Still Life With Red Dragon

It’s something you get to believe when you’re young, that you will live many lives over the course of your one existence, that while you are here on earth, your bulletproof life will have chapters marked by moving from place to place, changing careers and partners, chapters that are discrete enough to feel as though they are each different lives you inhabit. 
	Laurel Kneeland was one of these people, and she was happily going about one of her many lives when her and her husband’s basement flooded. It happened in the middle of the night while she and Brett were sleeping and the power had gone out and their white noise machine wound down to a noticeable silence, and they were woken up by the pounding on the door from their upstairs neighbor, Diane, who was holding her cat and saying something about the water pressure or the hot water. Laurel was groggily processing what she was being told and why the power was out when Brett called her over to the steps leading to the basement and they both looked down. Previously they’d regarded this descent with gratefulness that they had the separate space for a washer and dryer and all the extra storage, but now they looked down with alarm, and the dread at knowing what lie ahead. 
	She touched Brett in the same way she did whenever they were watching a horror film, shock at the unfolding of relentless events. In that moment, they didn’t yet know that the old shutoff valve had broken and that water had reached the breaker box and fried the electricity of their unit. All they knew was what they could see from the beam of the flashlight in Brett’s hand, that their basement was waist-high with dirty floodwater that was quickly rising, and that the first of several someones would need to be called. Like, right now. While Laurel spun her wheels, unsure of who to call first, Brett dropped the flashlight and frantically waded into the water as though going after a person submerged. Before she could ask him what he was doing, she saw that he was wading toward a manuscript box containing the stories and novel drafts from when he was younger and trying to make it as a serious writer. He sloshed back to her with the box held heroically above his head, and then he seemed to trip on something and lose his balance. He flailed around trying to gather all the soaked and stapled pages, diving under the water’s surface to find everything. And when he came back up, he was a different person.