The Girl in the Bath

Chapter 1 Lila Lila stood, pale and statuesque in the emerald polished bath, unable to move, as the water rippled cold around her ankles. All her tomorrows and yesterdays were meeting in this moment in the chilled, greedy water of the bath. She clasped her hands in front of her, mindlessly tugging at her crinkled white nightgown that was tainted with sleek stripes of blood. Red ribbons slid silently down her thighs into the wet to join the ruby pool that reached to the end of the bath. She tried to force the strained muscles in her head to look down and claim what lay there, but she couldn’t. Instead, she stared straight ahead at her reflection in the mirror above the bath. Staring back at her was a young woman she failed to recognize. The stranger’s long blonde hair was a matted mess of knots that clung to her face and neck, the eyes that looked back at her were huge and panicked, frozen in fright, the pallor of her skin assuming a bluish hue as if it had been bruised by an unseen force. The mirrored stranger moved a hand to her face and stroked it slowly in a caress. The caress kissed Lila’s own cheek. Surely this apparition couldn’t be her? Lila, like most seventeen year old girls, was obsessed with her appearance. Looks were so important if a girl was going to get by in this world. She carefully chose her image to imitate slim, long-legged, air brushed models. Not that she was shallow. Lila knew looks weren’t everything, but they helped to ease her passage through the tedium of every day. A pretty smile could help secure an extension on a late assignment at school, free cruisers at the pub and the best seat at the movies. Looks, however, were not going to help now. No amount of air whipped makeup, black extra curl mascara or volume adding hair conditioner was going to get her out of the mess she was in. But still Lila couldn’t believe she looked like the vampirish creature that was reflected in the mirror. Forcing her eyes shut she willed the image to disappear. Surely it was just part of the distorted reality she found herself caught up in. “Go away, leave me alone,” she whispered. “Please don’t let this be real.” Lila wanted never to open her eyes again. She wanted to be lost in a limbo that carried no consequences, no wrongs, no rights just a floating never-land. Somewhere else. Somebody else. But some part of her consciousness pried her eyes open and forced her to see once again the ghost-like young woman staring back at her from the mirror. She gulped, disbelief sliding down her throat. So this was really happening to her, the mess in the mirror was her. She was standing in a bloody bath of her own making. Lila shivered the cold seeping into her bones. How long had she been standing here like this? Minutes, hours, all morning? She forced herself to think back. She had been in bed, pains in her stomach, when her mother Meredith had left for work and her brother Jason had left for school. Meredith calling out in morning ritual, “Don’t forget your lunch Jason…it’s on the bench and make sure you turn the T.V. off” Then the impatience of her pause, as she waited for Jason’s answer. “Jason, can you hear me?” Jason, stuffing peanut buttered toast in his mouth as he slumped in front of a re-run of the Simpsons, answered with a grunt, in the thoughtless way of teenage boys. He licked the last of the peanut butter off his fingers, reluctantly switched the T.V. off, farted loudly and went to grab his school bag, full of unfinished homework from his lion’s den of a bedroom. “Lila…you’ll have to get up some time today” Meredith, on her way to work, had instructed impatiently from the front door. “Getting up mum! Catch you later.” Lila had forced a cheerful voice from the confines of her bed, and for authenticity added, “Better not have gutsed all the cornflakes Jase!” “Nar…but there’s no milk left, suck on that ya loser!” “Loser yourself.” “Are not.” “Are so.” “Loser with a capital L.” “Don’t talk to your sister like that Jason,” Meredith hissed as she shut the front door with a careful click. Jason, emerging from his room, kicked a ball up the hallway, farted again and banged the front door so that the ancient lead light rattled, threatening to break. Silence settled on 22 Pandora Crescent…their rundown, western suburbs house on the wrong side of Melbourne. Lila lay in bed, white sheets a crumpled damp mess, dread creeping through her body as her discomfort increased, perspiration slimy on her forehead. Curling up, lying on her stomach, lying on her back, legs drawn to her chest…nothing had diminished the nausea and the cramps. Her body smelt disgustingly of dried sweat and something else that reminded her of overripe figs decaying in a bowl. “You should go wash Lila,” she ordered herself, but trapped in strangling distress her body disobeyed. She couldn’t move from the rankness of her bed. Her pains had grown in intensity, becoming short sharp stabbing throbs that peaked and left her weak. Surely her period at last, that heavy dragging sensation in the abdomen before the blood starts to flow. The pain briefly subsided and mastering her rebelling limbs she had thrown off the ruined sheets and stumbled down the hall to the bathroom. She ran the bath, warm water her friend. The emerald bath was old and cracked, but shone in uneven patches of cleanliness. Meredith’s attempts at making the old new. No scum or mould dared to creep unbidden here. The dated black and white tiles on the floor were antiseptic fresh and cool beneath Lila’s bare toes. Thread-bare bottle green towels that did not quite match the emerald of the tiles, hung primly arranged on the chrome towel rails, except for Jason’s towel that lay wet and abandoned on the floor, oozing defiance in its bunched shape. Lila clothed in her nightgown, stepped into the bath and sighed as the welcome warmth licked her toes. And then the blood had started trickling down her legs…lots of blood…more blood than a normal period. She gasped as the pain increased. She thought of going back to her room in search of a sanitary pad but there was too much blood, it would leave a trail of stains on the hallway floor. She rubbed her stomach hard, trying to reduce the cramps but it only made it worse. Hot water bottles, warm wheat bags, pain killers, nothing was going to relieve this. It was consuming her. She had images of aliens and monsters thrashing around in her insides. Fear slid in sweat down her neck and stuck between the curves of her breasts. A scream echoed in the bathroom, sounding as if it belonged to someone else. “Mum! I need you...Mum...” But Meredith was not where she was needed. It seemed, these days, she never was. Lila was alone...alone in the house...alone in the world...alone with the torture. She steadied herself against the tiles with one hand, lifted her nightgown away from her legs and the blood with the other and waited. Waited again for the explosion of pain, the grip it had on her, and the moment when the pain was in its lull. She was caught for what seemed like hours in this never ending repetition of cruelty and release. The blood continued its journey down her legs. The water in the bath cooled down becoming cold in the igloo of a bathroom. Then all of a sudden with the pain at its peak, the urge to push overcame Lila. Her legs apart, her body splitting, a mass from her insides fell silent into the water.