Envirofiend - I

* unedited

I've never seen a shower run dry before. I've lived in large metros, and the water supply's always been adequate.

There's a point in my showers when I turn up the temperature from warm to scalding. At that point, I let my shoulders fall and set aside the burden of being me. There's a comfort in knowing this waterstream will massage the back of my neck till I command it stop. The steam will cocoon me, and I can be Hitchcock's Bates one moment, or stepping out of this hazy amniotic sac, I can be reborn, sins washed away every morning.

The water had just started to dilate my capillaries, unknot fascia, when suddenly the showerhead sucked the water back into itself. The jetstream stopped dry, with a gulping sound, sort of like a guilty swallow.

I looked up and the showerhead was quiet, not even a gathering drop of water. It seemed tilted away from me. I glared at it, demanding an explanation, but it stayed quiet. I tapped it gently, and nothing. I blew air up the pore-like barrels that made up this showerhead but still no water. The audacity. Angrily, I grabbed it at the throat and pulled it free from the wall. A tile fell to the floor, narrowly missing my feet, leaving the ugliest gash on the wall.

The showerhead was attached to a rubber pipe that disappeared through the gash into the wall. I imagine this plumbing led to a large tank somewhere, a tank fed by water from the city's filtration plants. The water in these plants probably arrived from our sewers and some from the sea. None of that helped now, and the flaccid rubber pipe remained coiled, lifeless in my hands.

I towelled myself dry and couched myself in front of the tv. There were banners running across the bottom of each channel, breaking news about how the city was without water, that tanks across the city had run dry. Engineers had been dispatched to determine where the city's plumbing had gotten clogged. The problem seemed dire enough, so I decided to plough into action myself. I stepped out into the sun, minus my spf 60 sunblock. I'd get back the city's water even if it meant getting burnt.

While the engineers trawled the city's pipes, I decided to head to the source of the problem. The beach.