Please God let me pass that drug test, prays the Lifeguard.
The electric blue pool undulates, soft like a silk bedsheet. It’s a cloudy day and the pool is quiet. She glances at the lap clock, thirteen minutes to go on this rotation.
In front of her, in four feet of water, eight old ladies in white rubber swim caps bounce up and down to low-volume eighties music, swishing Styrofoam dumbbells out to their sides.
To their left, a guy churns out slow laps in board shorts, lane lines be damned.
Across the pool, a cluster of middle school girls— onetwothreefourfive of them — huddle on the steps in flat triangled bikinis with too-long strings floating off the back.
She counts them up. Fourteen heads above water.
The last time she smoked was that show at The Mad Hatter— was that a Thursday? A Friday? Every night at the Hatter blurs together, one continuous foggy screeching regret. Was it the first night of Spring Break? Or the night before that?
Two teenage boys hover in the Lifeguard’s blind spot on deck. Or what they think is her blind spot. The soft shadows of new mustaches make them look unwashed.
She knows those two are going to try something. Shoving each other in the pool, running, sneaking an airplane bottle of vodka by the soda machines. Talking to girls a little too young for you isn’t strictly a violation of pool rules, but long before they slide up to the bikini cluster she’ll find a reason to kick them out.
Fourteen in the pool, two knuckleheads on deck, everyone’s head above water.
Her lips form a straight stone line around her whistle. She tastes SPF lip balm, standard issue wax-and-cherry, part of the uniform. It makes her feel impermeable.
She rewinds her eyes to the shallow end, begins her count again.
Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneight old ladies, one dude doing laps, onetwothreefourfive girls on the steps, two mustaches making their way to the snack bar. Sixteen heads above water.
Sixteen…if that show was on the sixteenth, maybe I’m clean…seventeen, eighteen, nineteen—oh, hello handsome…
She sees it one second before Lap Swimmer feels it, his left leg going flat with a cramp, the tension squeezing his calf. He overcorrects with a grasping stroke but wobbles, then— classic mistake—lifts his chin out of the water. Now his balance is off and he finds himself in a doggy paddle, which, besides being humiliating, puts his nose right at the surface.
Easy, champ.
The Lifeguard stares at the back of his bobbling head and breathes out slowly around her whistle, its bead rattling for her ears only.
Don’t make me jump in for you. You’re in six feet of water, man. Talk about humiliating.
Lap Swimmer slows, reaches a hand for the wall, and pulls himself upright. For a fraction of a second, the shiny surface goes taut around him. The Lifeguard watches his pale foot flex in the deep.
There ya go, bud. The corner of her mouth twitches.
The pool surface ripples a nod, spar acknowledged. She breathes in, clears her mind. Back to the shallow end.
Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneight old ladies, onetwothreefourfive girls on the steps, one lap swimmer clinging to the wall like a kindergartner, two bad boys eating Doritos. Sixteen heads above water.
What was I doing on the sixteenth? Was I with Seth smoking that skunk weed? She pictures a calendar, its white square days streaming out behind her in rows. She tastes the bitter green of Seth’s skunk weed, his wet joint unraveling in her lips. Was it three weeks ago or four? If it was four she had a chance. If it was three…
Sweat dampens the brim of her floppy hat but the Lifeguard is impassive. Her authority flows from her still, quiet calculus. Lifeguards can’t be jumpy.
Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneight old ladies raise big soft arms above their heads, one ex-lap swimmer sits in the gutter, shaking water out of his ears, onetwothreefourfive girls sit on the steps braiding each other’s hair.
Three little kids creep towards the deep end, unaware that their Lifeguard might have smoked weed twenty-five days ago.
The two in front sloppy paddle past where they can touch, squealing when the water gets colder, bluer, scarier. The third stretches his toes for the bottom, trying to keep up, but without the buoyancy or strength of his buddies. He bounces off once, twice, then sinks deeper than he was expecting. She watches his lips snorkel for air and his round baby face dip below the surface.
Here we go.
The Lifeguard pauses for a glorious watery moment, feeling the kid’s fear drape over her skin like a cold mist. Her stomach flutters, fingertips fizz. This is the elegant dance she loves.
