Life Cycle of an Otter
Originally published in Lost Futures: Thresholds
There’s a ghost in my shower. Honestly though, it doesn’t bother me much. It’s not so different from seeing a spider in there, only I doubt I have a glass big enough for this particular pest. I will say, it’s a bit fleshy for a ghost. Streaks of body hair hang onto pink skin, raw from the water’s heat. I can see steam rising from it, but it’s also speckled with gooseflesh, as if cold, even after it’s used all my hot water. That irritates me slightly. It shivers where it stands, dripping wet, a towel over its head. Its hands clench and release, clench and release. The motion is rhythmic, soothing almost. I stare at it, forgetting myself. Perhaps I should feel guilty for this intrusion; but it is my shower. It tilts its head to one side and seems to see me through the fabric. Its hands slowly slip the towel from its face. I bolt from the bathroom when it does that. A half-naked ghost is one thing, but to see one full frontal would be obscene. I think I’ll shower later.
My house begins to blur as I get ready to leave. The walls shimmer as if bathed in heat, then quickly dissolve. Bricks fly past me, propelled by a hurricane. The storm blows my bedroom, my stairs, my front room, my door, my drive, all away. Until I’m stood on the pavement. I turn back and see my house tall and thin behind me, hemmed in by its neighbours. Along the road cars are parked nose to nose, blocking driveways. A few wheels rest nonchalant on the curb, while others sit some distance away, as if disgusted by the gurgling drains. I look up at the smattering of trees imprisoned in concrete; they moan in the wind and strain to break free. I set off for the bus stop and immediately step in dog muck. I walk over to a patch of grass, which is browning slightly at the tips, and wipe my shoe. My dad used to say to me: better the muck you see than the muck you don’t. I haven’t a clue what he was on about.
On the bus, I sniff the air, trying to see if the smell from my shoes has reached the other passengers. I can’t smell anything, but they probably think I’ve got a bad cold, or I’m on the gear. My heart thumps a bit faster when a group of teenagers get on; they wear identical Adidas trackies and have chunks of hair missing from their heads. Their hands hang low or are stuffed inside pockets. I notice half of them don’t pay, they push past the ones that do and head straight upstairs. I catch the eye of the driver. He sees them too, but it’s not worth the fuss. They slink up the narrow staircase in a mass, like a shoal of fish, and a minute later I hear music playing from a phone’s tinny speaker. Occasionally, I hear them screaming with laughter. Looking around the bus, I can’t imagine what seems so funny. I almost want to laugh out loud too and pretend I get the joke, but I just can’t see it.
I get off at the next stop, two earlier than I paid for. I start walking towards town and pass four pubs, all of them shut down, their windows covered with ply wood and graffiti, their signage so grimy the pictures of decapitated monarchs and charging animals look monochrome and flat. Whenever my dad drives down this road, he always tuts and shakes his head, first at the newly created bus lane (a piss-take and a waste of money, he says) then at the pubs he used to frequent as a young man, now dilapidated and all-but forgotten. As a child, I’d sit on his lap as he chatted to other men stood at the bar. There might have been hundreds of them, or there might only have been a few. I don’t know, they all looked the same. Later, when I turned eighteen, I’d go in on my own two feet. My Dad bought me my first pint and toasted my going to uni. Most parents would say things like: make sure you work hard. Think of your future. But instead, he said: Make sure you take a break from working. You’ll work all your life once you jump on the wheel, then before you know it, you’ll be old and grey. Like him. He’d nudge one of the other men as he said this; they’d all laugh and jeer, but the next moment they would be silent, staring into their pints of flat larger clasped by wrinkled fingers.
‘The wheel’ was what my Dad called the cycle of life he and most people he knew entered when they became adults: marry, have kids, work to provide for those kids, work harder so those kids could eat, play, go on holiday, so on. Then onto a retirement that was always talked about but never seemed to come. Fingers would cramp with arthritis, joints would stiffen, knees would be replaced, yet on and on the wheel would turn. It seemed less like a wheel and more like a railway, a rigid set of tracks only turning or stopping when something beyond deigned it to be so. If they ever did. Despite these warnings, my Dad’s always seemed happy. His face is deeply creased and lined, but I’ve never thought those wrinkles came from age: they were battle scars from a lifetime of smiling.
I’d never liked that pub. It stank of smoke until the ban, afterwards of BO and crisps—which was worse. In the car park there was a pool of blood. The red was so deep I couldn’t see the concrete underneath, so I used to imagine I could fall into it and be submerged in sticky, sickly liquid. Even as I got older it seemed strange because it was always there. Week after week, year after year, the puddle of blood remained. The sun didn’t dry it, the rain didn’t wash it away; it sat there always, a biblical lake in the middle of the city. Funny thing though, once the pub closed it finally disappeared. I pass this way often, but I never saw it shrink, never saw its deep red lose its lustre. It simply vanished. Sometimes I miss that pub and its puddle of blood.
The bank will close soon. I heard they’re turning it into a steak restaurant. For now, there’s an old man typing with blistering speed. I’m instantly impressed, until I notice there’s no monitor. He tells me: ‘fill out this form’. Instead of the collection of boxes and dotted lines I’d expected, I’ve been given an exquisite watercolour painting of an otter in a stream. I’m not sure where I’m supposed to write, but I choose a space as far from the otter as possible. I look down at the serene creature and think of its home on the riverbank, the fish it needs to catch, the family it needs to feed. I walk quickly towards the exit.
Back at home, colour seems to be returning to the world. I look at the otter I secreted from the bank; its brown fur looks soft and warm, its whiskered face content as it drifts in the water. I trudge upstairs, stripping away my dirty clothes as I go. I open the door to the bathroom and gingerly peek inside: no ghost. I grab the towel and find it’s still damp. The ghost never washes the towels, which I always find inconsiderate. I turn on the water and leap under the stream. Thankfully, the boiler has had time to heat up. The water is so hot it almost burns me. My toes ache with cold. I stand in the stream, willing my thoughts to be scrubbed clean. Wipe away this day, I chant, wipe away this day. When the water turns from flesh stripping down to scalding, I know it’s time to get out. I pull the towel off the hook and start to dry my hair. The towel envelops me like a shroud. I pause. My hands clutch the fabric. I let out a sigh. I shiver from cold even as my skin burns. I close my eyes and rock back and forth on my toes. The door creaks open. I know it’s the shower ghost. I can’t see it, but it can’t be anyone else. It wants another shower. The towel obscures it, but I suddenly have the urge to see it, just once. I want to look in its eyes and ask it why it moans in the shower, why it burns its thoughts away, why it hides beneath a towel day after day. I cock my head to one side, listening for it. I can hear its feet backing away. I pull the towel from my eyes but only glimpse its shape as it darts from the bathroom.