Cutpaste

Cut/paste/

Essie stands above the pool she's grown to love, and she feels connected. Outside, car tires screech out of estrangement as they are ground into oblivion. They wisp away in a shiver of smoke, and the hooligans continue their charades. Cold moonlight brushes past Essie's pale skin, and chlorine strokes glass chimes as it glides through the air like superfine sandpaper.
The minor chords gleam, and she asks how things can be so perfect.

Detergent ghosts of pale colours swim in circles below her. Essie lowers her gaze to the smooth water, in an attempt to perceive its depth. Blinking her eyes when the two girls reflected merge into one, she stops. A voice that sounds like nothing appeals to her ears, but the air is too cool for her to listen. Overspill grates relish thoughts of their thirst being quenched, and the water looks so soft.

Essie looks down the length of the pool, through the water and along the black lines. The ventilation pipes on the ceiling have diameters too massive to occupy her thoughts. She inhales. Cool air strokes her throat and a semblance of chlorine invites itself along, but she hardly notices. At capacity, she dives off the aqua-foam block to fall into the water as a missile in apparent slow motion. The surface scans Essie's threadlike, ethereal body, and she disappears like a paper strip into a shredder. Just as she starts jerking in the water, the pool bottom confronts her, but she has time. She turns to look up and through tiny bubbles surrounding her face to see a receding surface. She's still falling. Essie expands her muscles in a desperate attempt to stop, but lines and parachutes are mutually exclusive. She tries for a scream, but only shiny, irregular clouds escape her face to manifest and float upwards. She begs the for help and they readily embitter her with a scoff. She only continues to sink until the concrete pool bottom cracks into her now splintered back. She recoils and stretches like a fish struck with a cane before settling on the ground again. Hair is the lightning tree to a tesla coil head.
W
Stasis.

Essie looks up to see a face fixated upon the barely imperceivable beneath the water, and in alogment as much as shock it quickly recedes. Maybe there was a girl, but it was probably just a distorted reflection. He blinks his eyes as all the people on the surface coalesce. It's only him. It was nothing. Sometimes bubbles are just waiting in the pool.
The door was locked. He was the first one here. It's early, he's tired, it's dark. Don't be absurd.
Readjusting his blue and white stripe collar, he resumes checking the filter. A wholesome bag of chlorine powder waits patiently, at his side.
/
Essie realises she's been seen and her brain turns to plastic. There was so little time. Pins and needles swallow her feet and she knows it's too late to take a breath. Acutely aware but now alight with hypercapnia, she feels like a broken torpedo laying on the stripe. The oceans are full of polyethylene, there's really nothing left. Essie winces as the carbon dioxide burns her insides. Alarms are on fire with silence and histamines are lost for a purpose.
/
The maintenance man confirms his filter checks, and decides to chlorinate the water. After tearing the bag he tries to slowly distribute the powder, but the bag gets enthusiastic and overbalances into the water.
"Bombs away," he mutters to himself, pondering how he is so often compelled to say and do such stupid things. He shakes his head.
/
Rush. Essie's brain swells into her eyes as her head contracts. Systems are shutting down now. The water is like glass and her ears are on fire. Her vision blurs and somehow, the surface has gone. Far away stalactites are pullulating from a disinfectant white plume. Essie's eyes already feel sandblasted. They aren't ready for this.
//
Now her extremities have started to freeze. There isn't enough oxygen to go around and it makes her sick. She only wants to stay awake. It's the numbness that scares her the most. She's almost swallowed by the cloud. Black out. Essie falls up, and the chlorine floats down. Nothing. The chemicals take pleasure in the osmosis of the girl.
///
Nothing.
-
Cofusion is rampant among the other droplets that night. Tablets are fizzing as miscattered bubbles rise. Essie stops swimming in circles for a moment to observe a girl upon the diving block. Examining the length of the pool, she's looking through the water and along the black lines. Essie tries to scream but droplets don't make much noise. The girl falls like a torpedo in apparent slow motion and her ethereal body is scanned by the water as she disappears like a paper strip into a shredder.

The End.