Rick White

is what the sign says. So I sit in the shallow end propped up on a floatation device, one of those long polystyrene tubes. I look down at my belly, which years ago I would’ve been proud to expose in a bikini but now I keep covered by a black one-piece ‘cozzy’ as my mother would call it.

I look like a seal.

The water makes the skin on my thighs appear paler. I’m like a cave dwelling salamander, pinkly translucent. They live in total darkness so have evolved’ to the point where they are blind (in actual fact their skin grows over their eyes). They can live for a hundred years.

I consider the salamander’s life-cycle, amidst the splashing and the shrieking of my infant son’s swimming lesson, and I can’t help but think it sounds kind of, nice.

I knew having a baby at thirty-nine meant there was little chance of everything snapping back into place as it seemingly does for women in their twenties, but I was not prepared to feel like an entirely new species of mammal.

Stuart always insists on being in the water with Fletcher during his lessons, I think it’s so he can show off to the young swimming instructor with her gorgeous honey-coloured legs. During my pregnancy he was still going to the gym three times a week. After Fletcher was born this indulgence only increased, ensuring he maintained his physique while I was barely even reassembled in the correct order. Frayed at the seams and busted up on the inside — a badly stuffed pillow.

Stuart had his own insecurities about becoming a dad in his forties. He usually has to win at everything but it may affect his bid to become the coach of Fletcher’s football team when there’s guys twenty years younger lining up to have a go.

I suppose I could forgive him the desire to stay in good physical shape, apart from the fact it annoys me so much that all those gym sessions do seem to have worked. He’s never looked better, the piece of shit. Easy to have visible abs when you’ve not had to spend nine months growing an actual human inside you.

Oh my god how have you never learnt to swim? Is what everyone says, including Stuart’s mother, the world’s foremost expert on everything. The answer is Quite easily. It’s very difficult to think of a realistic scenario in which swimming against one’s will would ever be required. A plane crash in the ocean, maybe.

I always liked to imagine — if that did happen — Stuart could swim me to shore on his back. Now I think he’d be more likely to use my corpse as ballast to save Fletcher, because of course our child is going to win the Olympics and reverse global warming and must be protected at all costs.

Swimming holds absolutely no appeal to me. I’ve lost count of the number of times Stuart has suggested it would be good for me to ‘get a hobby’ and I give him the benefit of the doubt as I don’t think he means it to sound patronising, he genuinely does think an activity outside the immediate demands of motherhood would be good for me and he’s not wrong. But why do men always think having a fucking hobby is the answer to everything?

I want to tell him I did have hobbies — wine, adult conversation and not spending Saturday mornings slowly simmering in a poaching liquor of chlorine and child urine being chief among them.

Fletcher is getting ready to swim five metres across the pool with the other kids. He’ll get a badge if he makes it, I’m not sure what will happen if he doesn’t.

‘Are you ready?’ shouts honey-legs.

‘Come on Fletch,’ Stuart roars, just as an excuse to pump his fist and tense his arms.

As the instructor blows her whistle I look down and Oh good! My legs appear to have fused together. At first I think I’m turning into a manatee (the gentle sea-cow) but on closer inspection it looks as though they’re being bound by a silky material, wrapping itself around them. Well this is new I think to myself and to be honest I haven’t the energy to complain so I’ll just see where it goes.

Fletcher kicks and splutters his way through the water and I wonder if this is what the big net by the side of the pool is for — fishing out drowning children? They’ll need to remove me in a minute as whatever it is that’s encased my legs is now snaking its way past my waist and up my torso.
But it’s fine.

‘Come on Fletcher you can do it!’ bellows Stuart. Give it a rest I think, the poor kid is trying hard enough.

The fine gossamer fabric has now encased my entire body like a sleeping bag, I’m like an Egyptian Mummy. It’s pretty cosy in my new designer shroud and no one seems to have noticed, which doesn’t surprise me one bit.

The alien fabric covers my head and face, and finally my eyes. Then everything is black, and I feel myself sink beneath the water.

And now something’s changed, I’ve changed. I can feel it. I’m struck with a sudden awareness, like waking up from a deep and dreamless sleep. I poke around inside my cocoon and make an opening, a tiny pinprick of light opens up and I force my newly formed body through it. I see through insect eyes, a binocular field of vision. And when I stretch out and fully extend the spikes on the end of my raptorial fore-legs I realise I am now a Praying Mantis.

I stalk the poolside on bladed limbs, fast and deadly in my arthropod shell.

The females of my new species are known for devouring the males after mating and I fix my kaleidoscopic gaze on Stuart, gleefully preparing to bite his fucking head off but then… I stop.

I wouldn’t want to spoil the moment for Fletcher. He’s just about to get his first ever swimming badge and I don’t want him to have to deal with the memory of his father being decapitated poolside and slowly gorged on by his mother who has just transformed into a vicious, sexually-cannibalistic insect.

So I slink back down into the shallow end and submerge my thorax beneath the cool water. Above the chlorine meniscus, I see my son; Fletcher has nearly made it to the other side, frantically kicking his legs and gasping for breath. There is a look of solemn determination on his pudgy little face as he battles on and I realise he doesn’t care about learning to swim, not really, he’s just trying to reach his father. Because he so desperately wants to please him, even if it means he drowns.

Fletcher makes it to the other side and Stuart holds him aloft triumphantly. I look down and see my own form has returned to normal. Fletcher is happy in this moment, Stuart too — and I want to be part of it with them. My baby just swam five metres all on his own!

I start to move in their direction, swishing the water away with my hands (thankfully now human again) feeling the way it supports me as I try to get where I’m going. As the floor of the swimming pool drops away, I realise I’m no longer holding my floatation device, the long pink tube. Maybe I devoured it in my insect rage?

Either way, my feet aren’t touching the floor and I’m not holding on to anything. And although what I’m doing isn’t really swimming (not yet anyway) I’m happy that I’m getting somewhere. Managing to stay afloat.

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About Rick White

Rick White is a fiction writer from Manchester, UK whose work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best Microfictions, Best of the Net, Best British and Irish Flash Fiction and the Pushcart Prize. Rick’s debut short story collection, ‘Talking to Ghosts at Parties’ was released in 2022, however, due to the unending cruelty of the universe/economic climate, the book is now in need of a new publisher. Rick is currently working on a new collection and novel, both of which he hopes to finish before he expires. 

To read more of Rick’s work head to www.ricketywhite.com or follow @ricketywhite on Instagram and X.