Flash Garden

She selects a yellow Laffy Taffy out of the bowl of candy that had been collected from the floor and placed in the kitchen, presumably left over from Halloween, although one couldn’t be sure. Laffy Taffy appears to be the most artificial option, and therefore least prone to spoiling, so it seems like the safest choice even though yellow Laffy Taffy numbs her mouth and makes her drool a little bit. She’s home alone, so she can afford some drooling without risking embarrassment. She tastes the un-banana-like flavor and feels the usual tingling sensation while reading the wrapper to distract herself, piecing it together where she had ripped it apart. One joke is fairly straightforward. It’s not funny, but it’s usual Laffy Taffy joke material. A drip hits her arm and she rubs it into her skin with the back of her hand. The other joke on the Laffy Taffy wrapper, however, is notoriously awful. “WHICH GARDEN HAS THE MOST VEGETABLES? FLASH GARDEN.” Drip. Brandon R. of Florence, South Carolina has done a disservice to the eyes of thousands, thoroughly and nationally embarrassing himself. Drip. When Laffy Taffy jokes are awful, one can usually excuse it by assuming the submitter is a child, but no child is familiar with the 1950s television show Flash Gordon. Worse, it was clearly meant to say—

A wetness is seeping through the heel of her sock. She has to change her socks immediately. Wet socks are her least favorite sensation of all time, although this isn’t an unusual occurrence. She is, after all, standing in the kitchen: Home of Mystery Liquid Spillages. She stands on her tiptoes to get her feet out of the wet spot and immediately feels liquid invade the crevices between her toes through her socks with an audible squelch. She is standing not in a wet spot, but in a puddle. A puddle that is noticeably viscous, like hand sanitizer. Her family is not one to use hand sanitizer. Below her right clavicle she feels the same wetness seeping through her tank top. She flips her hair away and recoils when her hand touches a soaking slab of hair. The hunk meets her bacne-covered shoulder with a wet slap. She looks down and leans over her toes, her back forming an uncomfortable arch. The mangled neon yellow Laffy Taffy falls from her agape mouth into the puddle and is absorbed. She feels dizzy, as if her head is heavy enough to anchor her forehead to the floor. Another puddle is forming directly beneath her eyes, and as she brings her hand to her face, her fingers disrupt the stream to the new, widening puddle just as it begins merging with the one she’s already standing in. Her fingers are coated now, getting closer to the source. When she touches her mouth, her fingers feel mostly goo and, faintly, a perhaps-swollen bottom lip beneath the goo, but her mouth feels nothing. She glances back at her now-drenched socks. She is standing in a puddle of her own drool.

She walks to the bathroom leaving wet footprints in the wake of a thin line of spittle that precedes her. Sometimes she steps in the line of drool, obscuring it. Sometimes, when she’s looking down to observe the tracks she is creating, the drool is intercepted by the tanktop resting on her stomach or the jean hem on the widest part of her right thigh. In the mirror, she is met by a dazed looking person with a bloated bottom lip turned downward, more swollen at the right side, spilling an ever-steady rivulet of drool. A bastardized waterfall.

There are now wet spots all over her clothing and body and the right side of her hair is soaked. She puts her too-long-to-be-in-pigtails-hair up into pigtails directly out of the sides of her head to get the hair off her shoulders. She looks like Gilda Radner. Or, she would, if one pigtail weren’t drenched, hanging stiffly and heavily over her shoulder, dragging the hair tie down. The bathroom floor drool level is rising, despite the crack under the door. The drool isn’t leaving the bathroom fast enough to overtake the rate at which it’s leaving her mouth. She climbs into the bathtub and opens the drain as wide as it will go, getting long, curly dark hair stuck on her fingers. She wipes the tangle against the tile wall, joining it with its brethren of discarded hair. Sitting on the ledge of the tub, she gets out her phone. It won’t unlock. She wipes her fingers on her shorts, but her fingers are still coated. She balances the phone on her knee and leans over to the faucet. She puts her hands under the faucet, her torso clamped down over her phone, and more or less cleans her hands. The water doesn’t fully integrate with her drool, like oil with water. She unlocks her phone and looks at Google Maps Satellite View. She looks at her little house and zooms out bit by bit. She doesn’t have time to wait here. She has to stand up in the bathtub now: the drain can’t drain as fast as it needs to. Her calves are completely submerged. The drool is oozing over the edge, slowed by the bathmat but soaking it nonetheless. She is careful to hold onto the metal bar that she had always dismissed as only for old people as she extracts herself from the tub. She slowly ventures outside the bathroom, seeing that the drool has already done so. She wants to hurry but is too afraid to fall. She can’t help but think of herself as a snail, moving excruciatingly slowly and leaving a trail of slobber in her wake.

