Shower Time Adventures

***Inspired by the 5/11/2010 prompt given for "The Writer's Cramp"  and memories of the Calvin & Hobbes comic strips.***

         The rain just kept falling. No matter how hard he concentrated, he couldn't get it to stop. How was he ever going to become a Weather Wizard if he couldn't master these spells? His dense fog spell was so dense it was like trying to walk through a room full of giant cotton balls. He managed the lightning spell okay but the accompanying thunder came out like a bad case of flatulence. And now he couldn't get his rain spell to quit. He could feel the impatient stare of the Weather Master boring through him. Maybe if he concentrated harder he could get the rain to stop....

         "Tyler! Quit staring at the water and get in it. You're just wasting water by standing there."

         "We can save more water if we cancel my shower," Tyler suggested.

         "Nice try, kiddo. But you're showing more dirt than skin. Now get in the water."

         Tyler quickly stripped when his mother walked out of the room and stepped into the tub, pulling the curtain closed behind him. He had every intention of staying on the dry end of the tub when the shower curtain whipped open back open halfway.

         "Mom! Can't I have a little privacy?"

         "Have you forgotten who gave birth to you and changed all your diapers? You don't have anything that I haven't seen before." With that she shoved him into the stream of water and attacked him with a soapy loofah.

         "Geez, Mom! Leave a little skin on me, will you?" he protested as she scrubbed at him with a vengeance.

         "As soon as I see some skin instead of just caked on dirt, I will," she replied. When the telephone started ringing she said with a sigh, "Saved by the bell. You finish rinsing off and I will be back in a minute."

         The rain just kept falling. His arch-nemesis, Toxica, the brilliant chemist who had set her sights on world domination, had turned tail and fled. Her plan to defeat him once and for all was, he had to admit, a stroke of genius and came very close to succeeding. She had encased him in a dense, foam cocoon that temporarily paralyzed its victim and then doused him with a torrent of acid rain. The only thing that saved him was her failure to anticipate the effect that the high levels of acid would have on her paralyzing foam. She took off the minute she saw the rain dissolving her foam, knowing he would soon be free from her trap. The remnants of the foam trap were now streaming down his body giving him a tingling sensation as his mobility slowly returned. Unfortunately, the rain ate through his costume, leaving nothing behind but a tattered cape and a very pink layer of skin. But if a costume and a first layer of skin was all he lost from this encounter, he counted himself very lucky indeed. He just prayed that his hair didn't all fall out when this was over as the last of his cape fell from his shoulders....

         "Tyler! Why is your towel in the shower? Now it is sopping wet!"

         "It just fell in, somehow."

         "Just fell in, huh? Then how did it get tied around your neck like a cape before it 'just fell in somehow'?" Tyler just shrugged his shoulders and gave her what he thought was his most innocent look. "Wait right here," she said, "while I go get you a new one. Oh! Will that phone ever stop ringing?"

         The rain just kept falling. It hadn't stopped for days and now he was beginning to fear that the old coot was right. Maybe this was the end of the world. He had been saying it would happen for weeks and weeks while he built that crazy boat of his. A boat! Smack dab in the middle of dry land without a river and ocean in sight! And if that wasn't crazy enough, he started collecting animals to put in it. We all laughed at him, but he had to be the only one laughing now that what had started out as mud puddles had become deep lakes and the streams were turning to raging rivers. The water was up to his knees now and getting higher by the second. He no longer cared how he would look to his friends. It had to be better to be safe and dry inside this floating zoo than to be standing out here. He started pounding on the giant door hoping against hope that Noah would let him inside....

         "What in the world are you doing banging on the walls like that? Tyler!" she shrieked. "Why is there water all over the floor?" She whipped the shower curtain all the way open causing an even greater cascade of water onto the bathroom floor. "Why did you let your towel plug the drain?" she asked as she cranked the shower handles off. "Run and get me some more towels to soak up this mess!" she bellowed as she shoved Tyler towards the bathroom door.

