Shower Blindness

They think I'm crazy, but I know something is trying to get me.

"What you are feeling is normal anxiety. Stick to your medication and keep your appointments. We can help you get over these paranoid feelings."

My therapist says it's all in my head, but I know better.

Paranoia didn't try to kill me when I was four.

When I was four, I nearly drowned in the bathtub. We had a big old grungy plastic tub in my parent's bathroom, where I took my baths. I can remember it vividly, the tub full of suds, my mother reading a paperback on the toilet as she observed me at play, my boat and my duck bobbing happily on the surface. I was pretending my duck was a sea monster as it stalked the ship through the foam when the phone rang in the hallway, and my mother left to get it. She was gone for just a minute, but that was all it took. My duck attacked the boat, dragging it under the water. I submerged as well, closing my eyes and dipping below the soapy water. Then, as my duck battered the ship under the warm deluge, I felt something wrap its hands around my shoulders. I struggled for a moment, confused and suddenly terrified, and as the breath puffed out of my lungs, I felt myself dragged deeper than our bathtub had ever been.

I kicked and struggled, and when something else wrapped around my neck, I bit it.

My mother dragged me out of the bath, my teeth still clenched on her arm.

If she hadn't saved me, I would have drowned then and there.

That was the first time, but it was far from the last.

I was terrified of baths after that. I was afraid that something would get me if I ever got in the tub again. That's not to say I never bathed again. My mother was still insistent that I have a bath, so I didn't become the smelly kid in class. I would fight her on baths, refusing to sit in the tub or even entertain the idea of getting close to it. Finally, she would throw me, clothes and all, into the tub. There I would wash as quickly as possible and jump back out. I would always wash my hair in a frantic, fitful way, but I always felt like something was watching me. I could feel it creeping up on me, and I was always shaking when I opened my stinging eyes to look behind me.

I quickly learned to take showers, and, for a while, I felt relief. This appeased my mother. As long as I was bathing, she didn't care how it happened. I would take as little time as possible, but I still felt those eyes on me whenever I showered. I could feel something slimy, something hateful, sitting on the corner of the tub or peeking at me from the drain, just waiting for its chance. I would glance around, trying to see it as the shampoo stung my eyes, but there was never anything there.

I lived like this for years, afraid of the thing that watched me as I showered. Finally, it got to the point where I could almost feel its eyes on me while I lay in bed, the bathroom door joining onto my bedroom. I would close it, sometimes even propping a chair underneath it, but I would still lie awake and swear I could feel those eyes staring at me. I could feel them when I went to the bathroom as well, and it finally became too much to handle. I was thirteen when I finally told my parents about it. I was sitting on the couch and shivering in my towel as I cried and cried, pouring my heart out to them. I told them about the thing that had tried to get me when I was young. I told them I was going crazy, feeling the eyes on me all the time. I told them I couldn't function anymore and that I didn't know how much longer I could live with this kind of fear bubbling inside me.

They took me to a psychiatrist, feeling I might be a danger to myself. They weren't wrong. I was quickly approaching the point where my anxiety and my paranoia would have driven me towards something drastic. The psychiatrist listened, made notes, and told me that I sounded like I had a case of Scopophobia. Since I'd been suffering from these fears since I was small, he put me on medication and suggested that my parents monitor me for any changes in behavior.

His diagnosis brought on the most comfortable week of my life and nearly led to my death.

The pills calmed me down, evened me out, and allowed me to live outside my anxiety for the first time since I was four. I could walk into the bathroom. I could sleep with the bathroom door open and no longer feel the penetrating eyes of my bathroom stalker watching me. My parents commented after the first week about how much calmer I seemed to be, how much happier, and that was when I made a colossal miscalculation.

I decided to take a bath, something I hadn't done since I was four.

Something I will never do again.