She slides the back door open. Her soaked socks meet grass. She flings her socks off and feels the blades of grass between her still-wet toes. She can move faster now. She advances toward the wooden fence and hoists herself over it, her swim practice finally coming in handy on land. She walks quickly and purposefully, but not so fast as to attract attention in this yard that is no longer her own. She meets the next fence and hoists herself over it again. She wonders if she should try different directions but figures that odds are she must find what she’s looking for eventually. A few dogs bark at her, following her trail and nipping her ankles as she invades their territory, but it’s the middle of the day so no one should be home. And because it’s the middle of the day, her shoulders are getting sunburned and hot to the touch and sweat is pouring down her body, intermingling with saliva. Her arms are getting increasingly tired so her fence-scaling is becoming sloppier: she’s flinging her legs over and relying on the momentum to get her to the other side. She’s also relying on the assumption that grass will cushion her fall, which has mostly worked out but has also resulted in some light shin bleeding and a few involuntary outcries. As her bare toes scrape over another splintering fence top, she wishes she had worn shoes, although shoes aren’t usually waterproof from the inside out. She encounters some sprinklers, which is bad for the environment to be running in the middle of the day, but she couldn’t be more thankful as her drool, sweat, and blood seeps into the grass below her. She can see a pool in the next yard over, but she can also see a tiny white dog that is making strong eye contact. It can’t cause any real harm, but it looks like it could make a racket. She knows the type of person who would own a small white fluffy dog would not be happy to find a dirty, bloody girl contaminating their pool. She also knows any sort of saliva in a swimming pool is rude, no matter the circumstances.

She pulls out her phone and dials.

“Hello?”

“Hewwo,” tumbles out of her mouth. Shit. This is the first time she’s tried to talk.

“Dude, what?”

“Dwoo wou knwow—”

“What the fuck?” He’s laughing now. “Is this a Scooby Doo impression?”

She hangs up. She texts him: Do you know of any nearby empty pools I could use rn?

Also: Scooby Doo speaks with Rs, not Ws.

His response is swift: Alright Velma, go to 4572 Walnut Dr and go in around the back.

She looks up the address. It’s not that far, but she’s tired of fence-hopping.

Could you pick me up?

She’s sitting on the curb when he gets there, her drool making its way to the storm drain, and she wishes she was surprised that he’s arrived by skateboard, not car.

“Woah dude, what’s up with you?”

“Dwon’t ask.”

“Boys rule, girls drool!” He sing-songs, cracking himself up. This is the one situation in which traveling by skateboard is actually better than by car—she wouldn’t want to ruin the upholstery. He lets her put her chin on his shoulder, and he doesn’t say anything when the wet spot begins to form on his t-shirt or when the dribble eventually makes its way down his forearm. Some of the spit flies away or dries with the wind.

When they get there, people do double-takes, but they never say anything. They regain their apathetic composure and, as usual, head nod. She does the same. She finds the least steep part of the bowl and climbs down, her feet smacking against the concrete, echoing. She walks across the bottom, pausing for people as they skate by, but finds many people stop skating to let her pass. She makes her way to the deepest part and even though the ground is filthy, she sits down. She notices that the stream of drool is now much thicker and faster-flowing. Skaters keep their distance out of necessity, relegating themselves to the shallower, less exciting areas of the pool. When a thin layer of drool covers the entirety of the bottom, a few continue to do tricks for the novelty of the splashes they leave in their wake. Most stop skating. One skater, a girl she’s never seen before, sits down in the deep end next to her. They smile at each other but remain silent. One by one, other skaters come sit down too. They don’t flinch at the drool inching its way up their bodies. As the drool rises, everyone watches, transfixed, as the sun sets behind the trees in front of them. The sky is pink, and it’s warm. Everyone looks a little bit pink. The pool is filling. People’s criss-crossed legs detangle as they begin to stand up and then float. She stays at the depths of the pool, and even though the drool is now over her head, she’s still touching the ground, sitting just the same as before. Her sunburned shoulders are soothed. She can see the bottoms of people’s shoes as they bob up and down. A stranger looks down from above the surface, smiling inquisitively, motioning for her to come up. She does. They’re all floating. It’s pink outside. It’s still warm. The pool drains are working fast enough to keep up with her. It will not overflow.

Pauline Hales-Brown is an undergraduate student at USC majoring in Narrative Studies with a minor in Folklore and Popular Culture.