Drip, Drip, Drip | Short Story

The water tower looms, as all water towers do. It does all of the things that water towers are supposed to do; it winks in the setting sun, it slowly rusts. It groans in ponderous, metallic agony.

You like that? Made that up myself, so I did.

Buy some of the more suggestable townsfolk a beer and they will tell you all sorts of things about the tower. They’ll wax about how the creatures first crawled into the shadowy cylinder on a dry, moonless, desert night back in the sixties. They’ll talk, if you let them, about an unsatiable appetite for moisture, for dankness in the arid northern winds, of an incomprehensible idyll of beaded moisture on oxidising iron. You’ll see, if you’ve time enough in the bar, the locals side-eyeing you, even more than might be expected for an out-of-town businessman. You’ll notice lips twitching and elbows dug into friends’ sides.

An outsider would notice these things, an imbecile even. I think you’re more than that, friend.

It takes  someone with a real eye for detail to look beyond the smugness, beyond the devil-may-care twinkles.

A person might notice, if they were so inclined, that there’s never any hosepipe bans in the down – this despite that desert air I keep telling you about. The reason? Well, there’s no hosepipes, is there? I’ve never seen one of the damned things that doesn’t leak or freeze up in the winter, and who wants that in their garden? Drip, drip, drip.

It’s the same with outdoor taps. Have you ever seen a plumber get the washer on right? I sure haven’t, and I’ve spent more summers in this bloody town than I care to remember. As for water features – well, folk around here don’t tend to go in for all that nonsense. A lawn and maybe a rockery is about as far as we’ll go towards the aesthetically pleasing.

Much as I don’t believe the stories, there’s not much point in being reckless is there? The last thing I want to see is one of those long, slender-knuckled hands emerging from a tap, even if it is only in a dream.

You’ll have another before returning to your hotel for the night, friend? Yeah, I reckon you’re right in getting a beer; mineral water’s a waste of damned money. Your round, isn’t it?

Thanks for reading, folks. Recent short stories include ‘Bellahouston‘ and ‘Listen‘.

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Matthew Richardson is a writer of short stories. His work has featured in Gold Dust magazine, Literally Stories, Close to the Bone, McStorytellers, Penny Shorts, Soft Cartel, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, Flashback Fiction, Cafelit, Best MicroFiction 2021, Writer’s Egg, Idle Ink, The Wild Word, Down in the Dirt, and Shooter magazine. He has a Professional Doctorate in Education. Matthew blogs at www.matthewjrichardson.com.