By Kayleigh Cutforth
I am playing chicken in a searing hot bath with the hot tap on full. I can feel the water scalding my skin and I am seeing just how long I can take it
before I have to shout Chicken! in my head
and put the cold tap on.
I am wondering how hot it would need to be to do any lasting damage, probably 50 degrees over quite a few minutes, according to the blogs and my legs are red raw now, right
up to the crotch. I leave the hot tap running just until the water threatens to flow over the sides, and I wonder what would happen if I kept it running and just lay here until he noticed the water dripping through the ceiling and then a loud creak and suddenly the bath came crashing through the ceiling into the living room missing him by an inch or maybe–
just maybe–
it falls squarely onto the sofa where he’s sitting scraping his empty strawberry yogurt pot,
watching Eastenders,
and it traps him by both his sparrow legs,
and what if–
I didn’t get out of the bath?
Just lay there listening to his cries for help and the baby crying blue murder in the spare room until some random person found us half-starved, and then I’d play mute like Mum used to–
and make them pass me a piece of raggedy paper or the back of an unopened bill, so I could write something down like,
Chicken.
It’d be all over the news I expect.
Kayleigh Cutforth has a first in English Lit and Creative Writing and is studying a Masters in Publishing at the London College of Communication. She is editor-in-chief of lit mag MONO.
MoonPark Review 