I Make No Ripple

This is kind of surreal.  Use your imagination while you read this.

I'm standing in my doorway.  I see the white walls loom all around me, the light above my head, the windows frosted over with a thin sheet of ice so they're translucent. His shadow outside assaults my eyes.  Clear, cold water pools at my feet, soaking my shoes, making me shiver.  The chill invokes in me a curiosity.  I have to know.

Sudden knocking persuades me to turn ever so slightly from the water I crave to investigate so thoroughly.  As soon as I realize that the distraction is a plea to come inside and stop my quest for the source of the frigid water, I am disheartened.  It is an annoyance.  This trespasser has interrupted me.  The water's trickle becomes a roaring wave in my ears to drown out the incessant, now frantic, attack on my door.

I take steps away.  Each movement makes the water splash like it's falling from a sky high waterfall.  The door still strains under the effort of the intruder but I can't hear it anymore.  The water transfixes me.  It's running down the stairs, plinking as clear as a bell when it encounters the next step.  Before I comprehend it, I'm climbing the stairs, one by one, sloshing water.  At the zenith, I find the source: the bathroom.

I follow the stream inside in a haze.  The bathtub is overflowing.  When I try to turn off the water, the handles spin endlessly, no matter which way I turn them.  No less flow, no more flow.  I touch the surface, dipping my fingers in tentatively and stand waiting for an effect, a consequence for being so curious.  The water is still freezing to the touch.  My fingers shake but I've more will to leave them than to remove them.  I sink them in further.  My fingertips brush the bottom of the tub.  The water almost reaches my shoulder.  My shoulder which had your arms around it once.  I try in vain to unplug it and get a feeling of wrongness for it.

I recoil quickly and curl up in the puddle.  My being feels scorched by the wrongness.  The water's roar diminishes.  It only augments the door as it crashes in.  It wasn't who I thought was knocking at my door.  It wasn't the wrong person.  You can't see me like this.  The sudden urge to jump in the bathtub grabs me around the neck and squeezes all my thoughts away to mingle them with the water.  I watch them pollute it and trickle down the stairs to impede you while I throw myself in the tub.  I expect the splash to bring you to my rescue.  There is no splash.  I don't make a single ripple.  So while my thoughts hold you back, I slide under the water.  I try to hold my breath at first, but I don't.  I am drowning in the bathtub.  Dying alone and you don't know it.  No one knows it because I left no splash, no ripple in your world.  You don't know because I left you to think all my thoughts.

Your world is so distorted from underwater.  The water is so cold.  Icey frost creeps out from the edges and coats the surface to trap me under.  I can't breathe.  I can't pull myself out.  You're downstairs, wrapped up in my thoughts.  The water stops flowing, it's task nearly complete, and my world is silent.  You know how your life flashes before your eyes as you die?  Drowning in a bathtub leaves a lot of time for your life to fly by, unchecked.  My eyes are movie projectors, showing the film of who I've been on the ice locking me underwater.  So I close them.  I touch the panel of ice in my darkness.  And you touch the other side.

The ice cracks and melts and I can feel you trying to drag me out.  I fight you but I don't know why.  Instinct, natural reaction to leaving a place that doesn't hurt.  You're so warm though, I am a melting ice cube.  The bath tub drains out.  The water dries up.  Soon it's gone and I'm clinging to you.  I've got no where else to go...And you're so warm.