Scarlet plunges almost to the bottom of the pool, her body stiffening with the cold. She surfaces and swims to the shallows, flips and swims back to the deep.
She swims in the earliest hours, when the building is deserted, and the only sounds are water and her own breath. The room is dark, but for the tiny lights in the pool itself, casting wavering shadows on the tiled walls. She admits neither age nor aging, but shadows are kinder to a body slowly surrendering to the inevitable.
Memory bleeds into the water. Nightmares dissolve in chlorine. Sex washes away in the cold.
Scarlet, drained and quiescent, lifts herself from the water, leaving a trail of wet footprints as she leaves.