The relentless, sublime, eternal squeeze of drowning.
That loud, splashy mess from TV? Pure fiction. Drowning is a quiet death, a meditation, the stop-motion inevitability of a snake swallowing a mouse.
In training, the Lifeguard was taught that the best way to identify a drowning person is to ask them if they need help. A drowning person will not answer. Already wading across the River Styx, they’ll look at you through half-lidded eyes like they’re thinking about taking a nap, their puckered lips bubbling at the surface.
She knows there are seconds— seconds— to save a person once they go quiet. But she stretches those seconds until she can fit her whole body inside them, staring that eerie silent slipping in its cold blue eyes.
And then she saves them.
The Lifeguard focuses on the kid’s moon face, his wet eyelashes, his black dot nostrils still above the surface, and breathes in slowly. She watches him bob, his chin rising into the air as his lungs inflate.
Come on little guy, don’t make me jump in.
She darts her eyes toward the shallow end and pulls him back, inch by inch, the chlorine seas shaping a V around his bony chest. She sees his heart beating like a bird’s, racing oxygenated blood around his body. He points his feet until his tippy toes touch and then he lifts his head, creeping closer to the side. With his feet flat on the tile he smiles, thinking he saved himself.
Take a break, little dude. The Lifeguard stares pointedly at the pool ladder next to him, but he’s forlorn, watching his friends. She brings the ladder fully into her mind, its slick sun-warmed aluminum, bumpy treads and rounded rails, until— ahhh— he makes his way there and plops on the top rung with a splash, looking every bit like he’s in time out.
The Lifeguard hisses out a breath, dropping the whistle from her teeth. Her right leg bounces. Little slow, that one. Back to the shallow end, she restarts her count.
Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneight old ladies stretching their triceps, one Michael Phelps wannabe trying out a weird backstroke, onetwothreefour middle school bikini models laid out in the gutter, head to toe. The fifth on deck getting ready to cannonball her friends into screaming chaos.
The Lifeguard presses her tongue into her cheek—I’m not doing band-aid duty today— and the girl shifts left at the last second, missing that one cracked tile.
Two kids holding onto the wall in the cool deep. One frustrated little dude on the ladder, kicking his feet, unsure why he doesn’t feel like swimming anymore. Seventeen above water.
And two peach fuzz shitheads lighting a joint by the locker room.
FWEEEEEEET! Her whistle blares.
“You two! You’re outta here!” She shouts at them across the pool, rising to her feet so her yell will boom. She gives the boys the hitchhikers’ thumb.
Everyone in the pool looks at her, their eyes wide, goosebumps flashing in the cold sun, stunned to realize that statue in the tall chair is real. So still and expressionless, the person babysitting their souls had been totally invisible until now.
She sits, bringing the whistle back between her teeth, adjusting the red foam float across her bronze thighs. Seventeen above water and I’m still dry.
Jesus lord let me pass that drug test. I’m great at this fucking job.
***
Hi, it’s EJ with a rare fourth-wall break because I have news to share!
Last week, I released an annotated pdf version of my recent story Eyes on the Side. This is “EJ Trask 101”— the techniques I use in a horror story to create and sustain dread, build memorable characters, and draw the reader in for more, even when he wants to look away. If you are a writer or reader of horror looking to peek under the hood, here’s your chance.
Here’s a preview of what you’ll get:
It’s priced at $5 because cracking open my own brain was quite painful, but if that’s out of reach send me a note and we’ll work something out.
Speaking of exciting news, my Twilight Zone-inspired story The Creative Lives of the Lichtensteins will be available in this gorgeous anthology in March. Unfortunately that means I’ve had to paywall the story here, but you can pre-order the e-book right now! Shout out to for inviting me to be part of the project, and to and for their labor and creativity putting together the anthology.
Finally, paid subscriptions are 25% off for a few more weeks, so if you’re angling for your own custom horror story, angle this way!
Stay spooky.
Another killer story! You are on fire! The lifeguard is a minor god and she knows it.
Nice! Was worried something horrible was about to happen any minute. And that’s what I love most in stories.