Water Loss

Water Loss by Sam Logan | Issue 1.9

The swelling in your legs started a few months ago, about the time you stopped remembering to take your medications. There were so many pills. Take the big blue one after meals three times a day.

Take the tiny white one with a glass of water before bed. The pink one as needed. You hated doctors telling you what to do, anyway. You were going to do it your way, come hell or high water. You thought you could tough it out, and you knew better than everyone else. The generation of Men Who Were Always Right, except when you weren’t, which was often.

Your fleshy legs turned bright pink as the skin stretched to its limit like a filled water balloon that threatened to pop at any moment. The surface tension was tighter than when your (ex-)wife told you she filed for divorce. The left leg sprung its first leak about a week ago. The pressure was too much for the thin, elastic membrane that could no longer hold it all in. It was a dribble at first. Droplets dripped from a pinhole and ran a path from shin to sock. A paper towel could last a few hours before it was soaked and had to be thrown away.

Drips flowed faster until it became a bubbling brook. You tried gauze for a few days, but the puncture had grown to the size of a pebble and leaked more than could be absorbed by the white mesh material. The wound jetted a stream of water when you flexed your ankle at just the right angle, and the calf muscle pulled taut. It was difficult to walk. You could no longer keep up with a world that had left you behind. You kept your foot resting in a plastic basin and dumped its contents every hour or so. The fetid water left behind an oily residue.

The swelling hadn’t stopped at the legs. Water built up in your belly like a big beach ball. Arms and neck almost twice their usual size.

You stopped going to appointments altogether. Rather, you forgot they were scrawled on the wall calendar by the owl clock with moving eyes. Tick tock tick tock tick tock. You hadn’t planned on going. Doctors called, but your phone was disconnected. The phone bill was neglected and unpaid. You had money but refused to pay it because the price had gone up too much. No one came to check on you. They all abandoned you long ago, and you couldn’t blame them, but you did.

Regrets, you had a few. But it was too late, and you were all alone staring at the walls as you listened to the news that crackled out from tinny speakers of a handheld radio.

Your skin bag bloated with water faster than it could leak out. Finally, it could hold no more.

Your body sprayed foul water from every pore like a sprinkler. A shower that burst outward. Thousands of droplets flung about until all the pressure was released. Water crawled down walls and pooled near baseboards. The slimy water soaked through the recliner where you spent your days. There was no strength left to move or try and stop the outflow.

The last bit of moisture was expelled from your body. Your skin deflated and flattened like a drained cow after a Chupacabra’s night visit. The inside of your meat suit was drier than a burnt brown lawn on a sweltering summer day.

Someone will find you, eventually.

—

Sam Logan (he/him) emerged in 1984 from the depths of the Chesapeake Bay off the Maryland shore. He made it to Oregon where he is a university professor and somehow convinced someone to let him teach a course about body horror. Sam Lives with his partner, kiddo, and Dune the dog. He has stories in Mouthfeel Fiction, Punk Noir Magazine, Divinations Magazine, Major 7th Magazine, and Underbelly Press.