• Bubbles burst the settling surface of the water in the old fashioned bathtub. Beneath the disrupted surface of the tub, her face could be seen scrunched in concentration, letting little bubbles free every few seconds. Her lips were pursed tightly together, the muscles of her lips moving them back and forth, making the absurd impression of Samantha from the long forgotten black and white Bewitched sitcom. She clutched the sides of the tub tightly, holding herself under. Her knuckles grew whiter as she struggled to keep herself under.

    Quite a while after she released the last of the air from her lungs, she reemerged, breaking the surface of the water. Her eyes bulged as she took a deep gulp of air, hands running along her head, squeezing the excess water from her shoulder-length, dirty-blonde hair.

    “Finally!” she exclaimed, after receiving enough oxygen to speak. She reached for the towel on the bar above the tub, and carefully dried her hands. When she was sure her hands were dry she reached for the swiveling table next to the bathtub, swinging it towards her. She wove her fingers together and then stretched them outwards cracking her knuckles as she went. She then poised them over the keyboard in front of her and began typing fervently.

    As she typed, her mouth again mimicked the witch from yore, twitching back and forth in a nervous tick. She concentrated hard on remembering what she had been thinking while under the water, her fingers flying on the keyboard. Ignoring spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and other small things, she typed as fast as her fingers would allow. Her deep grey eyes stared intently into the screen, scanning what she had written as she continued to type. She was already correcting what had been written as her fingers continued to drum out more and more material to be edited together later.

    The shrill ring of the phone interrupted her fingers in mid beat, but they continued to type blank air as she turned to glare at the phone.

    “Goddamn it!” she shrieked at it, one of her hands shooting out as she lunged for the phone. She had installed a phone in the bathroom just in case shortly after she moved in. She picked up the phone and jabbed the talk button, her voice cold as a polar icecap.

    “What Do You Want?!” she demanded into the phone, spitting the words with the intention of poisoning the offender's ear. Glowering at the phone's base, she listened as the mumbling voice on the other end tripped its way over an apology and then proceeded to try to sell her something. She didn’t listen to what. Instead, she slammed the phone back into its cradle.

    She lowered herself back into the tub, and started reading from where she was last typing. Her fingers could not remember where they needed to go from there. Another expletive flowed freely from her lips. She was stuck again and she had only started writing again. Slamming the palms of her hands onto her swiveling table, she pushed it away from the tub once again.

    Taking a deep breath she thrust herself back under. Her knees bent to allow her to submerge and her hands resumed their grasping positions on each side of the antique ivory tub. Her lips pursed tightly together, and she started to let forth regulated bursts of air bubbles, watching them rise to the surface.

    As she held herself under, her overactive mind started to settle on just the task at hand. Thoughts of dinner, tomorrow, next week, last week, editing, publishing, her next paycheck, the moron who interrupted her writing process, et cetera one by one vacated her mind. Letting out the last of the air in her lungs, she waited patiently for her brain, and hands, to pick up the tangent they were once on, or to find a new one.

    Lungs burning for air, she finally found a tangent. This new idea seemed a little far-fetched to her, but as she burst through the water’s settled surface, she felt that it might just work. She felt that she could make it work when she began to revise. The new tangent might even be better than the old one, though she could not remember what the old one would have been, had she not been rudely interrupted.

    After wringing her hair out, and thoroughly drying her hands, she pulled the swivel desk with her laptop back over the tub. She stretched her hands and fingers once again cracking the base knuckles, then poised them above the keyboard. Before she started tapping out her rhythm again, she glared at the phone.

    “You better not interrupt again,” she hissed at it. Then, turning her focus to the screen in front of her, her fingers began to tap out a beat all their own, her eyes following behind, already scanning for editing errors. As each long, slender finger typed out what she had been thinking up while submerged, they looked almost as if they were playing an ivory-keyed piano. They each tapped down quickly, but caressed each key gently at the same time.

    She continued typing, mouth swishing from side to side occasionally until the water got cold. When it started getting colder she started to slowly pedal her legs in it, first one knee up, then that one down and the other up. Finally, when it got too cold to bear, one of her toes looped around the chain for the plug, and pulled it up. Her fingers kept thudding along, writing unheard music as her feet worked.

    Once about half of the water had drained, her feet shifted to reach the faucet. Placing one on each side of the hot nozzle, they turned it slowly on. She glanced up at her feet for a second, shivering slightly as the warmth started to fill the tub once again, and then refocused on the task at hand.

    “Just a few more pages,” she muttered, scanning a paragraph behind her still working fingers. “A few more pages and we’re done, boys.”