this is the sea

Henry tugged on the skin on his hand to see if it would snap back into place.

It did not.

A sure sign that he wasn’t drinking enough water. He knew that he should be drinking at least eight glasses a day.

He knew it goddamnit.

On the other hand, drinking too much water causes hyponatremia, a condition where sodium levels in your body drop too low. It can be fatal. A little nausea or a little diarrhea and then BOOM you’re dead. No coming back from dead. While his friends might have noted that the waitress was giving them good service, he worried that she might be an assassin sent to kill him. Smiling the whole time.

Then he read that the amount of water that he needs is based on his weight, so every meal the dance begins again. Walking the tightrope.

His life hanging in the balance.

When he was young his mother told him that you can drown in three inches of water. He doesn’t remember why, perhaps he was running by the ocean and not paying much attention to the tide coming in. Maybe he was fooling around while feeding their goldfish. It’s not like they had a pool so he doesn’t remember how it even came up. This was, after all, the same woman who told him if you look out a window long enough something will come along to look at. Something that otherwise would never have happened. He never really believed it anyway.

One day he needed to know, once and for all, so he filled the tub with three inches of water.

That’s where they found him.