The Man/Boy Who Stayed In The Shower

The Man/Boy Who Stayed In The Shower

There was a man who was yet a boy, who was a boy almost a man. He had an argument with his lover and to cleanse himself of this dispute, he went into his shower. It was warm and comforting, and he decided he would rather not get out.
Living in a big guest-house as he did, there was a limitless supply of hot water available to him. So he stayed in the comfort of the shower, and thought about his life. He thought about the disagreement he had had with his lover. He wished it had not happened, because he felt bad, and he hoped that his lover was not feeling bad. Then he thought about how it would really be if there were no disagreements in the world, and he took a philosophical view and so he was able to transcend the bad feelings he had been feeling.
As the shower went on, he became more and more relaxed, and he entered a dreamlike state of mind. He allowed all of the strange memories and thoughts from his past to flow through him, and down the plughole, with the soap and the shampoo. He let go of all of the troubles he had collected. He stopped worrying about his mother, and her health, thinking that in the end, she was just like him, and was standing in her own shower. And he stopped worrying about his father and his father's worries, although they seemed less apparent than his mother's, and he knew that his father was also standing in some sort of cosmic metaphorical shower as well. He stopped worrying about his sister, and the complexities of her life; that of her child- his nephew- and her partner, and the myriad things that may beset her life. These were all things beyond his control, and in the end his sister and his little nephew and all of the things connected were in the great big shower of everything, and they would all go down the plughole with his worries.
Passing from the dreamlike state, he found himself drifting upwards and out of his body, above the shower-head, and floating around the ceiling above the shower, which was collecting moisture from the steam. He watched his body from above, which was swaying gently in the stream of water, and he thought of how fragile life really was, in all its organic forms. He knew that his spirit as it drifted around the ceiling was in touch with all of the spirits that existed, and that had ever existed, and that ever would exist. He acknowledged his fear of the future lives he might go through. He knew that he might be forced to relive the whole gamut of experiences that he had already been through in his so-far short life. The pain. The overwhelming sensations of touch and sight and sound and taste. The memories, and the learning, the loss and the joys... He was afraid that if he were going to go through life again, he might be forced to experience one of the horror stories he had learned about during his own lifetime.
Then he wondered whether his own life might seem like a horror story to to other souls, asking the same questions. He thought that perhaps to others, his life might seem like a punishment as well. He could hardly see it himself, but then he thought about how this detached mind, as it floated above the steam of the shower, might to others seem like a nightmarish confusion; a cacophonous orchestra of atonal distress. True enough he'd never been tortured, nor imprisoned, nor raped, nor disemboweled, nor any other atrocious torment he could think of. In such a light he had been blessed. But perhaps only through his perception, such as it was, did his life seem like the relative bliss he thought it to be. Perhaps to another mind, tortures and horrors would become apparent that he had not seen. And he let himself drift further from his body with the thought of bliss in his centre.
Soon people came knocking at the door, wondering where the boy/man had been for the past few days, and how come the heating in the guest-house was so inconsistent. His body was now leaning against the shower-door, and he was unable to respond, since his spirit was drifting through the netherworlds. The people could hear the shower running, and there was steam from beneath the door of the room, so after a few more days of concern, they knocked the door down with a log and ran in to see.
To their great surprise the boy/man, the one they had known as as standard normal human person for all of these years, was leaning naked against the shower-door, and his entire body was glowing a radiant iridescent silver. His hair, his shut eyes, his genitals, his toenails... Everything was shining with a light from within, and his skin had apparently become metallic, like brushed steel. He was breathing slowly and his face had a blissful look. The water was running evenly all over him, and he smelled so clean that it made some of the people cry with happiness.
The people sat for a while in the glow of the boy/man's body, and discussed what to do. They knew that this was something unusual, and something special, and they had seen enough movies and read enough stories to know that calling the scientists was a bad idea, because a scientific analysis of something so resplendent would only denigrate its glory, and would leave them questioning their spiritual motivations.
After nearly a week of debating, with the shower running in the bathroom and the people comfortably warm and moist from the steam that filled the room in the boy/man's presence, the people came to a decision. They would leave the entire situation just as it was. They would fit a second boiler in the guest-house, and keep the first one running themselves, giving a little extra money in rent payments to the landlady in order to maintain this strange spiritual monument. They knew in their hearts and minds that if it were them in that same position, slumped blissfully in the warm comforting shower, they would want to stay there too, and to be cared for.
Meanwhile, at the centre of the universe, a transcended being cloaked in silver light channelled the near-infinite power of the cosmos through his hyper-enlightened multidimensional essence and created hydrogen and carbon, to make sure there was enough hot water for the showers of every planet ever.