/yesod

Tag: water

  • bathtime again

    Downstairs, I run a bath for my daughter. I kneel down to check the water.

    When I rise, the old woman is standing in the doorway. She is hunched over, watching me.

    “Fuck.”

    And then she’s gone.

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  • stench

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    Over the holidays, there were a number of points when I noted a pungent smell in the little hallway at the back of our kitchen — a cloying stench, like rotting fish.

    (I do not care for this little hallway. It feels off to me, somehow. There is a mirror of it upstairs and the one gives me a vague sense of unease as well — though I have not noticed any phantom smells there.)

    More than once I looked everywhere trying to find the source of the smell — searching in the hallway as well as the adjoining rooms. But there was nothing. And, oddly enough, the smell seemed to fade away as I searched.

    Other times, most times, there was no smell at all.

    I mentioned it finally to my wife who said she’d had the same experience on numerous occasions but couldn’t find an explanation for the smell either.

    It was puzzling and — not surprising, given my usual temperament — a bit eerie.

    Late one evening as I was getting ready for bed, I was in the shower — the bathroom is located off of the little hallway — when the same rotting smell suddenly rose up around me, permeating the steam of the shower. I gagged, nearly vomiting from the sudden, overpowering stench.

    And, inexplicably, every hair on my body and scalp stood on end. I was chilled, despite the heat of the shower.

    After a few moments, it passed.

    After I got out of the shower, I checked the drains — the most likely source of the smell. Nothing.

    We have not experienced the smell since.

  • in the shower

    …as I’m washing my backside, someone peeks in between a seam in the shower curtain — old and wizened, though I cannot tell whether it is a man or a woman. They roll their eyes up at me, almost comical, and purse their mouth in a silent “Oooo…”

    …and then I wake with a start, my afternoon nap ruined.

  • frantic spider

    …the spider struggles against the pull of the water as the tub drains, a thin filament of almost wire-like web cast out like a dark line . . . it clenches like a fist in the water, and I feel the tug of the web and pull my hand away, leaving it to it’s fate…

  • a jar of mud and other fragments

    …gathered around the table, we trade anecdotes and witty replies . . . just a bunch of guys hanging out, who also happen to be famous — all except me, of course. I can’t believe I’m here, can’t believe that everyone just assumes I belong…

    …he’s lying in the shore, dozing in the early evening breeze. The surface of the lake stirs faintly, the ripples slowly moving toward us. He has his hat over his face, one leg resting on his upturned knee.

    A long dark thread is knotted around his big toe, stretching out over the water to a little rowboat bobbing ten or fifteen yards offshore…

    …I stand in the water, soaked to the knees, reaching out to pull the boat in. It’s small, maybe four feet long. Almost like a child’s toy. Antique. The rough wood stained by the water and by time,

    In the shallow bottom of the boat are mason jars, each filled with small stones or soil. A few have both. The soil is very dark, dark as coffee grounds. The stones, very pale.

    These are my jars and I am glad to see that none of them have been broken. As I lift one out, it slips through my fingers and spills stones and soil in the shallow water at the bottom of the boat.

    “Great,” I mutter. “Because that’s what I needed right now: A jar of mud,”