A Horror in 6teen Posts

- a drowning woman pleads for an umbrella-

“Chris, you have to help me, baby, please. I’m drowning. Chris. Christ. Chris, please! Christ, help me! she screamed. “I need an umbrella. I’m drowning. You have to get here. You have to help!”

These were in the days before cellular phones, and I was torn in two: my office phone’s cord stretched to its breaking point as I prepared to bolt from my office to my car, but I was trapped in place by the necessity of staying on the phone with my wife.

There was a hysteria in her voice that I had never heard before, from her or anyone else, and though I had heard my wife fearful at times, terror had now consumed her.

“I’m coming, baby. Ok? I’m coming, but I have to get off the ph-”

“No! Don’t leave me! I need you. Help! Help!”

“Kali! I’m trying. I have to get off the phone. I’m on my way. Please,” I implored. “I promise. I promise. I’m coming right now!”

“Bring an umbrella. My God!” she gasped, and the line went dead.

She was calling from the house. I hadn’t heard any splashing, any gushing or any pouring water, not even a drip-drop, but she had continued screaming for an umbrella and that she was drowning. But her screams hadn’t been the gulping breaths of a drowning person, more the over-abundant oxygen of panic.

I careened through traffic, her pleas drowning out the noise and outraged horns outside. In my haste, I had completely forgotten, or ignored, her request for an umbrella, not wanting to waste any time hurrying home. I hurtled through the subdivision, squealing into the driveway, and bound for the front door, which I found would not open or budge under any circumstance.

Racing to the front window, I saw her inside.

She lay fetal-like on the couch, her bright, watery eyes bugged out in horror, looking heavenward.

Tears were falling as waterfalls from my wife’s eyes, but, rather than crash to the ground, they ascended to the ceiling, bubble-like, and integrated themselves into the calm, accumulating depths that now filled from the high ceilings of our home down to within a yard of Kali’s head.

The water was steadily rising, and I beat on the windows with my fist before punching them outright. I grabbed our garden hose and swung it in great arches before slamming the nozzle into the windows, over and over again, but nothing. I hurled gardening bricks.

I ran to the car, and floored it, battering the house with a crash. The airbags deployed, burning my face. I wretched as I crawled out the window before stumbling onto the hood to climb in and save her, but, to my horror, the house remained unharmed.

Returning to the window, a scream stuck in my throat. The water had now filled the entirety of the house but for a small umbrella-shaped space above and around her body.

She turned her head, looking at me through blurry eyes before the water dropped itself as if a mountain, launching Kali from my view and filling it with wave upon wave. Frantically, I screamed her name, beating the glass, my eyes screening the abyss.

BOOM!

Her body bludgeoned the glass, breaking her in front of my eyes, but the window never even cracked.

Her dazed eyes focused a last time, recognition filling her face with love and sadness, before the water, now shadowy with blood, drew her back into the murk; the mystery of it all taking her from me forever.

Follow P.CM. on Twitter: @plzcallmechrist