Where I go, no one goes... Where I go, no one knows...

One last look at Hayley.

Hayley put on a brave smile, squeezing her shoulders as she lowered her friend into the water. Her expression was a grimace, really, a mixture of pain, fear, hope. Fake bravery, put on in a desperate attempt to comfort the other. Courage though... courage there was, indeed. Immense willpower... that amazing willpower to be able to let her go.

Where I go, no one goes... Where I go, no one knows...

Laura bathed in Hayley's smile.

Inside the water, Laura was utterly calm, serene, unworried. She savored her last moments, taking in what her senses gathered of the world around her.

Outside the dilapidated building, the world was burning down: the opened windows reflected orange carnage of the city’s black destruction; explosions peppered the rooftop and the walls. Smoke was outside, inside – inside her lungs. Laura acknowledged all these sensations with understanding – dangerous things were prowling the street. Malicious things were coming their way.

No, she was leaving this place. No worries – not for now – at least not until she arrived to the other side. But right now, this instant, she was fine. She'll be fine.

Laura released her hands from the side of the bathtub. Hayley released her grip on her shoulders. Yes, letting go, that was the key – for both of them. Hayley's expression grew even more worried though, the smile was still etched on her face. No, no, I'll be okay, they said to each other, silently.

Laura pulled her eyes away from Hayley and turned to look up at the decaying ceiling. Wires, plaster, brown mold, threatening to drop into the bathtub – a likely prospect, thought Laura when a rumble shook the building. She eyed to the dangling chunks of ceiling tile, contemplating and then accepting the fact that they wouldn’t fall – at least not now.

She let loose the resistance built up in her body, and proceeded to slide in deeper, submerging her face underwater. She closed her eyes. One last thought:

Where I go, no one goes... Where I go, no one knows...

With remarkable willpower, Laura commanded the muscles in her nose and throat to relax, open up. Water trickled, then streamed through her nose, slowly filling up her lungs.

Hayley saw Laura's eyes close. When she saw the bubbles begin to stream from her nostrils and breaking the surface of the water – a sign that air was leaving Laura’s lungs, meaning that she was effectively drowning – she kneeled back. It was done – it was on its way.

She continued to watch her, though. Lips turning from pink to pale – skin color pale so that one could not distinguish between her lips and the rest of her face – and from that paleness to blue. Not really blue, she said to herself – but that's what everyone called it, because blue was the opposite of red, right? It was more like gray, she tranquilly observed.

The same thing with her eyelids – they were turning gray, as though someone was applying eye shadow with an invisible brush. Along with that color transformation...

Hayley watched the last of the bubbles pop from between the girl's listless lips. Coming out slower now. One. Two... Any more? A small one, emerging from a nest in her bronchi?

Then – a brutal, viciously brutal concussion originating from before her face! – the bathtub! the bathtub? how is that possible? – blew her off her feet. She was violently knocked over backwards, and the back of her skull cracked against the tiled floor, commencing an insufferable paralysis of her bodily functions that she could not overcome. She struggled against the waves of disorientation and temporary paralysis, but they wouldn’t cease, wouldn’t let her open her eyes. What happened? What the hell happened?

She squirmed, twisting left and right, trying in vain to get on her hands and knees, to prop herself up, but she remained on her back. Her feet were kicking, twitching lamely, while her arms were flailing weakly. She was glued on the floor, unable to take control of her limbs. Squirming – get up, get up!

Laura saw the whole thing from above. Strangely calm she had been when the explosion happened. Or rather, the implosion.

Her body had been wasting away in the water, clearly a saturated corpse while Hayley was kneeling before the bathtub and doing nothing at all, when it seemed as though waterfalls and rapids replaced the volume of water that had contained Laura’s body. Her body: apparently gone. Replaced with: a hurricane? Rapids? A angry storm? A maelstrom caving into where the body had existed. Logic forbid such a forceful reaction to water displacement – at these pressures, at least – but who knows…

She saw the implosion: tumbling in with bizarre and otherworldly force, then squeezed so tight together that the water blew upwards like a massive fountain display, knocking the ceiling tiles loose and raining bathtub water down in the little apartment bathroom.

The water lodged itself in the crawlspace above the ceiling, proceeding to coax the tiles loose, and producing more rain.

Hayley finally came to her senses, emerging from the mind-boggling seizure that her brain had over her body. She realized that she was wet. Soaking wet, clothes all wet, wet to the skin. Where did all the water come from – and how? Sprinklers? No, no way.

With a rush, she twisted her body and crawled with grotesque effort to her knees. She pulled her shuddering body to the bathtub, and looked inside.

Some residual water swishing harmlessly at the bottom, she saw that; and no Laura. She was gone.