Fiction

Kill Your Shower
by David Holub

When I turn on the shower, I expect water. Clear, refreshing, chemically treated, hot, cold or warm, depending on which knob I turn more.

What I don’t expect to come out is coffee.

But that’s what I have here, shooting out with alarming pressure. Coffee. Piping hot.

This is the seventh time it’s happened in the last two months.

The first time it happened, I shrugged it off. And bathed in coffee.

Two weeks later it happened again.

You’d never see coffee come out a shower 30 years ago. Even five years ago you wouldn’t have seen it.

It happens so often now that I’m getting used to it. Can you believe that? What has this country come to?

I mean, I’ll admit my love of coffee. Swiss chocolate almond. Snickernut cookie. Columbian dark. Arabian roast. Dry roast. The flavor doesn’t even matter.

Whatever’s in the pot. Every morning, I sip a cup and watch whatever’s on TV and every Saturday we meet our friends for coffee to get away from the kids. It’s a lifestyle, coffee is. But not when it’s coming out of my shower.

I could take a shower in the guest bathroom. Coffee has never come out of that shower. But why should I interrupt my routine?

I shouldn’t stand for this. I can’t. I won’t. I’m sick of going to work smelling of coffee. It’s a disgrace to see my once gleaming white tub now a dingy brown.
And it’s just plain coffee. Maybe if it were Bavarian hazelnut or Cinnamon crème I would be more tolerant.

No, the water department needs to know about this. After all, I’m paying for water, not coffee. I’ll stop paying my bill. If I don’t pay they’ll have to listen to me, right?

Because the next thing you know it’s not just coffee blasting out of the shower. It’s apple cider. Or diet root beer. Or whiskey. Whiskey! Whiskey would be a real problem with kids in the house.

That’s it. I’m calling the department of public safety. Because this is now an issue of safety. Better yet, I should call the police. Pumping hot coffee into someone’s house has got to be illegal.

Maybe I should call my congressman. If it’s not illegal, he will pass a law to make it illegal. Yes! Congress!

I need to tip off the media. This would be all over the news. Imagine the TV coverage.

It will unite the people.

There will be signs of protest. “Turn off your showers.” We’ll have “Kill your shower” T-shirts and bumper stickers.

But the pressing matter now is showering.

I bet if I let it run long enough, water will eventually come out.

But then again it might be coffee forever.

How long do I wait?

How long before I just turn it off?