He looked down at the water in disgust as the pool vacuum glugged and jerked at the bottom of the pool. He could see the results in the hose. It twitched and stiffened while being dragged behind the main assembly.
At times it looked like it was properly sucking up loose particles of debris and strands of hair. Then it would belch things back out as it continued to scour the bottom, accomplishing virtually nothing at all. He was dealing with a spastic pool vacuum… and he didn’t have the part needed to make it run properly.
He dried himself off, removed his soaked swim trunks, and then slipped back into his street clothes. There was a supplier on the other side of town who had the part he needed. If he wanted to make the repair quickly, it would mean driving clear over to fetch it and then bringing it back to install it.
He toyed with putting it off for another day. But the homeowner was frustrated as hell with her pool vac. She wanted the damn thing fixed yesterday.
She’d called the repair company several times, complaining on three separate occasions. It was time to fix it once and for all. They wanted to get her off the company’s back.
He looked down in disgust. Then he muttered, “You just cough and sputter all you want, you little bastard. But I’ll be back in an hour. Then we’ll put an end to your belching crap back out onto the pool floor once and for all.”
For a moment he thought about packing up all of his gear and taking it with him. Then he decided to leave it and his trunks behind. Besides, he was planning on coming right back.
“Hopefully traffic won’t be too bad during lunch hour,” he muttered unhappily as he headed out the gate to his work truck. “Maybe I’ll pick up a burger on my way back…”
—
Deidra pulled into the yard, frustrated with how work had gone. The boss had yelled at her because she’d misfiled some papers. What’s more, a client was unhappy and ready to leave their company for something she may or may not have played a part in.
To top it off, she’d been asked to run some company errands during her lunch hour. “Take a long lunch if you have to,” her boss had told her with a dismissive wave. “Just don’t forget to pick up that stuff I told you about.”
She’d driven home in a huff, amazed how some days could deteriorate so quickly. She pulled into the drive and snorted with disgust when she didn’t see any sign of that pool company’s repair truck. “They probably haven’t even been here yet!” she thought bitterly.
To confirm her suspicions, she walked along the side of the house before opening the gate to her back yard. She was surprised to see a set of workman’s tools lying near the pool along with a damp set of swim trunks. Then she looked all around, wondering if the repairman was here.
She hadn’t seen the work truck in the driveway. But it was obvious he’d been here recently. Then she heard an eruption of bubbles in the water.
Deidra walked over to the pool and looked down. The repairman certainly wasn’t in the water. The bastard was probably out somewhere eating lunch.
She could see the pool vac faithfully chugging along the bottom. Was it working now? Had he fixed the damn thing, only to leave his tools and trunks behind?
All of a sudden the pool vacuum went spastic again. The hose behind it jerked and shuddered as though the flow had been interrupted. It was doing the same thing she’d complained about the last three calls.
Had he even worked on the damn thing? Hell, it looked as though the repairman had made things worse! His tools and trunks were still here. So where the hell was he??
The pool vacuum suddenly belched, spewing air as bits of debris were discharged back onto the pool floor. “Shit!” Deidra muttered in disgust, her arms on her hips. “That bastard didn’t fix a damn thing!”
She watched as it moved along the floor of the deep end of the pool, dragging the hose behind it. Now it was working fine again. But she knew it wouldn’t last.
Sure enough, it wasn’t long until it became spastic once more. The hose behind it jerked and shuddered.
As far as she could tell, there had to be something wrong with the intake. Hell, for all she knew the damn thing was just clogged or something! What the hell could take so long in fixing that??
By now Deidra was frustrated with the whole damn thing. The spastic vac still wasn’t working the way it was supposed to. And this was after making three separate calls to the pool repair company. It was the perfect ending to a miserable morning.
She’d finally had enough! Deidra looked around again before taking off her secretarial outfit. She was going to go down there and have a look for herself.
The afternoon errands could wait. She wanted to see if she could do anything about it. Besides, hadn’t her boss told her to take a long lunch?
She stripped down to her bra and panties. But then she hesitated. Did she really want to do this?
“Why the hell not?” she told herself. She was hot and frustrated. A short little skinny-dip in her pool would be just the thing she needed to cool off.
The repairman was nowhere in sight. So she figured she could get away with it. That’s when Deidra quickly slipped out of her under-garments before stepping off the side of the pool, hitting the cool water with a quiet splash.
She burbled as she swam down to the bottom. She went chasing after “Snoopy”, which is what she called the damn thing. It had an intake that sucked debris off the bottom as well as an exhaust pipe for filtering water back out. The long hose that dragged behind was like a writhing snake, giving “Snoopy” an extraordinarily long tail.
