The Memory of Water

I rose on the day in question like a poorly reanimated corpse, my eyes ripping open, as though they’d healed shut during the night. At that time, sleep had rarely afforded me much peace, the nocturnal theatre of my dreams laden with ills stemming back to childhood, and most mornings I swallowed down still-boiling past-anger with my shitty filter coffee. There was a whole menu of woes to choose from: formative-era wrongs that had broken down and rotted over time, coalescing into a black, stinking marshland in which nothing but resentment and hatred could grow. It was any wonder my waking hours were so stormy. I slammed doors with extreme prejudice, viciously abused inanimate objects and unleashed hell on the keys of my laptop as I wrote my poison-pen emails to any and all entities with the unmitigated gall to wrong me.

I’ll never forget the day that caused my life to take the most profound of turns. It was the Water Company with its exorbitant rate-increases that plunged its pointed beak into my skull on that occasion. I saw red and quickly set to brewing a pot of fresh coffee, before sitting down at my desk. I assembled an arsenal of words, a volley of pointed jibes like arrows set to penetrate the utility’s vanguard and weaken its resolve. Next came my foot-soldiers, deftly striking the limbs from all potential counterpoints. Finally, I devastated my enemy with the thundering hooves of myriad horsemen: threatening to employ the investigative faculties of the appropriate government bodies, and the coup de grace: “I. WILL. TAKE. MY. BUSINESS. ELSEWHERE.” This last assault was not well thought out at all, as there is absolutely no competition in this God-forsaken country when it comes to water.

Satisfied, I sat back in my chair and reread the email several times before hitting Send with a spiky flourish. I was rather surprised when I heard a knock at the door almost immediately after closing my laptop. Chalking it up to coincidence, I crept to the peephole, unsure of what it was I saw on the other side. The wall-eyed image of a very peculiar woman set my pulse racing, oddly dressed and staring back at me as though she could see me with the utmost clarity. ‘Who is this?’ I called out through the door, very nearly losing bladder control when the latch clicked, allowing her to breeze into my home where she took up residence in the sitting room. ‘I beg your pardon!’ I protested, chasing after her.

‘I received your complaint,’ she said, her voice thin and raspy.

‘You saw it on your phone, I gather,’ I said, though looking at my unwelcome guest, I had little confidence that she even owned one. ‘And I guess you were… in the area?’ I rationalised, as I looked her up and down with a thinly veiled sneer. The woman was attired in rags, and to make matters more absurd, her apparel was soaked through, though it hadn’t rained in a fortnight. Her dark, wispy hair was wet also, and her grey skin looked puckered and unnaturally wrinkled.

‘People like you have no love for Water,’ she croaked, glaring at me with milky, pale-blue eyes that made my skin crawl. Regrettably, I also caught a glimpse of her teeth, many of them black and worn, and the fetid stink of her mouth soon travelled the expanse of the room and found me. It was eye-watering. ‘It remembers things,’ she said, lifting a gnarled hand and extending her long, bony fingers. Inexplicably, murky liquid cascaded from her palm onto my parquetry floor, and I cussed at the thought of having to clean it up once the woman had left. ‘And as it stagnates, its anger grows,’ she added.

I raised both eyebrows and tutted. ‘I know the feeling.’

She stared off into space, seeing some nebulous thing I couldn’t perceive. ‘How dreadful to never know the cool of the swamp. To never hear the mournful music in the gurgling of mud, the heart-rending poetry of toads, nor the alarming secrets of serpents.’

‘Yes,’ I said, folding my arms across my chest. ‘Well, I’m pleased you received my message, and I hope you’ll take my feedback along to your next meeting, or whatever. Best you be off, then. Don’t want to keep you from your work.’

‘That which you mock, Be mine to deny, Your gift's now recalled, Let your flesh be made dry,’ she muttered, before shuffling for the door and disappearing down the stairs.

‘Hey!’ I called after her, my arm outstretched.

I was horrified to see that my hand had been severely altered. My fingers had lost all vitality, and when I bent them, they crackled like fallen autumn leaves. I immediately reached up and touched my face, the flesh there was rough and wrinkled. I tried to cry out, but my voice was barely a hoarse whisper. I ran for the full length mirror in my bedroom, my knees rustling like brown paper. My reflection struck me with dread the likes of which I have never known. I was no longer a man, I was a husk. My beef-jerky skin had the look of a mummified pharaoh's; my lips had receded, exposing my teeth and withered gums, and my eyes were sunken and hollow. I released a wail, a desert wind that scarcely carried a sound, and in that moment I regretted every scalding word I’d ever uttered, and every acrid phrase I’d ever written.

Every day since my altercation with the swamp-hag has been a living hell. No matter how much I drink, my thirst is never quenched. I soak in the tub all night long, yet my flesh simply repels the water. My days, once consumed by bitterness and resentment, are now afflicted only by the terrible Dry.

The Dry.

The ghastly, unending cruelty of The Dry.