The River

 As you wake up drenched in sweat, it takes you a moment to realize that it isn't water from the river a former friend of yours was pushing you into just a scant few seconds ago. It was a former friend your certain of that much, the details are hazy. This haziness isn't brought on by alcohol for a change, but from sleep, that wide blessing that has eluded you as of late. You had shared a fair amount of alcohol over the years with that former friend, and truth be told alcohol was probably the main cause of the "former" part of your friendship. As you continue down the boring path to complete and unwelcome consciousness, you wish the fellow that is screaming would shut up for a moment so you could think. That is when it becomes painfully clear that the fellow doing the screaming is you. It was that scream, timed with the feeling of hitting the cold water of the river that is the reason of you being awake. As you take stock of your actual situation you realize you are merely at home in bed. Sure you're curled up into a ball of sweat soaked terror, but you are at home, not sinking towards the bottom of a very cold river. 

You manage to stifle the second scream, and feel around your surroundings. The bed is empty as usual. You, the sole occupant are the main reason for its sole occupancy. Something to do with, being "emotionally crippled" or at least that's the main thrust of the argument you had with the last dual occupant of the bed right before she removed herself from the scene on what is beginning to seem a permanent basis. Pity that, she was a fun playmate, and helped to keep the wolf of coldness away in a lot more interesting ways than an extra blanket does. Further inspection shows you that the extra blanket in question has also left the scene and is now lying in a neglected pile at the foot of the bed. If blankets had eyes, you suspect it would be looking up from the floor at you with a slightly hurt expression as if wondering what it had done to deserve to be discarded in such a fashion. At least you and the blanket would then have something in common, because you also wonder that exact same thing quite often, and as of yet have failed to come up with or be provided an answer. 

You doubt the question will be answered anytime soon or at all considering the "I hope you die in a fire" speech she left you with as the door slammed on her way out, but hope springs eternal as they say, and maybe today will be the day. Now that you are completely, unhappily awake, you also begin to put together the fact that the former friend that was pushing you into the cold river is the same former friend that was the cause of the exit stage left departure of her. It did teach you a life lesson or two, one is when you move into a new abode to make sure the doors are sufficiently sturdy to stand a good slamming, two hide the matches and other fire starting material, and three most of your friends appear to be cunts. It's that last one that stings the most, after all you are not the type to make friends easily, and losing one of a solid cadre of like five actual friends is much more of a loss than it would be to the social butterflies of the world. Social butterfly is not, and never will be a term applied to a description of you.

However much as you wish your subconscious would pick a new theme to use in place of an actual alarm clock to jolt you awake, it seems to be on a run of death in convenient rivers. A theme made all the more fun by the fact that you can't swim a stroke, in fact you sink like a stone in any body of water you happen to find yourself in (on purpose or not). Your former friend knew of your stone like quality (when it comes to bodies of water) and perhaps that is why they chose a not so friendly push to help you along your way to becoming deceased. It would be like them to pick a cold river to use to decease you, since it is pretty close to the opposite of dying in a fire. You are not sure if that is irony or not, and if it is you are certainly not sure your former friend is clever enough to come up with the idea. More likely the river just happened to be handy. And if a woman can't find you handsome, she should at least find you handy.

Perhaps a move to a desert would help? Hard to drown in a desert, but then again you figure if anyone can manage it you could. At least rivers do solve the 'where to bury the body' problem, and saves the expense of a decent shovel, and the effort of digging a hole. After all, the killing of you (or anyone for that matter) is really only have the problem. Unless, you really want to get caught, have a really good reason (or lawyer) getting rid of the body is a useful way to help hide the fact you've made the person into a 'body' that needs to be disposed of. No one wants to answer awkward questions about their whereabouts whilst being shown pictures of a dead body. The questions might be just as awkward, but answering the "have you seen X lately" is a lot easier to answer than "so you shot him how many times?"

Rivers are generally an accepting lot, they don't discriminate on race, creed, or political beliefs, hell rivers will take all sorts of trash, even Liverpool supporters can be dumped into a river with no fear that the river will reject them. Some lovely, secret hoarding rivers even manage to never give up the body you none too gently offered it. They will take it into their cold embrace and let it find its way to the bottom for all eternity. Of course, the lead weight you attach might facilitate that along, but who has time to attach cement shoes to a body they are pushing into a river?  Being the drowning sort, you've never really considered the body disposing qualities of rivers in any depth. You doubt you'd ever be in a position to have to get rid of a dead body, and you also figure that on the way to depositing aforementioned dead body into a river, you'd probably somehow contrive to drown yourself as well. Which would at least save you the awkward question phase of the drama.

Of course, some rivers are better than others in their ability to accept unwilling partners. They need to be deep, and cold helps as well. The colder the better, and your brief recollection of the river you were being introduced to was that it was sheep stealing cold. Maybe it was the water, or maybe it was the fact that the extra blanket had been discarded but cold was the main theme of piece. Cold as your ex's heart as you like to say, but in reality she wasn't cold, in fact she had a warmth about her that could have been the reason you wanted her around to begin with. After all, blankets are nice and all but they just don't suit certain purposes. 

** This aside was brought to you by the second nightmare of being drowned in a river, and while a poor effort it was at least an attempt to get back to writing. An attempt that while poor, has been encouraged by a few people for which I am grateful. I just wish the result was as good as the encouragement.