A flow of water and sound

The diagnosis was definitive: Glioblastoma multiforme. Of course, setting aside the headaches, Chris had suspected that things wouldn't turn out as expected ever since that afternoon when he first heard the buzzing in the shower. It hadn't been a normal buzz, that was clear, and he wasn't even sure if he could classify it as a buzz proper, just as he couldn't say if it was a good or bad buzz. Either way, the sound was a warning, and ever since then, he wondered if what he felt was right. In fact, he often found himself wondering if, after the visit to the neurologist, he could still affirm with absolute certainty that something was good or bad.

His mother's voice, the one that inhabited his head all the time, pounding incessantly, shouted at him that a favorable diagnosis was what they truly hoped for, so he should feel terribly bad for getting a different result. But that other voice, the voice of the pulse, made up of several clear and crystalline voices that made the stream of water vibrate, told him that once again, his mother's expectations had imposed themselves upon his will, passing themselves off as his own, as they almost always did. Yes, a brain tumor had to be something bad, at least according to most sensible and reasonable people, but, for some reason, Chris felt a kind of guilty relief.

Since he was five years old, his mother had enrolled him in countless extracurricular courses: karate, piano, theater, soccer, and even chess, to name a few. The best grades, the best behavior, the best health were always expected of him. And Chris, being a good son, dedicated himself to fulfilling them. Each and every requirement had been met, one after the other. If Chris wanted to watch movies, play video games, go to a friend's house, play in the park, or ride his bike, he was told to forget about those activities that only distracted his attention from the path of excellence. Every goal, every trophy, every diploma and recognition, all achievements accumulated one by one, from his earliest childhood, in the huge showcase in the living room, where his mother placed them, like an altar that gave Chris chills every time he looked at it. It was disturbing to think that all of that had sprung from that small, exhausted, and brief existence, as if it were an inexhaustible source of perfection. One that everyone, teachers and family members, but especially his mother, could turn on and off at will, like a water tap, happily drinking from it, while Chris himself gradually dwindled in solitude and silence, drying up, withering away little by little. And yet, perhaps silence wasn't so bad. In silence, there was tranquility. And also in sickness. In fact, if he was honest with himself, cancer didn't seem so bad, at least as long as the symptoms didn't worsen.

He knew it because that afternoon, the afternoon of the buzzing, he felt no fear, not even amazement. Perhaps the most accurate description of his mood when he heard that mysterious and melodious sound coming from the pipe had been admiration. Those drops of water impregnated with sound were like an omen, a wonderful welcome. But they were also a spectacle of multiform matter, like his glioblastoma, because at least he felt that one as his own. Everything else was alien to him, because it belonged to her. Everything except the water and its voices, because there, under the cascade, energy could take any form, enveloping him in cool and revitalizing moisture, and he could almost see what was on the other side, guessing the fascinating glows of a rainbow that invited him to become like water to float to that world flowing from another place, a place where he could be whatever he wanted, unrestricted. It was a welcome, yes, but a welcome to where? He had never heard such a beautiful sound in his life. At first, he thought it was some sound from the pipe, like many other noises in the house, but as the sound increased, Chris noticed that those notes were perceptible to him throughout his body, more like a vibration than a common noise, and he knew that that song was there for him, manifesting itself through the water falling on his naked body.

It was a certain afternoon, months after the diagnosis, when his mother had already spent several weeks taking him to see all kinds of medical specialists and alternative healers, that Chris found himself reflecting on all of this while taking a shower, and the familiar vibration reached him, enveloping him through the water, like a liquid orgasm, if there ever was such a thing. Chris had begun to see his encounters with the sound and water as the only time of day when he could be away from her, but it was also the time when he could be part of something beyond the earthly, beyond the mundane and suffocating life he had been leading. Beyond the constant and suffocating siege of success.

When Chris turned into water and sound, there was nothing to limit him, not even cancer, not even his mother, with her controlling and ambitious shadow. Of course, after a while, she began to notice that Chris was hiding something. Many times she tried to defile that sanctuary of steam and melody, calling him out, but the door was closed, and inside nothing could snatch away his peace or the freedom sponsored by the voices that came from that other world.

"What are you doing in there? You're not like this, Chris... look at me when I'm talking to you. We should be together, now more than ever, do you understand? The operation is near, Chris... Chris!"

