Shower Drain by Alan Caldwell

Douglas liked taking long showers. He said it was a poor man’s medicine. Douglas wasn’t poor, at least not by any reasonable global standard. He was a good salesman. He never made his Manager angry or even disappointed. It doesn’t matter what he sold. That is not important. He had very few friends, but none of them knew what he sold. His wife and two daughters didn’t know what he sold either. They knew only that he sold enough of it, whatever it was, to maintain a basic American middle class existence. They knew he often worked late and sometimes even worked weekends. They knew he would arrive at home exhausted, scratch the dog’s ears, eat a cold dinner, divvy up hugs, and excuse himself to the master bath. 

Douglas liked taking long showers. He would turn off the bathroom lights, sit on the shower floor, lean back into the far corner, and let the water, as hot as he could stand it, strike his face and chest. The water was a steaming daily baptism. He would rest in his corner till the water ran cold. Everyone knew to do their own bathing and washing before he came home. It was his one personal allowance. He participated in no hobbies or interests. He sold unimportant things. He took long showers. He slept. He started over. 

Sometime last fall, after a particularly difficult work day, a day when established deals fell through and no new ones emerged to take their place, Douglas reclined in his alabaster-tiled chamber and wished he had purchased and installed two water heaters instead of one. He then heard a strange gurgling in the drain. He leaned forward and listened closely, hoping the sound was an aberration and not a clog beginning to form. He again perceived a sound in the pvc pipes below, a different sound, not a gurgle this time, more of a barely-audible whisper, but certainly an actual human voice. He assumed, at first, that it was an echo of his wife and daughters talking in the living room, a weird acoustical anomaly of some sort. He pressed his ear against the waffle-like drain. He discerned a myriad of tongues. They were strange to him. He recoiled and pushed his head away, but curiosity pulled him back. They were speaking of him. He heard his name in distinct vocalizations, some distinctly male, some female. It was as if he was privy to a large conference about him but the words were slurred to a barely incomprehensible degree. He would hear his name and then jumbled syllables. He pressed closer till the metal bit his lobes and still no clarity. Nevertheless, he knew, or believed, that they were talking about him, and he knew, or believed that they were angry or disappointed. 

He listened till the water turned tepid and then cold. He listened till he shivered. He listened till they finally pulled him free from the drain, wrapped him in a warm robe, and took him away. 

Alan Caldwell is a veteran teacher and a new author. He has recently been published in Southern Gothic Creations, Deepsouth Magazine, The Backwoodsman Magazine, oc87 Recovery Diaries, and is forthcoming in Biostories and You Might Need to Hear This.