She swam down toward it and shook her head. “You would have to be in the deep end, wouldn’t you,” she thought in frustration.
She reached the pool vacuum and picked up the bulky object before turning it over. She didn’t fully understand how it worked. But it seemed to be sucking water properly.
She set it back down on the bottom near what looked like a combination of hair and silt. It dutifully glided over the top, leaving a clean section of floor in its wake. “So what the hell seems to be the problem?” she asked herself in frustration.
As she hovered nearby she watched the damn thing suddenly go all spastic on her again. It choked and jerked before belching sediment out of both ends. “SHIT!” her mind cried out in dismay.
She bubbled as she waved herself away from the spewing material. That certainly wasn’t the way it was supposed to work. Then she felt her lungs heave in her chest.
It was time to head back up. She hadn’t planned on a long breath-hold or anything. She was simply going for a naked swim while trying to figure out what was making “Snoopy” so damn spastic.
Deidra blew a burst of bubbles before chasing them back to the surface. She burst up panting heavily, her nipples having hardened from the refreshing coolness of the water. Then she looked down at the pool vac in dismay.
She certainly wasn’t about to pay for another unit. It was up to the company to get her a new one or fix the damn thing. Deidra sighed in frustration before taking a deep breath and heading back down.
She swam down to the vac before picking it up off the bottom. She turned it over, trying to determine what was wrong with it. She waved a hand in front of its mouth, noticing the suction.
Deidra peered closely, trying to determine if there was some sort of obstruction. But there didn’t appear to be any. Of course she didn’t understand how the damn thing worked. So how was she supposed to figure it out?
She checked the exhaust pipe, feeling a flow of water coming out. That’s when “Snoopy” started to seize up again. The flow of water ceased coming out of the pipe.
Instinctively she stuck a hand inside. Deidra tried to feel around for some sort of obstruction. Once more the hose began writhing and jerking.
The vacuum abruptly coughed and belched, causing a reverse flow that suddenly suctioned against her hand. It startled Deidra, causing her to let go of the damn thing in her grasp. But it hungrily clung to the hand it had swallowed.
She bubbled as she instinctively tried to twist away from it. That’s when the hose jerked and spasmed again. But she was more concerned the damn thing was going to bite her hand clear off than worrying about the whipping hose.
For some reason she couldn’t shake “Snoopy” off her hand. She cried out a burst of bubbles in alarm as she tried to back away from it. Her actions caused the coils of hose to twist all around her as they jerked from the machine’s spastic attempts at trying to suction properly.
She felt the hose around her legs and tried to avoid it. But it was twisting as though having a seizure. The hose coiled all around her.
She tried to jerk out of the way. But she became entangled by a second and then a third coil. She soon found herself in a tangled mess.
Deidra burbled in alarm, wondering why the hell the damn thing wasn’t returning back to normal. It was still hanging onto her hand, belching and spasming as though it was caught in a reverse feedback loop. It was a damn nuisance. Besides, she really needed to surface again.
She kicked upward as her lungs started to heave, deciding to take the contraption up with her. But she got caught in the coils. “Snoopy’s” weight was just enough to keep her from reaching the surface.
She didn’t quite make it. The bulky machine and entangling hose pulled her back down. Deidra grunted in alarm, anxiously staring up at the surface.
Her chest heaved, her breasts bobbing up and down. She tried to shake “Snoopy” off her hand again. But the damn thing had some sort of perverse attachment to her and wasn’t about to let go. Not only that, the coils were just enough of a hindrance to help keep her entangled at the bottom.
She kicked off the pool floor again in growing alarm. Deidra was consciously aware she couldn’t hold her breath that much longer. But the coils of hose were in her way.
Some had wrapped around her naked flesh. They kept spasming, causing a couple of them to tighten around her body. A moment later she discovered her arms were almost pinned to her sides.
“Gawd; NO!” her mind screamed as she frantically tried to shake “Snoopy” off her hand.
Her lungs were on fire from lack of another breath. This hadn’t turned out well at all. Her day was going from bad to worse. Hell, she was now on the verge of drowning!
She began cursing herself in her mind. “Stupid bitch for sticking your hand where it doesn’t belong! Stupid, spastic pool vac! Stupid, stupid “Snoopy”!”
The machine coughed and belched again, finally releasing her hand. In desperation she shot up to the surface, kicking as hard as she could. She slipped out of a couple of coils as her head popped up. But she barely managed half a breath before the remaining tangled mass of hose pulled her right back down.
