WATER - RAMYA POTHUKUCHI

She woke up with a start and the muggy hot air stifled her. She looked about to find that her eyes were still adjusting to the dim evening light that faintly bathed an otherwise empty room. She could still see the image of the sun, a very real sun, which was scorched onto her retina, by a dream.
She had been running from something and it had been very silent, hot, red and full of light, this place that she had escaped to. And it was also unnervingly quiet, full of alien life forms, none of which she belonged to.
Then she felt the stifling heat as she watched the sun slowly move across a red sky of breath taking beauty, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe as she awoke in a dark cool room. She groaned as she felt the familiar jarring feeling full of foreboding and distaste and a strong desire to be anywhere else but here right now… she felt her body weight as she shifted slowly off her bed and felt a slight clearing of her head as she stood up. She looked at herself in the mirror and smiled, wondering why she loved to feel so distastefully pathetic, low and miserable… as the sun glowed behind her… and suddenly she felt peaceful and happy.
She stepped out into her living room window as she felt the water under her feet. It seemed to have leaked in from the old crack in the window in the corridor. She ran on tiptoe and entered into the kitchen, a clean, white, sterile place that was modeled to look like the dream of a minimalist Zen architect. She went on to make herself some tea, all the while humming to herself a happy tune, drawn to the warmth of the electric kettle that whistled away happily. She was faintly aware of someone watching her and turned around to find herself looking out of a window, onto scenery that was calm and familiar. . She looked admiringly at the shimmering red sand that always reminded her of the sandbox in the backyard she used to so dearly love playing in. She felt awetness on her cheek, which made her wince, but it was gone soon and she looked on.
She snapped out of her reverie as she felt the weight of the warm mug full of tea in her hand. Her right arm was usually sore, for she suffered from a constant gripping cramp in her upper right arm that throbbed dully all day and plagued her at regular intervals throughout the day. She was used to it though, and tended to ignore it.
She sipped her tea looking balefully out of the window at the beautiful deep brick hue of the landscape, a plain stretch of glimmering sand under a brilliantly radiant sun. The moment, she felt, was ruined only by sporadic passing gusts of frigid wind that disagreed with the otherwise perfect evening. She felt complacent though, and made no attempt disturbing her stasis.

Time passed her by in which she watched a brilliant sunset, and the glitter worms rise from the sand into the evening. She shook off her inertia and steered herself out of the kitchen back into her room. She felt a vague discomfiture as she looked at her bed, a faint stirring of unpleasant emotions she couldn’t pinpoint. ‘ I must have had a nightmare’ she told herself as the warmth of the bed made her smile.

She hears a faint click as she drifts off

“The new medications seem to be working,” said the nurse to the warden as she shut the door.
“Yes. It is after a long time that she has been so serene…She woke up peacefully enough, and watched the children play in the rain in the garden for a long. I remember the days when she couldn’t even stand hearing their voices through her window.”
“ Yes, I noticed how she didn’t fight being steered by her arm like she used to, poor arm was sore she would say…although she did seem a little wobblier.”
“Yes well if the place is doing as well as it seems like it is, the doctor might want to make it look like that too! …The rainwater has leaked and seeped in everywhere, even the cells! And poor Jimmy has suddenly developed a strange distaste for water, and can’t sleep at night because he has heard the rain for four days straight now! …”

(ends)

AVY COMMENTS:
I like the internal contrast between the happy scenario and the shrink hospital reality. There are some internal contradictions you need to iron out in the plot. The menacing aspect of it is quite strong. Good for a first attempt. Now you need to push what you have learnt from this effort into the sci-fi story.