Ten Minutes Under Scalding Water

"Turns out you can hold it together right up until you can't — usually around the third step into the bathroom."

The bathroom door clicked shut behind me and I made it three steps before my legs gave out.

I caught myself against the sink, hands gripping cold porcelain, knuckles white. My reflection stared back with wild eyes, flushed face, hair dishevelled from where Claiborne's grip still burned on my shoulder.

What the hell did you promise her?

The question kept echoing. I'd lied directly to his face and added it to the pile of deceptions that was burying me alive.

My hands wouldn't stop shaking.

I stumbled towards the shower cubicles, already pulling off my jacket. The USB drive and phone tumbled out, clattering onto the bench. Evidence stolen from a corpse. A corpse I'd moved and concealed. A corpse with my blood on his clothes.

Cody Jennings. Gladys had given him a name and now I couldn't unknow it, couldn't reduce him back to an abstract problem to be managed.

I stripped quickly, the bandage on my hand snagging and sending sharp pain up my arm. I welcomed it because it was concrete and real, not the screaming chaos inside my head.

The water came on scalding hot. I stepped under before it had time to adjust, gasping as the heat shocked my skin. For one blessed second everything was external, physical, manageable.

Then it all came crashing back.

Karl jogging up that hill. The window breaking. Those empty eyes staring at nothing. The blood. The cupboard. Gladys on the couch. The USB device tumbling through the air in horrible slow motion towards disaster.

"Fuck."

The word tore out of me, raw and broken. My legs buckled and I caught myself against the tiles, palms flat against cold ceramic, head bowed under the streaming water.

The first sob came without permission, ripped from somewhere deep where I'd been shoving everything down, compressing it, holding it together through sheer force of will.

The second one broke me completely.

I pressed my forehead against the tile and let it happen. The sobs tore through me, violent and ugly, nothing controlled or contained about them. My whole body shook, shoulders heaving, gasping for air between waves that wouldn't stop coming.

Karl had killed someone and I'd hidden the body. Claiborne suspected something. Gladys knew I'd been there. The evidence was in my pocket. My blood was at the scene. Luke was missing and everything was falling apart faster than I could contain it.

The water poured over me, hot and relentless, mixing with tears I couldn't distinguish anymore. Steam rose around me like I was dissolving, becoming nothing, washing away down the drain with everything else I'd lost.

Who am I? What have I become?

The questions had no answers. Just water and sobbing and my hands gripping tile like it was the only solid thing left.

Time stopped meaning anything. Could have been minutes or hours or seconds. Eventually the sobs quietened, not because anything was resolved but because my body hit some limit where it simply couldn't sustain the intensity anymore.

I turned off the water with a hand that still trembled.

Silence fell, broken only by my ragged breathing and the drip from the showerhead.

I grabbed the towel and dried off. Pulled on my contaminated clothes. Rewrapped the bandage. Pocketed the evidence that would destroy me if discovered.

The mirror showed someone I barely recognised — red eyes, pale skin, hair plastered down. Thoroughly wrecked.

Good enough. Has to be.

I pushed open the bathroom door. The corridor was blessedly empty.

The breakdown had lasted maybe ten minutes.

It had changed absolutely nothing.