Rubber Darkling
By William Draycott
A shadow passes over me as I lie motionless beneath the suds. It circles overhead, unable to dive. Its hollow body filled with air prevents it from submerging. The water, pinking with strawberry daiquiri, is growing tepid. The straw from my drink is all that is keeping me in breath. The duck has not yet noticed its protrusion from the water.
I think about all of the showers I’ve ever enjoyed. The efficient quickness of their hot torrents renders bathing an inconvenience. With water bills reaching untold heights, bathing has become a luxury. But it had been a long day, hadn’t it? And what was one long soak on a Friday with a cocktail and a microdose of LSD on a sugar cube? I’m doing keto; one cube surely could not break ketosis, right?
It circles again. I’m living a reverse Jaws; me, the protagonist, lurking beneath the water whilst the apex predator skims the surface like a polyvinyl chloride avian punt. Where is a stray oxygen tank and a Smith & Wesson Model 15 when you need one?
Do I dare to resurface and face its bloodlust? I could just stay down here; build a life down here. It’s not so bad. The water tastes mildly of strawberries, if a little soapy. I’m starting to need a wee.
It stops overhead, and I think it’s up to something. It’s contracting and expanding, throbbing and breathing, taking on water and expelling the air within it.
It descends.
William Draycott, a cabinet maker and sometime writer, has been published and long-listed by The Yard Lab, Free Flash Fiction, The Cranked Anvil, Scaffold Literary Magazine and Dark Holme Publishing, much to their chagrin. When out in public, he is often mistaken for Uncle Buck.
This absurdist bathtub thriller is brilliantly executed. The escalation from cozy bath time to existential dread is seamless, and that "reverse Jaws" framing got me. I once had a similar parnoiac spiral in a bath but it was abou a spider on the ceiling, way less clever. The mix of keto anxiety, microdosing, and rubber duck terror feels like the kind of weird internal monologue we all have but never admit to.