La Douche

La Douche

Decision-making is a skill that needs to be honed. You know who’s honing away at it at 5:30am? The person who wants your clients. So if you also want them, you better get ready to hone even earlier than that, my friend. Rules of the jungle.

At 5:28am there were two different decisions for Heather to make: which shower gel to use, and whether to pay any attention to the strange tut sound she was sure she had just heard behind her. Cleanliness is next to productivity - isn’t that the saying? - so, shower gel it was. The purple one was lavender and chamomile, for stress. The yellow one was citrus blast, for waking up. What the hell were you supposed to do, when you were both exhausted and stressed, not to mention hungover? Was there even an essential oil for that?

Without an immediate answer to this conundrum, she decided to multitask and consider the issue of the tut. Heather was not the sort of person to jump at an unexpected tut. Maybe several tuts and a cleared throat, but not just the one tut. Under Occam’s razor, a single tut was most likely to be incidental: a bird outside, perhaps, or a knock on the neighbour’s door. Or even a knock on her door, and God knew, she had no time for that right then. She had shower gel to select, and a five stage skincare regime to adhere to.

The tut was followed by another one. 

Then a voice said, “It won’t work, you know.” 

A clear auditory hallucination was obviously a higher grade of concern than a tut. But how great a concern was it? Logic must always prevail. She was thirty-eight years old - a touch old to be developing schizophrenia. She had spent a night fuelled by alcohol and a modest quantity of cocaine. Auditory hallucinations were, she knew, not all that uncommon among perfectly healthy people like her. And she had been under some stress recently.

“I know,” the voice said. It was deep, and put her in mind of a cello that wasn’t being played very well. “You’re trying to rationalise me away. But it won’t work. You might as well talk to me.”

If it was psychosis, she reasoned, it was mild. She had no feelings of persecution, or delusions of grandeur. Her mind was… well. Not exactly clear, but again, there had been alcohol and cocaine.

“You’re too old,” the voice said.

She whirled around. “Excuse me?”

There came a heh-heh-heh. It sounded like it came from someone who’d never experienced laughing, but was trying to recreate it based on someone else’s verbal description. “You’re too old. How old do you think the rest of them are?”

“I’m in excellent shape,” Heather snapped. “I get asked for ID when I buy wine.”

“When you buy vodka,” the voice corrected her. “You’ve been asked for ID once in the past two years, by a shop assistant who barely looked at you. You know how old the rest of them are? The other side of twenty-three, that’s for sure.”

The voice was wrong, of course. But that needed to take second stage at this moment. Once again, this was about priorities in the moment. The possibility of her having a psychotic break needed to be taken seriously. If that were the case, would she need to go and turn herself in - as it were - or wait to be sectioned?

Could make a discreet call to the Priory later to see if they had space. Massive pain, though, to miss work like that. How long would all of this have to take? Valerie was still learning the ropes. Valerie was utterly useless.

In the meantime, might as well find out more. “Who are you?”

“Follow the sound, Heather.” That heh-heh-heh again. This time, though, it went on for long enough for Heather to track the sound to her showerhead. 

It seemed to be smirking at her.

Additional symptoms of psychosis, obviously, since showerheads cannot smirk. Something worth noting down for when she called the Priory. “Tell me,” she said. “Are you coming from the showerhead, or are you the showerhead itself?”

“Does it matter?”

“I like to understand the parameters of the situation, so, yes.”

“Make a guess.”

She thought about this, and decided she had to come down one way or the other, and in the dearth of any meaningful evidence, she might as well toss the coin. “The showerhead.”

“Correct. Do you know what that means?”

“It means,” Heather said haughtily, “that at some point today, between three meetings with clients, another meeting with the team, calling head office to plead with them about someone else’s mistakes, teaching Valerie how to do a damned thing, and working through a mountain of paperwork, I have to find time to call the Priory and ask them to find out if I’m losing my mind. Do you think I have time for that?”

The showerhead thought about this. No, the showerhead just went quiet, in that way that showerheads do. Because they’re showerheads. Get it together, Heather. 

After a few moments, it spoke again. “But what it also means is that I’ve seen your butt.”

“Oh grow up. That’s not an exclusive club, you know.”

“It’s saggy.”

“It is not.”

“I’ve seen more of it than you have.”

The preponderance of facts suggested that it probably wasn’t saggy. She did at least fifty squats a day. Most days, at any rate. When she got to the gym. She should go to the gym more.

The showerhead went on. “And you have cellulite. You should choose the purple shower gel, because you are more stressed and anxious now than you were before we had this conversation.”