But Chris just smiled and looked at the water jug, or the pool in the garden, or the fish tank, and he knew they were there. Just as they came to greet him in the shower, they were always close, taking care of him, reminding him that in his new condition, nothing could harm him anymore, and as time went by, Chris immersed himself more and more in his relationship with the "water inhabitants," as he had learned to call them.

He felt them everywhere, singing that sweet melody at all times, and the melodic vibration took on more and more meaning. They were present during all visits with doctors and healers, and Chris just let it happen. On one occasion, they went to see a healer who had come from India, an old man without teeth named Abdul Rohan Raj Agarwal, who looked the boy in the eyes, touching his forehead with the tip of a thin index finger.

"He doesn't need healing, because he has already been saved," the healer said through his translator, and the mother exploded in anger, demanding a refund.

Other times, Chris definitely decided to stay at home, although he could hardly speak to express himself anymore.

"How can this be your life, Chris? I know it's your life, that's why we must fight, don't you understand? You're not like this, it's that damn tumor! I'm your mother and I know what's best for you... And my coffee? What happened to my coffee? I just poured it..."

Chris, connected with the water inhabitants, laughed when they made the drinks disappear or flooded the sink. Through the music of the pipe, he found solace and encouragement, talking only with his faithful companions, those silent confidants who sang only for him.

And as his connection with the water grew, so did the tension of his mother. She couldn't understand his indifference to the disease, nor why he spent so much time lost in thought, contemplating the sky full of clouds or the water in the pool, from which she insisted on keeping him away for fear he might fall in. Her attempts to save him became desperate, more aggressive, until they finally reached their breaking point one night when she entered the room and didn't find him. After a couple of minutes that seemed eternal, she found him in the garden, dancing in the rain.

"Chris! How is this possible? What are you doing? How is it that...? You're going to get sick! Your immune system... Chris!" she shouted, scared. Her son, with his naked skeletal body and flesh clinging to bone, looked at the sky with arms open to the rain, and she tried to pull him away from the water, but the boy resisted with incredible force, making her stumble. She let out a cry of frustration, slapping him, unable to understand what was happening.

Then Chris hugged her, making her feel cold and his bony angles piercing her body, while soaking her clothes completely, and then he ran to the bathroom. The woman, perplexed and horrified, kept screaming, desperate, trying to hold on to him. She tried to grab his arm, but the water made the extremely thin arm slip away from her. The boy entered the bathroom and within seconds, the woman could hear the sound of the shower. Fed up with everything, unable to open the door that had been locked, she took her deceased husband's hammer and broke the handle, injuring her hand in the process.

When she finally entered the bathroom, with the hammer clutched in her stiff and numb fingers, she was petrified by the spectacle of sound and water surrounding her. Her arms fell limp at her sides, bloodless, while the water floated around her, tracing waves in the air, releasing lashes that soaked her relentlessly, splashing her face and pushing her back with waves of steam and moist gusts, while she watched helplessly as Chris's body transformed into floating drops against gravity, grouping together, dissolving and reconstituting themselves to the beat of a tribal melody. Her son gave her a final smile, full of rainbow light, and then she too could hear the tiny liquid voices greeting her in turn, laughing, curious, from the other side, where a multicolored cascade fell endlessly, forming endless liters of white foam.

With a lightning bolt that exploded outside, the house filled with a sea of light and sound, with water dripping along the walls, running through the corridors and blowing up light bulbs and screens. The water swept away Chris's wheelchair, from which he hadn't been able to get up for three months, as well as the boxes of medicines and dressing supplies piled on the dining table. When the living room filled with water as if it were a water tank, the glass cabinet shattered, the trophies floated away, and the diplomas and certificates dissolved for the most part, while the liquid enveloped the mother in a cool embrace, making her swim back to the garden to avoid drowning, where the water from inside the house spilled over the green grass with a dizzying and powerful wave, while the pool stirred like a fierce and relentless sea.

And so, as the torrential rain continued to cover everything, the woman fell to her knees, and then she felt free for the first time in years. Soon the rainwater mixed with her tears, rolling down her cheeks, and around her, Chris rose towards the clouds without looking back.

In the morning, the rainbow arrived, and she greeted it with a smile. She looked around, with the whole house filled with puddles of various sizes inside and out. And so, with a clean and rested soul, still smiling, she sighed and wished she had smiled like that when Chris was still by her side.