My alarm stirs me from the half-conscious coma I lulled myself into not that long ago. The hard work of several deep bong hits and the soothing voice of David Attenborough explaining the migration patterns of the something-bellied salamander. I swear my head had just hit my pillow mere seconds before.

7:15am. I count backwards to the last number I remember seeing on the clock before my attempt at a forced oblivion. A few semi-solid hours. I close my eyes again, although it’s less because I want to, and more because my head has become disconnected from my body and I’m unable to keep them open of my own volition. The ever-present lethargy sludging through my veins wins out most times while my eyelids remain glued. Sleep, these days, has become less of a tangible experience and more of a lucid fever dream that I get the displeasure of watching from outside myself. Swimming in the seas of my own sheets, a life jacket inflated with existential anxieties ensures that I’ll never go under the waves.

While I try to locate the ligaments that connect my neck to my spine, I think about the handful of near-death drowning experiences I’ve read about. Most of them say the same thing. After the initial panic, when their fingertips can no longer break the surface of the weighted blanket above them, in settles a euphoric sense of peace. I think of sinking calmly into the abyss, but my extreme claustrophobia is more powerful and my eyes open with a snap. I take in a deep breath, fill my lungs until I feel a twinge in my sternum and then push it out slowly. No water.

7:20am. I begrudgingly trudge to the shower and close my eyes again before flipping on the light. I've learned my lesson in self-inflicted early morning flash bangs. I know the space well enough to take two steps and push the shower curtain open without peeking. First knob turns all the way to the right. Same for the second. Third only goes halfway because I have a preference for lukewarm water to start.

I open my eyes and they instantly begin to leak from the mixture of terrible sleep and fluorescent lighting. The plush bathroom mat offers my disjointed skeleton little relief. Inside the tub, I face the stream head-on. The hope is that the water will flood the weed hangover that's weighing my cheeks down from my pores. I push the skin at my temples up in a mock face-lift, but it droops the moment I let it go again.

7:25am. Estimated. Time isn't real in the shower; everyone knows this. Instead of being washed away, I can feel the water pooling in the crevices of my body. I turn around to rinse the shampoo from my seaweed-adjacent strands, tilting my head back and letting gravity do the work for me. The liquid has started to congeal in my fingertips, pulling my wrists from my forearms and down to the tub bottom.

Starfish can lose limbs and regrow new ones in their place. Biologists call it self-amputation. Sometimes the lone extremity takes a small piece of the body with it, and in the right circumstances, it grows a new, almost identical starfish from its own wound. The backs of my hands hit the acrylic, and my wrists follow with a wet thud. I keep my eyes closed and sigh into myself. Can’t rinse conditioner out with no hands. You may think you get it all out if the water pressure is high enough, but there’s always a little bit still clinging to the hairs behind your ears.

7:something–am. I wonder if one stump is a little longer than the other, or if they both severed cleanly at the joints. I hope that my right hand took a little bit more of my arm with it than the left. I think about both hands and how scared and confused they must be. There’s no hope for them outside of the bathroom, really. If they climb the shower curtain, turn the doorknob, and get to the hallway, the cats will make quick work of them. I think about nudging the right one with my foot in the direction of the drain, but I believe in evolution and survival of the fittest so I stay still. I picture it eventually making its way to the drain, after trying to climb up the side and sliding back down, like a spider attempting to escape a similar fate. It will crawl through the pipes and hide out in the sewer system.

I think if I stay in the shower long enough, eventually other parts of me will begin to slough off and make their way through the same maze. Chunk by chunk. Skin and bones and everything. I wonder if my wrist nub will recognize its original wrinkly bits and try to collect them as they float by like a lazy river of man-made soup, or if it would want to be its own almost identical me. I wonder what it would be like to live in the sewer, to become a local monster alongside the ten-foot crocodile that children have been reporting for decades. I open my eyes just slightly and think about the ecological implications of a starfish and a crocodile living in harmony. I hope that when the almost identical me emerges from whatever tube they choose at the water treatment plant, there’s a towel handy. Maybe I should put a robe under the nearby overpass just in case. I have to think we’d be connected in some way and she’d know where to look. I hope, unlike me, she awakens well-rested.

7:58am. Late for work.

----------------------------------------

Megan Cassiday is an MFA student from Michigan. Her work has been featured in Kicking Your Ass Mag, Bullshit Lit, The Daily Drunk, Back Patio Press, and others. You can find her on Twitter @MeganLyn_