Hot Water
By Casey Douglass
as part of #fridayflash
Survivor log
#27482-EURO – Kenneth Brown
‘Most people have the
concern that as soon as they sit on the toilet, get naked or do
anything else that makes them vulnerable, that they will be burgled.
Or that some other contrived situation might arise causing them to
deal with the emergency services whilst only wearing a dressing gown.
Few would expect the world to end at bath time. Even fewer would
actually have it happen.
I was in the bath when
it happened, as you might have guessed. It was a nice deep one, the
kind with the water upto my ears and the buoyancy making my arms
float pleasingly a few inches from the bottom. I had some lavender
fragranced Radox bath salts which were making me very drowsy. I
remember having the thought that I had better pull the plug or end up
drowning, when a colossal boom made me flinch so hard that as I
relaxed again my head thumped on the backward slope of the white
bath. I wasn’t sure what was going on, although my whole body
tingled and ached with the flood of adrenaline. My ears sang like a
wet finger being run around the rim of a crystal glass. Before I
could marshal my thoughts, the bathroom window blew inwards in an
explosion of twirling glass. Somehow I did manage to get my arms up
to protect my face, the only injuries being some nasty gashes on my
forearms and shoulders.
The next thing I
remember was the broiling heat. I moved my arms down away from my
face and saw waves of rolling flame licking in through the window
frame and moving along my ceiling. It was like it was alive, an ocean
of orange and yellow lapping around the light fixtures. I gasped as I
felt my face tighten and begin to itch, so I sank lower into the bath
water to escape some of the heat. The air had become thin and bitter,
tanged with the smell of burning. My breathing rasped in my throat. I
thought I was going to die, to blackout or get cooked alive. It was
then that I felt a malodorous breeze on my face and quickly realised
that air was being sucked through the plumbing by some sort of
equalizing pressure. I moved my face closer to the overflow drain
halfway along the bath and breathed in deeply, fighting the urge to
retch as the smell of drains corrupted my nose. It was horrible, but
I think it is what saved my life.
I don’t know when the
fire vanished, my shell-shocked mind was just happy to be breathing
and was wholly focused on the source of air. When I did look up, my
ceiling was black and smouldering, my shower curtain gone, its rings
charred and clinking in the breeze from the window space. I do not
know why the fire burnt out. Later, when the fire-brigade did finally
turn up, they put it down to some kind of unique mixture of the
atmosphere in the bathroom and the construction of the house. They
told me I was very very lucky. I didn’t need to be told, I knew. I
later found out that one of the fireballs from AST6-75 landed in the
field behind my house. It was only a few feet across but I am just
thankful it wasn’t where the main rock fell to the earth. Others
weren’t so lucky so I count my blessings. The burns have healed
now, and they don’t hurt as much as they did. I am told that with
time they wont bother me at all, but for now, I have my writing.’
THE END