One March night, as I was swimming, I came across a metaphysical object—a living being, a woman. She was not a ‘normal woman’, but something more.
I was taking my daily summer night laps when I saw her swirling in the water. I could not see her properly, but I managed to see her hands, pushing against the water to go forward. Her hair was long; up to her back to be precise. There was something about this woman. I had no idea where she lived, what her legs looked like and what her favourite music was, but there was more to her than all that.
I could have asked her, but she left me with nothing but a swimming shadow. I had believed myself to be the only man in that pool, but it had been a wrong assumption—one that cracked, like a glass window pressed by a hammer. A slight move of the wrist and the glass shatters.
I tried forgetting about what had happened that night, but the more I tried the more it wouldn’t let go of me. I didn’t know what she looked like, what her voice sounded like, but
I was hooked to her, like a fish stuck on a fisherman’s peg. After that incident, I couldn’t set foot in the pool again. So I exercised, until my heart’s content, to replace the laps that my reflexes were used to.
Every time I exercised, I thought of her. I did have a wife at home to think about; I had two girlfriends, and a regular girl whom I’d sleep with every once a while—after I paid her—but this estranged woman kept hovering in my mind.
She was like an irritating song you keep singing. You keep thinking about it, you keep humming the tunes, and yet you hate it. Full of rage, you want the song to get out of your mind but still, it haunts you, like a spirit unwilling to let go of a place.
I stepped away from the treadmill and changed into my swimming gear. I would dive into the cold water. I wanted to face her, find out who she was. Find out if she was just a riddle, or the missing piece of my life’s puzzle.
I dipped my left leg and then my right and then my whole body, up to my head. The cold water made every living cell in my body quiver, but after a while I got used to the cold.
I did a few laps, one way from the corner and the next from the centre.
I kept swimming until I realised that I had done 30 laps; more than my usual routine. I kept waiting for her to come and meet me. I would talk to her, only talk.
A month and a half went by, I kept waiting for her to come, but she didn’t. I didn’t swim the whole time. Often, I would stare at a fictional horizon.
I kept looking at the spot where I had last seen her. The image of her swimming away with such wildness kept hovering in my mind.
“I’ve had the strangest past two months of my life,” I said to my friend while we were at a bar one day.
“Is the strangeness, in any way, related to a woman?” He asked.
“Yes. You know how I swim every day in the pool, I saw a girl there once. Just once, and I haven’t seen her since,” I replied.
“Well, what’s so strange about that? I see girls all the time. At my office, at the bus station, at the airport, in bars, and I never see them again.”
“No, this is different. I was the only one in the pool that night. This girl appeared out of nowhere, and vanished.”
“That’s strange. How was she? Hot, naked, sexy,” he smirked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t see her face, only her long hair and her hands. I couldn’t see her legs, her ears, her face or her breasts.”
I didn’t know if the things I said made sense to him, but went on, “I’m waiting for her to come back, but she hasn’t. I quit swimming for a few days and ran on the treadmill, but I couldn’t get my mind off her. She’s like a parasitic leech stuck to my brain. She is sucking all the energy in me, draining out all my thinking power. But somehow I like it; I don’t know why. I hope you get what I’m saying.”
He nodded, but I could see that he didn’t get a thing I was saying. After that conversation, we never saw each other again. When I called him, he wouldn’t answer, and he never called me back.
Another month went by. Yet another followed. A series of months had soon passed by, and eventually a new year arrived. I left my two girlfriends because my wife was pregnant. I didn’t leave my whore. I visited her more often just to get my mind off that strange water girl. Yes, I had named her ‘water girl’.
My wife had a baby boy after eight months and 17 days of pregnancy, a little too soon than expected, but the doctor said it was nothing to worry about. I kept swimming every day, but less than before. I kept waiting for the water girl just to talk to her; just to find out whether she had that something that my wife did not.
My patience paid off one day. I was staring at the place where I had last seen her, and after a few moments of wandering into the blue, a head appeared. It swam away quickly,
and then disappeared again. I kept looking at the place where she had just appeared. She rose again, from underneath the water, like a whale gasping for breath.
“Hey!” I shouted.
A hand on my shoulder, a slimy feeling—I turned back, and saw the face. A radiant face; one that belonged to a stranger—the lips of an angel, the eyes of a child, white hair like a swift, beautiful waterfall. Her face didn’t wear any expression, as if the water had washed it all away.
“I’ve waited for you for 21 months, and eight days now,” I said.
“I’m everywhere. Wasn’t I in your mind this whole time?” she asked.
“Sure you were, but I wanted find out who you are. Your favourite music, your favourite food, everything,” I said in a whisper.
“You haven’t seen them, but it’s my breasts,” she replied.
“How can I get addicted to your breasts if I haven’t seen them?”
“There are some things in this world that are hard to keep your mind off of, even though you might never have seen them.”
She rose from the water like a dolphin. I could see her neck, her chest upon which her ecstatic breasts lay. Her untangled nipples were nothing like I had ever seen before; the shape of her breasts—just about perfect, as if god had made them for his own satisfaction.
I touched her plump breasts. They were firm; just like women’s ordinary breasts.
“Look down, I’m not ordinary. Everything about me appears exactly as you wish. If you want to see me as an evil witch, I can be that.
If you want to see me as a whale, I can be that as well. You see me this way right now because this is exactly what you wish for.”
I couldn’t see below her waist, so I asked her if I could see her legs.
She rose from the water, exposing her body. Her legs weren’t there; they were nowhere to be found. Instead of her legs, there was a tail; a fish tail—long and slender and blooming. She couldn’t hold herself up for a long time, so she splashed herself back into the water dipping her whole body and then finally disappearing, forever.
By: Shrinkhal Shrestha