Under the Drain

There was only one real memory I could recall happening before that day I set my parent’s house on fire. In fact, it wasn’t a memory at all. It was a dream.

I always believed that dreams were a way of sorting out the mess of information in our heads so we can make better sense of things. In the mundane world of an adult, our dreams can never compete with the ones we had as kids. Perhaps the reason we dream with such intensity has a bit to do with how incredibly out of touch we are with our own bodies. While we are still getting to know ourselves, we grow and strengthen our mind and body connections. We are still paving the highway from our brains to our hands, to our feet, and body, fusing the paths the more that we dream.

As we are growing up, everything is brand new to us. We are experiencing everything for the first time, and it is a lot for our little growing brains to process. So as a result, as kids, we tend to have these incredible awe-inspiring dreams. Or in some cases, absolutely horrifying ones.

As our father was rarely home, our mother was always the one left to take care of us. Having so many mouths to feed, laundry to wash, and messes to clean up, our mother had to became more efficient in the way she managed things around the house. There was no exception to how she bathed us.

When we were all infants, we were washed in the sink. Whomever was the baby at the time, would be the first one to bathe after dinner. After we had all finished up our supper and the last dish was cleared from the sink, the youngest went in. And with how busy our mother always was, it wasn’t too surprising that we would all come out smelling like dish soap.

When we got older, we all bathed together. “Rubba dub dub, three boys in a tub,” I recall our mother singing to us, as Ben, David and I took turns washing each others backs. I always truly loved bath time. I liked to splash, and squirt water on my brothers from the various colored rubber duckies that bobbed up and down in the water. It was a time I looked forward to. That was until Ben told me the terrible lie.

He told me that if I stayed in the bath long enough, while the water was being drained, I would be sucked down. I believed every word. The very thought of this sent chills down my spine. After he told me this, I avoided the bath for as long as I could. When the stink from my body started to become too unbearable, I would wash up at lightning speed, and jump out of the bath before mom had a chance to remove the stopper.

My fear of getting sucked down the drain didn’t end with bath time. At night, I would imagine what terrible fate that waited for me, or god forbid, for one of my poor siblings. All who had just as good a chance as any to be pulled into that great beyond under the bathtub. I was so terrified, it often kept me up at night.

When I did manage to fall asleep, my fears did not subside, but only took on a new imagination of their own. In my dream, I was watching Ben taking a bath, only this time I wasn’t inside with him. Maybe I subconsciously wanted him to suffer for having put me through all that stress and turmoil, who knows. It was at that moment that Ben looked right at me with a freakish grin on his face, as he pulled the plug of the bathtub.

As the water rushed in, Ben looked up at me in terror, “Help me,” he pleaded. But I couldn’t move. Every ounce of me wanted to run and to save him, but I couldn’t move. I was planted there in that bathroom, unable to look away, as my brother screamed in horror. With the look of desperation in his eyes, his body began to slowly stretch, and break into pieces, until only his head remained. “How can you let this happen?” I remember these last words vividly, right before his head made a giant popping sound, and he disappeared completely, down the drain.

I wish it ended there. When my body finally unfroze, I walked slowly towards the bathtub. My little subconscious heart was pounding out of my chest as I hovered over to get a closer look. “B-B-Benny,” I whimpered. All of a sudden the whole bathroom started to shake. I wanted to scream, but no sound came out. Then from out the hole from which he went in, Ben jumped out. Though Ben wasn’t Ben anymore. He was a one foot tall green slimy gremlin.

“Bwalamagraphlahaha!” The gremlin screamed and violently shook his head, as balls of oozy, sticky slime flung upwards onto the walls and ceiling. “Aaaaaah,” my scream finally came out, as I ran for the door and out into the hallway. The quick little green gremlin Benny quickly caught up to me, and pinned me down on the carpet, and held both my arms down. He stared deep into my eyes, penetrating my body all over. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t let go.

It was at this very tense moment that I finally realized that none of this was real. Green slimy sticky gremlins weren’t real, and more importantly, getting sucked down the drain wasn’t real. It was all just a terrible dream. Everything vanished in a puff of smoke. Poof! I woke up in a sweat, lying face up on the floor next to my bed, scared, but at the same time laughing. I wasn’t afraid of the bath anymore after that. In fact, I still prefer them over showers.