There’s Something in the Water Honorable Mention
Soap suds ooze out the sponge. Audrey scrubs at the sink, the hard side scraping into the tarnished metal. The sink is grimier than usual, oil and gunk mixed together to form a repulsive mixture. She squeezes the sponge, and watches as the brown liquid slides down the drain. Suds rise to meet her yellow neon gloves.
Audrey flicks the tap on. The water rushes out, splashing into her face. Reflexively, she closes her eyes. Suddenly she can’t breathe. Heart palpitating, she gasps for air. The sponge drops to the floor as she clutches her apron, brown liquid soaking through her clothes and onto her chest. The water is unbearably cold. A frost spreads into her heart, an ice so unlike anything she’s experienced. Instantly, she falls to her knees trembling.
The impact against the slick tile shocks her eyes open. Out of the nightmare. The frost fades to a lukewarm wetness on her skin. Sprinkles of tap water fall on her head as the faucet violently collides with the sink. Audrey reaches for the sponge, and a teardrop rolls down her face. A wave of sorrow overwhelms her. Audrey crushes the sponge as she picks it up, blinking back tears.
Shortly after, Audrey clocks out of work, blaming fatigue on the illusion. She shuffles out the building with fast feet, not bothering to wait for a shift exchange. She was always left alone between the 1 AM to 2 AM stretch, coworkers flaking away as business slowed down. Alone, in the eerie quietness to work overtime for their shifts. Fatigue ached through her. Audrey was thankful for the moral justification to leave. Soon, she would rise for her morning job. A measly internship at a company to shoulder her rent.
Illuminating the empty parking lot, the car headlights shine brightly. An invokement for Audrey to get home quicker. After an aggressive tug on the car door, Audrey buckles herself into the seat as she drives home. The drive is a sedative to her buzzing mind. The road is quiet at night, cars zipping past to their varying destination. No disruptions, just road.
Audrey arrives at her apartment complex. Quietly, she unlocks the door. The room is empty. Nobody is supposed to be inside. Audrey grits her teeth, and flicks on the light before locking the door. She walks past the sunken in couch and makes a beeline for the bathroom. Audrey leaves the light off. She can’t bear to catch a glimpse of herself, at how she’s deteriorated and decomposed from the outside in.
Fiddling her way across the bath, Audrey plugs the drain. Carefully, she stands up and reaches into the cabinet. On its floor is a bathbomb, the last of an eight pack. A gift from her best friend. Audrey regarded the idea of baths as a waste of money. The water could be used doing better things, not on frivolous indulgences. Audrey throws the bath bomb into the tub. Frivolity was a welcome distraction now, amongst many other things. Audrey was simply too tired to care about things that mattered. Her only goal was to stay sane.
Water rushes into the bathtub from the faucet. Audrey dips her hand into the fizzing water to gauge when there’s enough. The water reaches midway to the bathtub and Audrey turns off the spout to step in. Carefully, she slides into the water. The fragrant scent of honey and milkweed wrap around her as she dips into the fluid.
The darkness is commanding. Sucking her into vivid sensations. Her feet slide against the coarse bathtub floor. Her back lays against the porcelain, the grainy holes digging into her protruding spine. The water is too warm for her liking, a misgauge of temperature. Above her chest is met with the cool air of the apartment. The bathtub is slightly too small. Her feet press against the edge. Audrey leans further into the bathtub, and lets herself descend.
Chin, lips, then nose submerge. A strange urge to exhale overcomes her, and she does. Her heart begins to palpitate, searching for oxygen. She does not yield. With her eyes hovering right above the water. Audrey closes them and lets her body be absorbed underwater. The thud of her heartbeat thrums through her ears. A fast pace that slows into a calming metronome, seconds between her heartbeats growing.
1. Audrey counts. Pressing into the bathtub to ground herself. 2. Audrey squeezes her eyes shut. 3. Her arms dig into her legs. Upon four seconds she can no longer bear it. She tilts her head up to break the surface, only centimeters away from her nose. Her head snaps back down and an agonizing scream departs from her lungs. A flurry of bubbles escapes her mouth as she screams. Her hands fly to her head, shaking furiously with the weight of her tears.
Audrey is being skinned alive. Dull knives pierce through her skin to the bone. A pain that she could never imagine flares through her. The knives burn, cold. Cold like her heart without a heartbeat. Audrey screams for mercy, words imperceptible within the muffler of water. The thing does not relent. The water gets thicker with the infusion of her blood. The tinge of iron taints the bitter synthetic taste of the infused water.
Audrey’s head pangs with the force of her tears. Her legs are being ripped to shreds and she cannot move out of this trance. Her hands fight to pull her head out of the water. Palms pressing into her skull fail to result in even minute movement. Any effort is unfruitful. The water closes in on her. Though she cannot breathe, the pressure is suffocating. No matter where she flails she cannot escape. The bathtub is no longer the confinement. It is her own body. A body she must vacate for freedom.
