Chapter 15
Wednesday, September 20—Landfall
Water flooded the storage space as Dulce slept. It seeped through the metal slats in the pull-down door of the storage space. It pooled on the concrete floor. It rose around the mattress where Dulce was sleeping. Although she was not exactly sleeping, more like in a stupor or a spell from the cocktail of rum and marijuana.
Water seeped up, turning the mattress into a giant sponge. The moisture soaked into the fabric of her clothes. Inch by inch, the line crept up her feet, her beautifully painted blue toenails. It saturated her hair, destroying the remains of a blowout, her hair blooming into springing curls all around her head.
Still she slept.
Her shoulder flinched with the moisture tickling her ear canal. Then both ears filled and the tickle was gone. Her body stilled again in sleep. The now full canals dulled the howls of the storm.
The flooding outside was anything but gentle, yet the water could only seep in through the slats in the metal door, and the crack at the bottom above the cement floor. So the water level rose slowly. It crept up gently along her neck, her jawline, her cheekbone. The water sidled up tenderly, like a lover.
She slept on when the water first touched her lips. Only when it began to drip into her mouth did she truly stir. The water, pooling in the back of her throat and making it impossible to breathe properly now. The prince had come. The rescuer on his horse. The discoverer. The pimp.
Her left hip was soaked now in the floodwater. Her right hipbone jutted above the waterline like a disappearing island of brown skin.
Water trickled into her throat, and she coughed weakly, her gag reflex still kicking, part of her brain began to register the fact that her life was in danger. Some fight-or-flight response activated her tongue, dragging it into action to spit some of the water out.
Her life was in danger.
She sputtered to consciousness, coughing through a burning throat. In total darkness. Completely soaked. She fought through the mental haze to orient herself, to make sense of the bizarre combination of mattress and moisture, screaming winds and crashing thuds.
Storage space. Hurricane. Flooding. Fuck.