Deidra cried out in terror, twisting and fighting while flailing wildly in a frantic attempt to free herself. At the same time “Snoopy” went right back to sucking on the pool floor. As a result, it gently tugged her entangled body along behind.
Deidra made one last frantic attempt to break free of the coils. She kicked and waved at the surface, grunting in terror. Then her lungs gave out on her.
She inhaled reflexively, without even thinking about it. Then she grunted and gurgled. Deidra immediately began spasming and convulsing as she waved feebly for the surface.
Her breasts bounced up and down from her struggles. The hose wasn’t all that tight around her naked body. But there was just enough of it holding her up to prevent her from reaching the air she needed.
She coughed and convulsed, her naked body jerking from drowning spasms as water flooded her lungs. Then she felt a warm wave flush through her body. She had just climaxed in response to a fearfully erotic arousal.
She shuddered briefly, her body gently spasming while she was all caught up in the throes of drowning. Then she let out something of a sigh as she gave up the fight. Deidra faced downward as she went limp, still in the clutches of the hose that now kept her tethered to the pool vacuum.
Her arms splayed out and downward as she stared at the pool floor in surprise. A few stray muscles twitched as she tried to comprehend what had just happened to her. Tiny bubbles slipped out past her parted lips.
She trembled before fading away. The life winked out of her eyes as “Snoopy” continued to move along the floor of the deep end of the pool. It sucked up sediment before belching it back out as it hauled the drowned, naked body of its owner behind it…
—
He knew he was in deep shit when he saw her vehicle in the driveway. “Damn!” he muttered under his breath. The last thing he needed was a confrontation with this bitch!
Maybe she was in the house and wouldn’t bother him. “Fat chance,” he told himself. Then he walked to the gate to the back yard and opened it up.
The first thing he saw were his tools sitting right where he’d left them. Then he saw a suspicious looking pile of clothes lying on the ground near the pool.
“What the hell?” he murmured in surprise. Was she actually enjoying a lunchtime skinny-dip? This he just HAD to see!
He carefully walked up to the water’s edge, wondering why the surface wasn’t showing someone in the pool. Had she changed her clothes outdoors and then gone inside? Then he looked down into the water…
“HOLY SHIT!!”
There was no time to change out of his clothes, no time to think about shedding his work boots. He simply jumped into the water before anxiously working his way down to Deidra’s limp, naked body. He had no idea how long she’d been down there, and he feared the worst.
He snagged her body and quickly worked the coils of hose free. Then he swam her toward the shallow end. When he found solid footing beneath him, he stood up and cradled her in his arms.
He waded rapidly toward the steps. In moments he had her out of the water lying all stretched out on the ground. There was no time to admire her naked body.
He drained the water out of her mouth. Then he began doing chest compressions. “Shit – shit – shit!” he gasped as he kept pumping.
“C’mon – c’mon – c’mon!” But there was no response. He was deathly afraid her heart had stopped.
He was going to call 911. But his cell phone was in his pocket. He was afraid it was water-damaged and wouldn’t work.
It was more important to get her breathing again than to see if it still worked. He felt totally out of his depth. He believed he was totally inadequate for the task at hand.
To his utter amazement his cell phone rang. He paused and pulled it out of his pocket, recognizing the number from his office on his caller ID.“CALL 911 AND SEND AN AMBULANCE TO THAT LADY HOMEOWNER’S ADDRESS!” he yelled before his boss could even start to speak.
“What? Bud, what’s going on?”
“I JUST GOT BACK AND FOUND HER IN THE POOL ALL TANGLED UP IN THAT DAMN POOL VACUUM HOSE! SEND THE PARAMEDICS NOW!”
“She WHAT??”
“JUST SEND THE DAMN PARAMEDICS!”
“Ok, Bud!” Then the line went dead.
He went back to pumping her chest, wondering how long it would take for the paramedics to get there. Then to his utter shock her eyes blinked. A moment later her stomach stiffened as she vomited up a load of water…
—
Deidra would remember none of that. What she WOULD remember was waking up in the ER. After a full recovery, she made a special visit to the pool repair company to thank the man who’d saved her life.
Afterwards, she wanted to take him out to dinner before taking him back to her place. That was where she wanted to give him a special thanks by having a private little skinny-dip with him in her back yard pool.
“Snoopy” would not be invited…
2011; 2021 (written for jqpublic Nov 12 ’11; ed. Jul 24 ‘21 by riwa)