         She sopped up as much as she could with the new towel she had brought in and then wrung its contents out into the bath tub and then repeated the process. It wasn't until she had wrung her towel out four times that she started to wonder what was taking Tyler so long.

         "Tyler?" she called down the hallway. When he didn't answer, she walked to his room and looked inside. His pajamas were still lying neatly on his bed so she knew he hadn't come to get dressed. "Tyler!" she called again as she headed the other direction to check the living room and kitchen. That was when she saw the front door standing wide open. She ran to the door and screamed, "Tyler!" She rushed out into the night peering through the rain for any sign of her son. "Tyler, where are you?"

         The rain just kept falling. It protected him from the giant bear's sight, but if she caught his scent he was as good as dead. Her razor-sharp claws that had ripped the clothes from his back in one swipe would make short work of him if she caught up to him. He could hear her bellowing roars coming closer and closer. Suddenly, he received a flash of inspiration. He grabbed handfuls of mud and slathered every last inch of his body to mask his scent and then lay as low and as still as he could, hoping he would blend in. The beast roared a mighty roar of frustration as it searched and searched for him. When its mighty paw came down just inches from his face and paused, he didn't even dare to breathe for fear he would give away his position. But, apparently, his plan worked as the beast roared again and continued onward. He waited until he heard the beast stop again. Fearing he may have been discovered, he scrambled to his feet and made a desperate run for his cabin. If he could get there quick enough, he may have time to barricade himself inside. He just prayed he would be able to hold out until help arrived. The beast roared once more as it caught sight of him and he could hear its pounding footfalls as it thundered after him, but he just poured on the speed....

         "What a downpour!" Ryan thought as he turned onto his street. After a long day at the office, the porch light at the end of the lane beckoned to him like a siren's song. Knowing Sarah would still be waiting up for him, anticipation filled him as he thought of the tasty dinner that was sure to be waiting for him and the quiet comfort of spending the rest of the evening with his wife. It wasn't until he pulled in the driveway and turned off his headlights that he noticed someone sitting on the edge of his front porch, staring off into the rainy night.

         "Sarah! Honey, are you alright?" he asked as he approached the seemingly-comatose figure.

         Startled, she looked up. "Ryan! You're home!" she said in an eerily sweet voice as she stood and threw her arms around his chest in a tight hug.

         "Whoa! Honey, you're soaking wet! Why are you sitting out here in the rain? Is everything okay?"

         "May I borrow your keys for a moment, dear?" she asked, ignoring his question. "Thank you," she said when he handed them over and then turned and unlocked the front door. That answered why she was outside, but her Stepford-like, sweet attitude was starting to creep him out.

         She pushed the door open and walked silently inside, not even bothering to take the keys out of the lock. He stopped to pull them out, allowing her to get five or six steps ahead of him, and that's when he noticed the set of muddy footprints leading from the front door to his wife and beyond. "Where did...?" He started to ask about the prints, but his wife had turned the corner and was heading down the hallway.

         He followed her and, when he turned the corner, he saw that they led all the way down the hallway to his son's bedroom door. He just barely came around the corner in time to see the light click off under his son's door so he knew he was still awake. The carpet suddenly made squishing noises as he walked past the bathroom. Glancing inside he saw two soaking, wet towels lying on the floor in a couple of inches of standing water.

         "What...?" he started to ask as he pointed into the bathroom, but his Stepford wife turned and said in her eerie, sweet voice, "Goodnight, dear," before stepping into their bedroom and quietly shut the door. The click of the lock told him all he needed to know. It meant she just had a horrible day with their son and she was taking no chances of getting pregnant with more. He just hoped she was back to normal by morning.

         Stepping back towards the living room, the carpet squished again under his feet. "Then again," he thought, "I am thinking it might be a good idea for me to take a personal day off work." Stripping off his tie, he laid it and his jacket over the back of the couch before rolling up his sleeves and getting to work.