Clean water and sickly air

I entered the decrepit room for my swim team’s first try-out. Instantly, the humidity of the heated pool enveloped my body and clung to my skin like a spider’s exoskeleton before it sheds, tight and sticky. 

The dingy lights cast a nauseating yellow veil over the floor and walls, making the whole room look aged and plagued with jaundice. The grime between the tiles of the plain mosaic walls reached over and onto the squares — the filthy layer of built up dirt looking like it wanted to burst out from under its tiled prison. Hovering around me, the buzzing drone of the lights rang through my ears and reverberated straight into my skull, bouncing against the walls of my head and cultivating the start of a headache, unlike a fly I couldn’t just swat the noise away. Occasionally, the buzz would go up or down a key, holding that note until a light eventually blinked and reset the tune, like a piece of dull, lifeless music on loop from a worn-down dusty radio.

The water was the only escape from the invasive, suffocating ambiance; the way the pool sloped from shallow to deep beckoned for me to dive in and slide down the slanted pool floor. The depths of the pool’s end — that were obscured by shadow — pulled me in to immerse myself and be caught up in the water. Alone under the surface the yellowish lighting and mind-numbing drone disappeared, swallowed by the wall of water separating them from me — creating an isolated space like some type of pocket dimension. On top, the water’s tranquility and level surface seemed to spread out for eternity like a free plane to explore and glide through, clean and sleek.