Too Hot Too Function

“DANGER! CROCODILES SWIM HERE!”

It was humid. It was sweltering hot. For ten continuous days the weather was too unbearable to breathe. Fans blew thirty-five-degree warm air right back in our faces. The car AC refused to work, and everyone drove with their windows wound down, so that flies, moths and mosquitoes could harass us while we were trapped inside, dying within the walls of our tin can vehicles.

I woke on a Wednesday morning to the strumming of a chorus of crickets. I’d slept with the windows wide open. Barely any breeze brushed in. My blinds barely swayed back and forth.

I resembled a star fish on the thinnest sheet I had. Sweat dripped down my thighs like rain.

 I rolled over and stared at my phone blankly. 7am. I opened the most used app at that moment, The weather app. Not even the start of the day and the temperature read 37.8.

It took effort to physically drag myself up. Laid out on the windowsill, was a family of bugs, flying about. My patio was tiny, that was the biggest issue. I couldn’t sit in a broken deck chair and lay doing nothing, there was no room. There was barely enough room to fit both feet.

Dangled on one of the plants I had overly watered, and yet was still yearning for a drink, was a thermometer. Old school technology told me exactly the temperature outside my window.

It read 40.1. 40.1, I read again.

The walk from the bedroom to the kitchen took much effort, but opening the fridge freezer felt like entering heaven. Icicles glistened like glass. The cold air smacked me in the face and I envied the ice cubes, the chocolate and water.

I grabbed the juice carton rolling it in my hands, then madness took control. As though I was a child, I found myself climbing the fridge shelf filled with leafy greens and steak, managing to squeeze myself into the corner.

I looked like a little goblin creature, with my cracked skin and sweaty armpits. I lunged for the fridge door, trapping myself inside. Life wasn’t fair, I was too big, too rigid to fit myself inside with the door closed.

I tumbled out like a bag of potatoes crashing back to the floor.

“Urgh.” I stubbed my big toe on the side.

I slammed the fridge shut, grabbed the carton and poured myself juice. As it touched my lips, I felt my problems fade away. My throat was cool for a few moments before the feeling subsided.

The next thing I knew, I was looking down at an empty glass.

“Need. To. Get. Cool!” I cried.

I ran my wrists under the cold tap, making sure the water was freezing. I’d read an article online that said wrists were the gateway to coolness. I tried to clamber into the kitchen sink as though I was a baby again, small enough to get washed. Little me didn’t know how good she had it back then.

It was barely 8am but I knew I had to take drastic measures.

“Ice Cream for breakfast it is.” I told myself, slipping into some smelly sandals stinking out the apartment.

Grabbing my keys and my wallet, with my phone safety in my pocket, I closed the door behind me. I didn’t care at this point that I was wandering the streets in nothing but a bikini, the last two weeks, no one else batted an eyelid.

Disaster struck. As soon as I rested my elbows on the ice cream parlour’s ledge, the sweet smile vanished from my lips.

“CLOSED. FREEZERS ARE DOWN. ICE MELTS.”

The metal shutters were closed all the way down and a ridiculous paper sign was crudely taped to it. I shook the shutters, they wouldn’t budge. Glimpsing a shady character creeping behind the trash, keeping his head down, I shouted raising a fist in the air.

“Eh! What do you call this? People are dying out here!”

Sheepishly, the figure swallowed hard. “No can do I’m afraid, freezers busted.”

The simple owner was afraid of me, glaring at him in rage.

My anger swiftly moved to a patch of grass, outside a row of shops and houses. A group of sweaty children played tag with water guns. Like a woman possessed, I raced after them. Leaping into the air, I rugby tackled a boy, spraying water with his super soaker. Grabbing it from him, I squirted myself in water. As though a fountain doused me in water, I bathed in tepid sprinkles until I could no longer squeeze a drop out.

I threw it onto the ground. I was soaked from head to foot and my toes made squelching sounds in my sandals. The children all stared blankly at me with their mouths wide open, speechless.

“Sorry.” I said sheepishly. “I may have got too carried away.”

I hurried away, and by the time I was at the other end of street, breathless, my bikini and skin had completely dried. I was back to square one.

Like a wanderer in the desert, I hobbled along the streets. It wasn’t a mirage; it was real and glistening. The words,

“COMMUNITY SWIMMING POOL.”

In large bold letters across the ugliest concrete building in town, it spoke to me.

“Thank the lord!” I breathed.

Flopping and stumbling, I made my way to the entrance beaming. My smile disappeared in a second. Taped to the glass door, crudely pinned once more, was a note.

“CLOSED FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE. POOL NEEDS TO BE DRAINED OF ALGE, SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.”

‘Sorry for the inconvenience’. It was less a want and more of a need at this point.

I slammed my hands onto the glass repeatedly, hoping the doors would open. I was too exhausted for this, too tired to traipse around. I followed big, steamed windows around to the side of the building. Inside, as they had described, the swimming pool was covered in algae. Thick, green algae.

Several cleaners looked over it, mindlessly swaying nets through the water. I felt my back fall down the concrete wall slowly. I sat frustratedly; eyes shut for a moment of two.

“I’m gonna do it.” I told myself standing. “The sun has led me to this!”

A newfound energy flew through my veins.  I marched through the streets and into the woods, where teenagers often dumped shopping carts in the bushes. Down a dirt path, tumbling into a ditch, to where the foul river lay. It was dark down here; the sun barely pushed its way through the trees. Painted in blood red paint, on a crooked wooden sign on the other side of the bank I read,

“DANGER! CROCODILES SWIM HERE!”

I laughed it off. No crocodile swam in this foul swamp, on the outskirts of the city.

I sat myself down on the riverbank, peeling my smelly sandals off my feet and placing them by a bush. I dipped my toes into the shallows. The swamp water was too cloudy to see my reflection; to see anything below the surface and it stank of rotting leaves.

I wouldn’t let a few smells deter me from getting cool, finally. One foot, then the other and then my entire waist. Up to my chest, water drifting all around me. I gently moved my arms, making ripples, and then floated to the top. The tops of the trees made the perfect cooling ceiling.

“Finally.” I exhaled.

It was nothing at first, barely a nip. Then another, and another and a bite. I cried out, yanking myself out. My ankle felt as though it was throbbing, red raw. A mouth grabbed hold of my skin and so I reached into the swamp and pulled out whatever was underneath.

Eye to eye, I was glaring at the ugliest fish I had ever seen, with deadly teeth. It wasn’t a crocodile, it was too small, too purple, too black and green.

“PIRANAH!” I yelled, falling backwards splashing. The fish flew from my hand and twirled in the air, landing back into the water.

The sound alerted the others. A school of them swam towards me with intent. I regretted everything.

“Being cool wasn’t worth this.”