The lady who cooked herself

September 30, 2020

Growing up I was raised by a religious family; I had to go to church every Sunday morning
and pray before every meal. Nevertheless, when my parents considered I had reached an
appropriate age to decide whether to attend Sunday preach I decided not to. The reasons for
my decision aren’t relevant for this non-story.

As an atheist I believe in coincidences, not on divine intervention or in any kind of spiritual

essence. I don’t believe in karma either. The only thing I’m certain of is that the world is
absurd. This doesn’t mean that life doesn’t surprise me.

One night after completing my daily routine I decided to take a bath hoping it would take the
edge off. I don’t remember any atypical events that day. I went to work, ate a normal lunch
(maybe chicken), drove back home, finished some homework and did my usual workout
routine.

It's weirdly ironic how the conscience sometimes works. You try to forget about something,
but you end up overanalyzing it; or maybe, you try to stop thinking about a special someone,
but end up staying up late just thinking about that person. This night wasn’t an exception.
When going into my bath trying as hard as I could to relax my mind started to picture the
absolute worst scenarios possible. First, I remembered a news I read about a woman who died
taking a bath because she had a stroke while the bath was filling up. Contrary to what you
would expect, she didn’t die of drowning. Instead, the boiling water cooked her skin. When
the paramedics arrived, they sensed a smell of fresh cooked chicken (or at least that’s how the
news described it). When they reached her she was still alive. The problem was that her skin
was sticking to the bath; just like when you are cooking and forget to add oil to the skillet. In
the news they said it was impossible to save her.

My train of thoughts just kept escalating from awful to horrid. The only thing my thoughts
had in common was death. The atmosphere I felt was so unbearable that I decided to get
dressed almost immediately.

When I got out of the bathroom my mom was staring at the window that faces the street. She
looked at me and said: “While you were in the bathroom our neighbor died”. I walked
towards the window and saw an abnormal number of cars and people gathered around my
neighbor’s house.

I thought to myself: how absurdly arbitrary life is. Still, it was just a coincidence.