From the kitchen widow, the morning looked dewy and pleasant, but when she stepped outside to let the dog out, the air carried a humidity that would be stifling in two hours. She stood on the deck and let her vision go fuzzy until all she saw was the nebulous outline of the pool in the foreground and the soft water colors of the tool shed and sloping yard beyond. It felt good to be dreamily suspended, at least momentarily, from the blackness gathering. She had a mind to carry this sweet suspension as delicately as she could, like water cupped in her hands, back to her bed where she might sleep a while longer. One or two hours, even, would be a grace. One or two hours eliminated from the many that lay ahead, stretching endlessly like a narrow cave river with no brightness to swim toward. This was folly, of course. She knew well enough that her mind would taunt her in the space between full immersion and semi-consciousness, so what was the point? 

She whistled for the dog and stepped back into the kitchen. Her husband smiled weakly at her from the coffee pot then took a seat at the table. He gazed wordlessly out the window, bringing the mug to his lips and setting it back down. He had stopped shaving several days back and now looked more like someone on the lam than an accountant living in a suburban split-level. From behind him, she topped off her own coffee. His inert figure, whose only concern for the day seemed to be bringing coffee to his lips, infuriated her. She fantasized about sinking a hatchet into his skull just to see him move. 

She took a seat across from him and joined him in his indifferent gaze out the window. “What are your plans today?” she asked.  

“I’m not sure. Yours?” 

“I’m going to paint the extra room, get some groceries, pay bills if there’s time.” 

“Sounds like you have a busy day planned.” 

"Uh hu.”  

She looked at him looking out the window. “Could you mow and weed whack?” 

“Probably.”  

“You might want to get an early start. It’s going to be hot.” 

“Is it?” he said to the window. 

 She bought her cup down, making a little thunk on the table, “and could you drain the pool?”  

She rummaged through the myriad paint cans in the basement and hauled the color she needed to the extra bedroom. The door opened to harsh sunlight pouring in that amplified the dust and sanitized the smells that once lingered there. She felt her energy drain immediately, but reminded herself that if she just kept rolling, in time she would forget what the old color even was. While she worked, she listened to a podcast about sea creatures who live on the ocean floor in total darkness. They exist only to themselves, and even the scientists who study them don’t know for certain how they survive in such extreme conditions. They live so far from sunlight that their only food source is what trickles down from the life forms above, who unknowingly sustain an entire, blind society below them.  

As the first coat dried, she lay on the bed and grew drowsy. She wrapped the blue comforter around her, inhaled deeply from it, then hoped for sleep to carry her off. Yet each time she felt her mind begin to sink below consciousness, reality inserted itself. After thirty minutes, she rose and went upstairs for more coffee.  

As she waited sixty seconds for the microwave to reheat her coffee, she heard the low din of the TV coming from their bedroom. It was nearing noon and she did not see any progress on the outside projects.  

"I thought you were going to do some yard work,” she said to the supine body stretched across the bed. He was facing the TV, but his eyes were locked on the ceiling. 

“I’ll get to it soon.”  

“You need to stay busy. Doing this won’t help.” 

“That’s how you manage. I’m not you.” 

“It’s been a year.” 

He sat and turned sharply toward her, “Don’t you think I know that?” he said.  “Don’t you think I fucking know that?” 

 They both knew the pool was his responsibility. After all, he was the one who’d dragged it home and assembled it with his brother. In truth, she always thought it an eyesore - a cheap above-ground imitation of the professionally installed pools their neighbors had.  

“It’s full of filth. I don’t want to keep looking at it.” 

“This has nothing to do with the filth. This is all just to punish me.”  

 “Punish you?" she hissed. “This couldn’t begin to punish you.” 

He leaped out of the bed and put on a pair of cast away socks. “I know, Lynn. The only thing that could punish me is a good, hardy drowning!”  

The word stopped them cold, as if an iron bell had tolled in a tiny room. He snatched his galoshes from the closet, slipped them on over his pajama pants, and stomped out of the room.  

“Where are you going?” she said to his back. 

From the kitchen window, she watched him open the garage door and emerge with a chainsaw. She couldn’t recall him ever using it. She wondered if she had set something irreversible in motion. Yet perhaps letting this day unfold would restore balance to a world upended?  

The chainsaw roared to life. He confronted the pool in his pajamas, galoshes, and weaponry – a dragon-slayer in an alternate universe.  

"What are you doing?” she called from the deck.  

 He stood beside the pool, staring down onto the surface of algae and dead leaves. 

“Why do you have that chainsaw?”  

He raised the chainsaw above his head and brought it down on the lip of the pool. He held on tight as the rotating teeth chewed through plastic and aluminum, engulfing him in a haze of debris. The water began to escape, slowly at first, then rapidly as the gash became broader. He stood in its path, letting it soak his pants and run over his boots. He cut off the chainsaw, threw it to the ground, and sobbed into his hands.  

For a while she observed him from the deck. He was making a spectacle of himself, but why did he always get that option? She walked down from the deck and stood with him at the gash. She cupped her hands under the water and brought what she collected to her neck. An anticipatory wince, then the shock of cold on warm. Again and again, she poured the fetid water over her breasts, down her belly, and between her legs. Again and again, even as he wiped a leaf from her cheek. Even as he brought the stagnant water to his own faded collar. Again and again - algae, leaves, chlorine - and their son’s skin cells, burning them until the pool was empty. 

Kristi Schirtzinger is an emerging author with an MFA in Creative Writing from Ashland University. Her work has been featured in The Black Fork Review and The International Feminism and Rhetoric Conference. She enjoys writing fiction that explores crisis and redemption.