The Slide

“Your boys are loud.” I said

“They’re excited to be here. They love to visit their grandfather, and you like them visiting.”

“No, that was your mother, not me.”

“You grouch.” She changed the subject. “How are you occupying your time?”

“The environmental people made me do pointless work on the cliff face.”

She stood and looked over the guard wall. “It resembles a giant concrete slide.”

“They feared my pool would leak and destroy the embankment. I told them it was impossible, even showed them the engineering specs, but they insisted. I had to empty the pool, put in a drain hatch, and electronic controls. Twenty-three and a half thousand gallons of water pumped out and back. It was nothing but a waste of time, energy, and my money, so I added a few additions of my own.”

 “What is that thing on the beach? It looks like a net.”

“It is a safety net from a tightrope.”

The boys came charging out to pool side, screaming and laughing.

“Keep it down, you two.”

“Yes mother.”

“Did you use the washroom?”

“Yes grandpa.”

“Are you sure, you absolutely must not pee in my pool. Do you understand? Get out if you have to go. You can’t hide it. I installed special pee detectors.”

“Dad, they said they wouldn’t. Let it go.”

“Do you promise boys?”

“Yes grandpa.”

“Then enjoy.”

Whooping, they cannon-balled into the deep end. My tablet’s pee indicator lit up at once. The sluicegate snapped open. A whirlpool built in moments. The boys didn’t have a chance of escaping. They swirled around, caught in the pull of the whirlpool. They stopped screaming as they disappeared below the surface.

I jumped to the guard-wall. They were through the hatch before I made it. My calculations were perfect, and they spent no time at all under water. The sluicegate snapped closed. Five-thousand gallons of water rushed down the slide. As it hit the ramp at the end, a standing wave surged into existence. The boy’s bodies flashing into the wave, shot up, and floated through the air landing safety in the net. They bounced a little. The rush of water subsided.

Silence followed until I laughed. “Perfect engineering, an expensive toy, but I bet it keeps them coming back for years.” The sound of the boys whooping and laughing as they bounced on the net drifted up to us.

The End

© Dave Skinner 2016