. She didn’t bleed. The fluid that came from the cut was a clear droplet of water that bubbled until it dripped down the side of her hand.
So she cut herself again. She cut her arm, her thighs, the soft curve of her belly. Every cut bled water.
She was in the bath when the call came. They told her he was gone as she held her newest, deepest, cut under the water. She could not tell where the water stopped and her new blood started. It was all the same.
When she dripped her way into the door Swampy came trotting to her, meowing all the way. Like her father, the cat loved her no matter if she was wet.
“Oh, Swamp, I’m sorry buddy.” She scooped him up and buried her face in his side, inhaling the peppery smell of him, feeling the rumble of his purr travel up her arms straight to her heart. When she set him outside on the welcome mat he just looked up at her, startled confusion in his spoiled house cat eyes. She shut the door before she could change her mind.
She left a trail of sodden clothes from the door to the bathroom, where she started a bath with her favorite lavender oil. She only used the oils on special occasions, because they made the tub slippery and she was always a little afraid she would fall.
It didn’t matter if she fell now.
She lowered herself, relishing how the water enveloped her.
“What’s another word for water?” He asked her sometimes. It was their game.
“Fluid. Moisture. Rain. Tears.”
She thought of water words and tried to clear her mind of everything except her father’s face, her father’s laugh, her father’s love.
She felt the release in her neck first, like a bubble bursting, the sensation traveling up her skull and down her arms, to the tips of her fingers. A series of teeny-tiny sizzling pops.
When she turned her head slightly to look at where her hands were floating she expected to see fizz. What she saw was her elbow fading slowly down to nothing, as if she were reaching into a thick fog. Her hands had disappeared.
She tried to move her fingers, but couldn’t feel them. Tried to move her arm, to make her hand touch her body, but there was nothing.
Outside the bathroom, she heard a key rattle in the lock.
“Whit, did you know Swampy was outside” someone called. She felt like she should recognize the voice, but like her shoe abandoned on the sidewalk, it didn’t matter. “Sweetheart, I heard about your dad. I’m so sorry.”
She heard footsteps in the hallway, moving towards the bedroom as Swamp nosed his way into the bathroom. He hopped on the edge of the tub, narrowed his yellow eyes at her before reaching out to place one soft paw on her nose.
She couldn’t feel her shoulders now. Her back and hips were gone. She could still feel her knees though, and her feet.
“Whit?” the voice down the hall again. It sounded a little concerned, but it had been the cat who knew to look in the bathroom first. Swamp, who loved her no matter if she was wet or not.
Like her father always had.
While she still had her feet, she moved them around until she felt the drain. She’d often turned the water on and off with her feet, so it was nothing to pull the drain plug with her toes.
When her ex-fiance pushed open the bathroom door, he expected to find her in the tub. He didn’t know why he hadn’t looked there first. Where else would she have been?
All he found was Swamp, sitting in the empty tub, pawing at the drain hole.