It was something I decided on after a sudden whim. I was washing my face in the sink, getting ready to settle into bed, when I saw the bathtub in the mirror and thought how nice it would be to sit in the tub and read as the bubbles popped fragrantly around me. So, I filled the tub with hot water, pouring in the packet of bubble bath my mom kept under the sink. I watched the bubbles rise higher and higher and flipped off the water as it reached the appropriate level. Then I slid out of my comfortable sleep clothes and stepped into the luxurious folds of the warm water. I buried myself in the warm deluge, the bubbles enveloping me, and I leaned my head back against the towel I had rolled up for my head.

For almost a minute, I felt completely at ease.

For that moment, I was completely at peace.

As I sat there, letting the heat rise and steam around me, I never felt the insidious fingers as they crept around my throat. I was so at peace that I never felt the bobbing as something disturbed the water around me as it got into position. With my eyes closed, I never saw whatever it was that loomed above me, preparing to throttle me into the warm waters of my last bath.

I opened my eyes for just a second as those strong hands wrapped around my neck and made eye contact with the source of my terror.

It was thin, an emaciated corpse with blue-black skin that looked like a fresh bruise. It was bald, its head gleaming wetly, and its face was all bones and sinews. Its arms were long, unnaturally long, its skin nearly breaking as its thin arms seemed to bulge with water damage. It was naked, but its waist was submerged beneath the water, thankfully. If its body was grotesque, then its teeth were the true horror. Its face was set in a rictus of a smile, its sharp little piranha teeth straining against each other as it throttled me.

It was like he was smiling and wincing all at once.

Then it fell backward, and I fell along with it as we sank into the tub.

The soapy water surrounded me, enveloping me in its warm, embryotic embrace, as we sank into a bath that had been barely three feet deep a moment ago. It continued to choke me, its fingers digging into my skin as it tried to pull me closer so it could bite me with those sharp little teeth. It opened its mouth, my struggling sending bubbles up into the watery void, and I could see the teeth stained with something red, something gritty. I swung my fists at him, my hands slow as they cut through the water, and as my lungs burned, I think I really thought I was going to die right there.

As he pulled me closer, I curled my legs back and gave one drastic last endeavor to stay alive.

I kicked my feet out and into its stomach, and as the bubbles exploded out of that fanged maw, I turned my head skyward and swam for my life.

My arms churned up the water, my legs sending me rocketing towards the surface, and all the while, I could feel it cutting up the water behind me. I dared not look behind me. I would see that thing swimming, its teeth flared and its long arms chewing up the distance, and I'd freeze. I could see a small oval of light hanging in the murky distance, and I swam as fast as I could towards it. My lungs burned, my arms ached, and my legs felt like they were constantly connecting with something as they struck out frantically.

I surfaced amidst the bubbles, tearing myself out of the tub and falling wetly on the bathroom floor.

That's where my parents found me, screaming and sobbing as I huddled in the corner.

This is the first time in seven days I have had the use of my hands. My parents had me committed that night, committed for my own good. I spent the first night screaming and pulling at my restraints. There was no toilet in the room. I had been catheterized so that I wouldn't need to be unrestrained, but the room did have a drop sink near the back wall so the staff could wash their hands and refill my water cup when I wanted a drink.

I watched that sink for the last week, feelings its eye on me as it peeked from the drain. I watched as it tried to lift the drain out, its fingers pressing thickly into the slits in the drain cover. Then it poked a long, probing finger from the tip of the spout. When it found that it couldn't come out through either of those means, it just sat in the drain and stared at me, its teeth making maddening little scrapes on the wall of the pipe as it just waited for its chance. It would always disappear when the staff were there, but I knew what I had seen.

Hallucinations don't try to throttle you in the tub.

It's watching me now as I write this. Keeping a journal is supposed to help me get over this, but I find myself just wanting to get this all down before something happens to me. It's only a matter of time before someone notices how badly I stink, and they make me shower. If I'm lucky, they'll leave someone to make sure I don't hurt myself in there. If I'm not, they'll give me some privacy, and this sneaky little bugger will have its shot.

I don't know if I have the strength to hold it off again, but I intend to fight it every league of the way.