Monday, April 30, 2012

Steampunk





Shower Scene: (experiment in extremely-short storytelling)


Gavin turned on the shower and watched as the water fell suddenly to the whiteness below. Splashing quickly then sliding down the drain out of sight like it had been waiting ready for that exact moment. An army of H2O propelling itself forward, each soldier parachuting out to accomplish its mission. He often had silly thoughts like this while he waited for things, it seemed like life involved a lot of 'waiting', where you can't do anything for one moment or so, then the system reboots gifting you a million options but bugger all time to use them. The water reached maximum hotness, so he adjusted the temp to just the right status and jumped on in.

After the initial acclimatisation and joy of the hot water, the shampoo and soap routine can begin. Showers are one of those simple pleasures that never gets boring, just one of those mindless daily things we all do and never find the need to really discuss. Because, well, the aim is simple: get clean. Not something you need to over-think. But that is one of those nice wee ironies of life, over-thinkers don't get to choose what they over-think about. So on the odd occasion they may find that they end up analysing the mundane, the banal, the stuff that everybody else just got on with, without being curious. It didn't happen all the time of course, but sporadically Gavin would get stuck in obscure thoughts. Like when did people first start taking showers and how serious historically, were humans, about hygiene. Apparently only a few generations back whole families shared bathwater, but in modern times it seems almost abnormal not to shower daily. Not that he'd done a survey or anything, but he could just tell by looking around at the people in his office that with the amount of bodily preparation they attended to they must shower everyday to achieve this. Sometimes he could skip a day on a weekend, but never more than one in a row, his hair and by default his forehead just got too greasy for his liking. This was partially behind the reasoning for his new 'shower at night' routine, which was current being trialled. You see if Gavin washed his hair in the morning before work, he felt like it went a bit dry and sort of fluffy, which he disliked. But if he didn't wash it his hair would get a bit oily. So the solution that seemed to work was to wash it at night and then wake up with bed hair, but because his hair was quite short the bed hair looked like it was meant to be that way.

He realised his mind had drifted off as he finished washing the remaining soap off and getting those last few blasts of hot water at the face. In a moment he would unfortunately turn the water off and reach out for the towel located close by. Dry off and go to bed. But for some reason it just seems more natural to shower in the morning, he guessed because he uses it as a way to wake up...

add/rewrite?








2 comments:

LB said...

First off... 'its mission' rather than 'it's'.
Also some tense/POV issues.
Otherwise, funny. And, as a night-showerer, I agree!

Xanixiel said...

Kudos on this one! ^^