Water

• Amber Curits, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2007

I can float in the bath tub, it took a while to teach myself but now I can. My feet just touch the taps at the end of the tub. It’s an odd sensation, cold wet toes while the rest of my body is warm and surrounded by bubbles.

My brother didn’t believe me when I told him, but he is lonely, getting older and going though that funny phase when people try to grow up before they are ready to. So I got in the bath with my night dress on and showed him, he said I looked like a swan, which made me laugh and sink because I lost that strange state of not concentration which is necessary for floating.

Have you ever gone swimming with your clothes on? It’s rather odd; your clothes that normally seem to be part of you turn against you and try to pull you downwards, away from the surface. It isn’t the water that makes them take on a life of their own; it’s the mermaids that live underwater, waiting for shipwrecked sailors or unsuspecting fishermen to fall in love with them. They breathe life into your clothing, this drags you down through the water, towards them. Mermaids are lonely and they only wish for friends to come and swim with them and communicate by song.

While merpeople live in the murky depths of lakes and the oceans, the bathtub houses other beasts, monsters. They are a device, formed by the water, to tame grubby, dirt covered children who hate to bathe and put into effect by frustrated parents who have been worn down by their Childs’ high pitched, abrasive screams.

It’s merely the waters way of being bitter; creating these red eyed, vicious monsters and nightmares to go along with them.

But I am told by my bother to keep these thoughts to myself he is slightly paranoid about people thinking I'm crazy, I think it’s just because my ideas scare him.

He goes fishing with our grandfather, and that’s what he wants to do with his adulthood, catch fish and wear unflattering overalls. My bothers life will belong to the sea and soon enough the mermaids will claim him.