Gently, the figure slides its hands over the flesh of Audrey’s arms. A horrifying dread dregs into her soul. Its touch makes her arms immobile. Her ravaged legs hand like deadweight in front of her, unable to provide any defense against the monster crawling over her body. An odious mixture of hard and soft and slimy. Flakes of matter fall onto her as its hands press into her face.
It grazes through her hair, and across her skin. The motions are uncomfortably familiar, an imitation of what once was. Her legs ache, pulsing with immeasurable pain. Audrey focuses on the motions of the creature unable to bear the battering of the destruction it has done on her body. She is furious. What right does it have to touch her so tenderly after ripping apart her skin? Why must it do this? Tears continue to flow out her eyes and the monster softly takes its hands across the planes of her face, to her tear ducts. Wiping at her cheek as if it knows that her tears do fall. The motion is too intimate. Audrey simply wants to pull away. To be alive.
The reprieve does not last for long. Soon the gentle swipes turn into an angry puncture of her cheek. Hard matter ripping through her flesh once again and allowing her head to be clouded by blood. Her tears elicit no sympathy. The blood from her body flows into her mouth, overpowering any trace of the relaxation she’d experienced just minutes ago. Her skin separates from muscles as muscle tears from bone. It is an unexplainable torment and betrayal. So much so that the absence of her muscle is a tangible thing she feels on her body. Audrey thought it had reached its end, but the horror endures.
A beast has eaten her alive, and tore through her as it wished. She is at the mercy of it, there is nothing she can do to stop this. Audrey’s head is pounding from tears, a headache so strong she feels as though her brain itself is cracking her skull. The sensations are overwhelming. It is too much. Her tears build up behind her bloodshot eyes. Sacs of wetness in the water. The pressure builds behind her eyelids. Her head pounds. Her skin rips. Her eyelids burst.
Audrey’s eyes open underwater and stare into the blackness. She shoots through the surface, nose first into the stale air. Her pupils burn from the attack of the soapy water. Scrambling, water sloshes out of the bathtub rim as she lunges for the lightbulb. No longer needing to rely on touch, Audrey blinks her way to the sink before hurriedly splashing water across her eyes. After thoroughly dousing her face, Audrey pops up from the sink, eyes sternly surveying her surroundings.
Water falls down into the pool below her feet. Nothing is amiss. The water is a light pink, unmarred by blood nor the remnants of her and the creature. Her body feels nothing from the incident that just occurred. Her heart does not feel cold, no sharpness in her head, or agonizing pain from her body. Audrey surveys her arms. Nothing.
Rushing water from the tap snaps her out of her daze. She flips off the faucet, shaking. Grabbing a towel off the door, Audrey runs into her bedroom quickly drying and dressing to hide under her covers. Wet hair dampens the pillowcase, and the perspiration from her body mixes in with her poorly dried skin. Sleeping is utterly unbearable, she cannot stay here and sleep alone. There’s only one place she wants to go. One place she will go. The place she has been avoiding for the past two months.
Mason was fated for an early death. A death seeker was what Audrey had described her, though Mason preferred the word thrill over death. When Mason had told her she wanted to go skinny dipping at their favorite beach, she allowed it. It was far more reasonable than base jumping or cave diving. Plus, it was a respectable spot. She went with Mason and watched her jump off the beach cliff. Audrey didn’t expect that’d be the day she’d watch her lovers’ last moments. Watch, as her head collided into the stone of the cliff and her body was torn to pieces by the rock shard. Body claimed by the sea after meeting the ground.
Mason’s funeral was tomorrow, and Audrey couldn’t sleep and was probably going insane. There was no better place to say her final goodbyes and reclaim her sanity than the grave of her partner.
Sand crunches under her feet as she approaches the shore. The waves cascade softly onto the sand, a soft background to the sparse groups that polka dot the beach. Even at three AM, the beach is lively and welcoming. Water caresses the soles of her feet. The cold sensation steadies her as she walks to the cliff that brought death. Visions of the death flash through her mind. When she looks up at the cliff above her, she sees the blood staining the rocks. Blood yet to be washed away, stuck between the cracks of sediment.
Beneath her feet, the battered body of Mason appears. Flesh cut at awkward angles and muscle exposed to the grains of sand. Breathless and cold. Audrey runs into the water, tears rolling down her face. Swim. A voice calls. Audrey does not stop until she is far from the sand, out of sight of the hallucination. Come. It calls- louder now. It’s Mason’s voice. Violently, she swims through the water, beckoned by the sound. Closer. She’s almost there. The silhouette of her lost one swimming towards her brings tears to her eyes. As she comes closer, her body begins to ache returning to the state it was in the bathtub. Though it is excruciating to swim, her pain is futile against the overwhelming emotion that ignites when they reunite. Fresh wounds against a decomposing body. Bone against bone. Frozen heart against a rotting one.
I’m sorry Audrey, I love you.
Life holding death.
Published 8/7/26