🧻 Episode 3: My Shower Curtain is Gaslighting Me
You know your life has taken a strange turn when your shower curtain begins correcting your grammar during an existential crisis.
But that’s what happened. Right after Carl—the monocled cactus with a flair for spiritual mischief—performed what he called a “ritual of humid introspection.”
I asked no questions. Mostly because he had drawn a mystical sigil on the bathroom mirror in toothpaste and was humming in Sanskrit, Latin, and something that sounded like interpretive yodeling. The air got thick. My shampoo curdled. A bar of soap twitched with intent.
And then it began.
It started innocently enough.
I stepped into the bathroom to brush my teeth and immediately felt watched. The kind of watched that implies judgment and possibly sarcasm. That’s when I heard the voice.
“Late again, aren’t we?” it drawled, in a silky British accent with a hint of petty. “Not that you ever respect your circadian rhythm.”
I turned, toothbrush dangling from my lips.
“Who said that?”
“Look up, darling,” it sighed. “Or rather, look in the mirror of your denial.”
I looked. My shower curtain fluttered ominously, even though the windows were closed. It stared back with the eerie calm of something that knows all your browser history.
“You're—you're alive?” I asked.
“Oh please. I've been alive this whole time. You’ve just been emotionally unavailable.”
That’s when it started to recite rhymed couplets about my flaws.
“The socks you lost were never gone—
You just resist what you dwell upon.”
“Another text left on ‘unread’—
A ghoster’s guilt lives in your head.”
“You cut your own bangs at 3 A.M.—
Now trauma and scissors are best friends.”
Every line hit like a passive-aggressive punchline at a therapy-themed open mic night. The worst part? It rhymed in iambic pentameter.
“Why are you doing this?” I demanded.
“Because Carl invoked the Ritual of Humid Introspection, which opened the Portal of Piped Perception. You’re now in Phase 3 of your self-awareness awakening: Hydro-Critical Reflections.”
“Is that… real?”
“No, but it sounds fancy, and that’s half the battle in metaphysical rebranding.”
I tried to take a shower to ignore the madness. Bad idea.
The water was lukewarm. The kind of temperature that makes you question your life decisions and whether you peaked in middle school. As soon as I stepped in, the curtain closed around me with a slither.
It whispered:
“You always run when things get deep,
Like dreams that sink into lost sleep.”
I whipped the curtain open and glared.
“Stop that!”
But then the soap chimed in.
It slid off its dish like a tiny, smug eel, plopped to the floor, and said in a sultry New York accent:
“Hey, sugar. You wanna talk about your dating life?”
“No, I do not.”
“Well too bad, because your last three choices were walking red flags. You couldn’t pick a green flag if it waved in front of you wearing a name tag and holding a cat.”
I blinked. “You’re just a soap bar.”
“I was a soap bar. Now I’m Dr. Latherstein, Relationship Guru and pH-balanced truth dispenser.”
Carl strolled in casually, sipping espresso from a mug that said “Photosynthesis Is My Therapy”. He nodded approvingly.
“Excellent progress. Phase 3 is always the most revealing.”
“I have privacy rights,” I hissed. “This is a bathroom. A sacred space.”
“Nothing is sacred once your loofah develops a personality,” he said. “Speaking of which, yours is judging your back exfoliation habits.”
I looked at my loofah. It glared back with the weary resentment of someone who’s seen too much.
The curtain had taken it up a notch now. It was quoting Byron.
“She walks in beauty, like the night—
But texts him back out of spite.”
It then proceeded to rate my past relationships using a scale of emotional maturity and sock compatibility. I tried to run but slipped on Dr. Latherstein, who screamed, “This is why you’re still single!”
I landed in the tub, tangled in the curtain, trying to hold onto dignity like it was soap—slippery, elusive, and now sentient.
That night, I attempted to sleep, but everything smelled faintly of eucalyptus, and my dreams were narrated by the shower curtain doing slam poetry about my teenage poetry phase.
“Roses are red, your angst was absurd—
You rhymed ‘soul’ with ‘hole’? Girl, you need a new word.”
In the morning, Carl conducted a debrief over peppermint tea and ominous Gregorian trap music.
“Well?” he asked. “What did you learn from your brush with psychological plumbing?”
“That I can’t even wash my hair without being psychoanalyzed?”
“Correct,” he said cheerfully. “But also: you need to confront the damp corners of your subconscious. The ones where mildew and shame grow together.”
I sighed. “Can’t I just go back to journaling and repressing things like everyone else?”
“No,” said the loofah. “You wrote ‘healing journey’ in your planner. No backsies.”
Eventually, the curtain and I made peace.
We agreed to a truce: it would only critique my life in haiku, and I would stop yelling “gaslighter!” every time I stepped out of the shower with unresolved feelings.
The soap is now offering couples therapy via ASMR.
Carl, of course, is preparing the next ritual—something involving sage, Post-It notes, and a playlist called “Awakening Thru Electro-Funk.”
I don’t know where this is going. I just know I haven’t done laundry in six days, and my toaster is beginning to show signs of sentience.
Author’s Note:
Bathrooms are no longer safe. Rhymed criticism is the worst kind. And if your soap starts giving you love advice, just smile and nod. Trust me, it’s easier that way.
Next time: Carl installs a dreamcatcher made of unpaid bills and forgotten passwords. The blender speaks.
Stay moisturized. Stay mentally stable. Or don’t. Who knows anymore?
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