Thicker than Water

Thicker than Water

By Charlotte Sloan

(Flash Fiction)

          Many people didn’t see dead bodies but I was on my second one. I didn’t understand why it happened, why we found them face down in the motel pools that closed at 11:00pm. I thought that women didn’t know how to swim. 

          She was pale and her skin looked soft. My hand grazed her shoulder, just barely, while the other hand gripped the blue glossy tile of the pool’s edge. I leaned closer, water soaking through to my knees as I tried to tell her that it wasn’t safe to hold her breath that long. 

          Her skin was softer than it looked. But before I could shake her awake, I was yanked back by my wrist. I didn’t look away from her as my dad dragged me back to the motel room. My eyes lingered on the tan confetti that caught in her hair that fanned out like it was a silk brunette net. 

          Then there was the fourth one. I asked if she wanted to borrow my life jacket to help her swim better but she said, No, and so I huffed, crossed my arms, and said, Well, don’t blame me when you drown. She smiled, rolled her eyes, and walked away. 

          I found her at the bottom of the hot tub. I usually didn’t see their eyes but I saw hers, red and crusted at the corners. They were wide and looking at me like she was terrified. I wondered, how could she be terrified if she was dead? Her mouth was wide, and though I knew it was wrong and my dad told me so, I laughed a little. I imagined her as a beached piranha snapping at me, the clattering of a shuddering jaw while she flopped on wet sand. 

          I hadn’t seen a dead body in a few years now. I knew that there was something strange about tan confetti and piranha at the bottom of a hot tub, about why women now knew how to swim when they didn’t then.   

          I asked my dad. I saw him sitting on the couch reading the paper, his glasses adjusted on the small dent of his nose. I sat next to him. 

          Dad. He hummed in response. What happened to those women? 

          He licked his finger and flipped the page. What women? 

          The women in the water. 

          Women in the water?

          The dead ones. 

          I thought I knew the answer or at least I knew it was real bad but I still needed to hear it. He opened his mouth. I thought he was going to tell me women were just poor swimmers but they’d gotten better now, and it was nothing bad and to Stop thinking like that, Joshua but then he didn’t say anything at all. 

          He frowned, folded the paper, and walked away.