Unfiltered Water

My story for the Fictionistas March 2023 Great Substack Prompt Celebration

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The following story is what I wrote for the Fictionistas March 2023 Great Substack Prompt Celebration.

The Great Substack Prompt Celebration is Fictionistas’s way of inspiring writers, giving us a chance to write together and share our stories with each other and give us a chance to be featured on Fictionistas’s Substack.

Check out all the stories written for this prompt here. Be sure to like the comment that links to your favorite story.

Fictionistas is a group of Substack writers. Check them out!

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There are worse places for a 25-year-old to be on a Friday night than at work. In fact, work is a pretty good place to be on the Friday night your girlfriend of two years dumps you because she’s found love from someone who doesn’t work at a gym on Friday nights. Work keeps you too busy to be sad about that kind of thing. Matthew finds himself extraordinarily busy on this sad Friday night as he is the only one of five scheduled employees to show up to work at the gym. It smells like creatine and sweat as he impatiently stands behind an old couple at the gym’s water fountain.

“Could you take any longer?” the old man grumpily asks his wife as she takes a sip of water from the fountain at their gym for what could only be a long time to someone you’ve been married to for 60 years who finds everything you do charmingly annoying.

“Eddy, the water tastes funny dear,” the old lady stares at her husband, hoping he’ll fix the water.

“Anything would taste funny after drinking it for an hour straight, Myra,” Eddy replies, still grumpy. “Let me get a swig.”

Eddy takes a sip and studies the liquid as it flows down his throat like a food critic assessing the soup of the day at a restaurant up for a Michelin star. After a moment, he looks up in a panic.

“Socks!” he cries out, pointing at Matthew. “He stole Socks!”

Matthew looks down at his feet, wondering if for some reason, he’ll find stolen socks.

“Oh no, these are mine,” he assures Eddy, chuckling at what he thinks is a funny old guy bit.

“Don’t play dumb with me maggot!” Eddy’s reply strikes fear in Matthew’s soul. “You stole my kitty! Where is he? Where’s Socks?”

“Oh, don’t mind him, sweetheart,” Myra says playfully to Matthew as if her husband isn’t about to eat his face off.

“Say, you sure are cute…” Myra admires the young man. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

Eddy glares at the guy who, to his knowledge, has stolen his cat and is now trying to steal his wife. 

“No… no ma’am,” Matthew replies in a sad enough tone to make Eddy stop growling. “We just broke up.”

“Oh, goody,” Myra oozes with giddy as she ignores his gloom. “I have a beautiful daughter about your age. Let me give you her number.”

She pulls out a pen and a scrap piece of paper from her purse and writes her daughter’s phone number on it. She hands it to Matthew along with a picture.

“That’s her,” she proudly declares. “Give her a call anytime.”

Eddy charges forward and grabs Matthew’s collar and tugs on it, pulling the worker’s face so close to his own that one might think Eddy will kiss him before his daughter does.

“You show my daughter a good time, you cat-thieving son of a horse,” he commands the young man with a muffled growl as his mouth fills up with saliva. “You break her heart, and I swear I’ll roast you like the turkey you are, and I’ll eat you for Thanksgiving.” 

Eddy hacks an unhealthily large loogy on the floor before turning and walking away. Myra kisses Matthew’s cheek before giving two thumbs up and following her husband out to their car.

Matthew stares at the phone number and picture of the girl it belongs to. She is pretty, he says to himself. Just as he whips his phone out to save the number, the gym phone rings. He says two words of the gym’s corporate-mandated unnecessarily friendly phone greeting before the caller interrupts him.

“Shut up, Matty, it’s me,” the man on the other line reveals himself to be Matthew’s boss, Vincent. “Did you change the water filter?”

“No, I haven’t had a chance to yet,” Matthew replies, rolling his eyes. “You left me hanging up here by myself.”

“You freaking slacker,” Vincent calls his subordinate. “No one drank any, did they?”

“Just this old couple,” Matthew stares at the water fountain confused. “Why?”

“Did they do anything weird after drinking it?” Vincent asks, sincerely nervous.

“Well the guy was acting crazy, but I think he was having flashbacks and thought I was the enemy from his war,” Matthew answers nonchalantly. “The woman was really nice though. She gave me their daughter’s number.”

“It wasn’t Eddy and Myra Nutbottom, was it?” Vincent asks wearily.

Matthew’s skepticism quickly morphs into suspicion. “Why?”

“It was them, wasn’t it,” Vincent confirms to himself. “We’re screwed. Their daughter died years ago trying to save their cat who was being stolen by some freak. The unfiltered water must’ve made them trip balls.”

Matthew stares at the girl in the picture, who he’s just been told is dead.

“She’s dead?” he asks God but Vincent assumes he’s asking him.

“Yeah, yeah, she’s dead. Who cares?” Vincent moves on, not giving a fudge about his customer’s dead family member. “You should’ve changed the water filter, Matty. We’re screwed.”

Matthew pulls the phone away from his ear as if he’s checking to make sure it’s real and he’s not imagining that his boss is that much of a scumbag. When he confirms it’s real, he looks around the gym before pulling it back to his ear. 

“No, you know what, Vincent?” he says, possessed by inspired confidence. “You’re screwed.”

He hangs up the phone and walks out of the gym.