Having A Bath

• Kaitlin Townsend, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2013

I was sitting on my favourite green, vintage chair at my desk which used to belong to my mother and is vintage too, happily typing away on my clickety-clackety, also vintage, typewriter which kept moving ever so slightly to the right for some obscure reason (maybe I was sliding the bar along too hard) when I felt a small, wet plop on me. I thought that the eldest of my younger brothers, Sam was just shooting sticky, slimy, spit-balls at me again. Then there were a few more drips that went PLOP and I thought that the eldest of my younger brothers was really asking for a ninja-kick in his ‘I have a six-pack, nah, not really’ stomach. After a few minutes, the smaller plops became much bigger plops, more like PATTERPATTERPATTER, and suddenly it felt like I was in Darwin during the rainy season.
I didn’t even think (this is where Sam would say something sarcastic) to look up above my now very damp head as I precariously carried my, now vintage, wet and slippery, typewriter out of my immaculate room, dodging around my only youngest sister, Josie, who was loping down the hall like a dog (however on two feet) on the cordless telephone and absolutely, completely, utterly oblivious to the rest of the world that she happened to be living in, into the extremely messy dining room that was not used as a dining room but an office, and sat down. However my vintage, wet and slippery typewriter was somewhat damp so I was taking a leisurely stroll back into my immaculate, ankle-deep-in-water room when I passed my yellow at the head, green and blue in the body and purple in the tail budgie, Ziggy, in his black, wire cage and I thought I would let him out. He flew erratically around the ground floor of the house a few times and then landed on the youngest of my younger brothers, Jake who was watching Looney Tunes on our 300 inch TV in the home theatre that was actually the kitchen.
I entered my flooded room and picked up my typewriter cleaning kit because I supposed that it, that is my typewriter, could use a super good clean as well as a super good dry. I was one step out of my waterlogged room when I remembered that I still had to hang up my damp bath towel from the previous night which was very clear and I could see the stars which made me start to daydream and forget to hang up my bath towel. I went back into my sodden room and just as I picked up the now sopping bath towel, my whole world crashed down about me. Well, it was more like the upstairs bath decided it wanted a nap and thought that my bed would be a good place to go to sleep.
When my eyes linked with my brain and started working again I realised in utter disbelief what must have transpired. Josie, who was still on the telephone and walking around the house still obliviously ignorant to the world, must have started running a bath and disremembered about it when one of her many friends called her up. The bath must have overflowed, oozing quickly through the flooring into the roof of the ground floor, making it weak. After the monsoon in my bedroom the bath must have become too heavy for the, now entirely soaked, floor to hold and crashed through the roof and onto my bed, bringing a tidal wave with it.