Thirst by Sarah Hilary
Thirst
Consider, the whole world is in a drop of water, suspended from the limed lip of a tap. Your reflection, and everything around it, captured and distorted. Water changes everything.
The first time it happened, he’d slipped in the shower. As he sat there, his legs sprawled in shock, the small of his back scraped raw by the wall, the pool of water between his legs started to rise up. Like a blister. Only it got bigger and bigger and then it grew a head. So maybe it was more like a boil than a blister, only then the head grew a face and the face grew a tongue and –
There was a succubus rising naked between his legs, scarlet lips parted, breasts high and hard. He could smell lilies, orchids and ashes. He could see fire in her pupils, thin flames dancing in time to the slow sway of her hips, slim curve of her waist. Her pelvis dipped to shadow; she was hairless, pearled sweetly with sweat. She pushed her palms up his thighs, spreading him out under her, and leaned in to feast, hot and hungry-mouthed.
That’s pretty much how it happened – the first time. After that? Everything. Every puddle of water – every drop – same damned thing. A single drip from a leaking faucet and he was leaping for a towel, desperate not to get wet. One drop of rain from a cloudless sky – that’s all it took. Water, water, everywhere… Like little sips from Satan’s lips. He was even scared to sweat.
Everyone except the barman said, “Church – go to church and pray,” and like a fool he started to think he’d give it a shot. Anything to be free of this feeling of being stalked by something large and dark and dripping.
He hadn’t meant any harm but Hell was probably bottom-heavy with people who’d meant no harm, not to mention the odd idiot or two who’d thought he could mess with the Black Arts for a laugh and sell his soul to Satan without it meaning a damn thing in the morning. Sometimes those dumb movies were for real. He hadn’t washed in weeks, too afraid of getting wet. “There’s something in the water,” he said, shuddering.
Hydrophobia. Hallucinations. “Have they ruled out rabies?” the barman wanted to know.
He’d been seeing stuff, and hearing it too. Winking eyes in puddles; sniggering steam from ventilation grids. He’d thought Hell was all about the fire, you know? But whatever was stalking him was wet, slobbering at him while he slept, leaving damp patches on the sheets.
He’d given up drinking anything on-the-rocks, condensation pin-pricking his palms as he lifted the glass, the iced drink dissolving on his lips into a blistering kiss. There were 800 different brands of bottled water available for sale in the US, and in each one a screw-topped tongue lurked, lunging to lasso his tonsils until his gag reflex got triggered just by looking at the dimpled plastic and glass.
The barman got it. “You don’t want water,” the barman said. “Fish fuck in it.”
Water was in the air. It made up 70% of the human body. There was no getting away from it. Precipitation. Aspiration. Forget global warming; the ice-caps melted into more water and the levels stayed the same. Water never got consumed. It just recycled itself, in one form or another. Driving, surging, gushing, lashing, spitting, coming down in sheets, coming down in pitchforks. Then evaporating, to do it all again.
He tried altering the composition of the water he couldn’t avoid. Filling his bath with Dead Sea Salts. Marinating his body in whiskey and smoke, syrup and salt, hoping to transfigure his sweat into something approximating Gregorian water, unpalatable to the forked tongues that licked from every droplet, everywhere, reaching from taps when he stooped to wash his face, wrapping around his ankles when he failed to dodge puddles, dancing down his spine if he got caught in a sudden shower.
He was going crazy. Well wouldn’t you? If water started leaping out at you all over the place, laughing in your face. He developed a phobia about urinals. No way was he unzipping in front of anything that dripped.
“You thought about relocating to the desert?” The barman, who moved the frosted glasses so he could sit at the bar without coming out in a cold sweat, was the only one who didn’t say, “Go to Church.” He ordered another drink and snapped a lighter at a cigarette. If he was on his way down, he may as well make it an express delivery.
“I am so fucked,” he told the barman. “Never ever meddle. Ouji-whatsit-Taro – Leave that stuff to the professionals. And especially,” he wagged a finger, wise with whiskey, “don’t let Him get your blood.”
“Thicker than water, buddy,” the barman nodded.
“More like soup,” he agreed, shoving at his glass. Damn, he was thirsty. It was hellish dry down South.
It was raining when he left the bar. Too drunk to care, he weaved his way through it, letting the drops slide and glide down the back of his neck, collecting in his lashes and blurring his skin. The rain whispered a drunken promise of his deliverance and, looking up, he saw a church.
The brownstone portico gaped like a maw. In the jaundiced, guttering light, he watched a woman fill a small plastic flask from the stoop. The sucking chuckle from the neck of the flask was the only sound in the place.
When she was gone, he approached the lip of the basin and looked down into the water, muttering the first prayer that came into his head: “Deliver me from every evil work…”
At first there was just his reflection, a precarious catch, like the fish that twists free before it’s landed. Then the Holy Water rippled into a smile, its gleaming mouth pouting to reveal the liquid tines of a forked tongue, shifting in the stoop with a slapping, smacking sound.
“Pucker up, sucker!”