It was right about that part, at least. She took the purple gel and showered. After all, if she was going to get treated for this possible psychosis, she wanted to get to the hospital with perfect-looking hair.

Terence was already in the shower when it started to speak to him.

“She’s thinking of leaving you, you know,” it said.

The shampoo slipped out of his hand and plummeted, painfully hitting his foot. “What the fuck…” His eyes darted around, looking for the source of the voice.

“Heather’s not happy with how you perform in bed. She’s thinking of leaving. And she will, too, if this Instagram influencer nonsense gets off the ground. But don’t worry. It won’t. She’s completely delusional about it. Of course, if she does, you’ll be screwed, right? You’ve never told your mum and dad that this woman pays all your bills, have you? Where are you even going to-”

He bolted from the bathroom, not even stopping to pick up his towel.

In the days and weeks that followed, neither one of them mentioned the showerhead to each other. It was a little much to admit to. Heather decided that, as she was very busy, and did not appear to be losing her mind anywhere other than the bathroom, the call to the Priory could wait.

At times, it would seem that the showerhead had returned to being a regular piece of plumbing. There would be nothing, for a week or more. But then it would return, spitting venom with the water. Both of them wondered if the showerhead spoke of hidden truths, or simply spewed out their insecurities. The horrible possibility, that this Venn diagram might be one circle, sat above them like a brown recluse on the ceiling.

Of course they replaced the damn showerhead. They weren’t total idiots. They each came up with independent reasons why a new one would be a good idea. They ordered one via Amazon Prime, and threw the old one out. And the problem was solved.

For five days. 

Then the new showerhead picked up where the old had left off.

“You’ll never get a promotion,” it told Heather. “Your career has already peaked, and you don’t even like your job.”

“Is this where you thought you’d be at thirty-two?” it asked Terence. “Would your fresh-faced undergraduate self have been proud of where you are now?”

They became much more dedicated to the gym than they’d ever been before. Heather abandoned her home workouts. 

This seemed like a solution.

For two weeks. 

Then the showers at the gym stopped working. When they switched the water on, only a tortured gurgle 

Having baths at home wasn’t an option. It only meant that the showerhead loomed above them, laughing at their pathetic attempts to shut it up.

They decided they should move house. It was a bilateral decision, of course, and entirely logical. They could move closer to Heather’s office. It would save her time, which would allow her to work later, which would put her in a better position to get that promotion which she was absolutely qualified for and completely deserved. Terence continued to work from home. It was true that the house was a little smaller, and needed a bit of work, but that would be absolutely fine. There were only two of them, after all. Downsizing a little was chic, compact spaces were in, and it was in no way a slide backwards that would disappoint his parents or make them make unfavourable comparisons with his brother.

It was a pure coincidence that this house happened to have a bath and a shower in different rooms. 

Again, they had peace for two weeks, taking daily baths just to be on the safe side. If the beast was still there, better not to wake it.

Then the showerhead began to shout loud enough for them to hear it all around the house.

They got another new showerhead. It behaved exactly the same way.

There was no way out. 

And while both of them suspected that the other was being similarly tormented, neither could manage to talk about it. It was too late to bring it up now, surely. They couldn’t do that after they’d been silent about it for eight months.

Heather considered the possibility that the Priory might have showers unaffected by this malady. But she knew, somehow, that it wouldn’t work. The showers wouldn’t work. They’d just stop, like the ones at the gym had stopped. After a few weeks of not showering, she would be very smelly, and perhaps she would lose her mind for real. And then they’d make her stay, and really, what would happen then? Valerie still didn’t know shit.

Bloody Valerie.

They grew apart. 

And then a strange thing happened. They began to grow together, and grow as people. They went to couples therapy, and then to individual therapy. They accepted their limitations. Heather gave up the idea of becoming an influencer, and was happier for it. The constant scrutiny of the showerhead made her realise that begging for the constant scrutiny of strangers on the internet would only hurt her. She decided that the promotion would happen if it happened, and she should stop spending her entire life at work chasing it. She took walks in nature, read books, and started to wonder what life was really about.

Terence realised that he could not live by the standards of others. Not his younger self - who had been a charming but naïve idiot - nor by the expectations of others. No longer afraid of the judgement of his peers, he reconnected with his old friends. It was awkward at first. He was sheepish about his absence, but they forgave him. He was not a failure. He was gloriously alive. They both were. They saw each other start to smile again, and smiles turned to laughter, and from there into joy. They fell in love all over again.

The poison of the showerhead shrank as they grew. 

I’m just kidding.

What they actually did was get Heather transferred to an office at the other end of the country, in a hard water area. They let the fucking thing get clogged up with limescale, and took baths for the rest of their miserable lives.