A Close Range Hose Blast to the Face

In Snowdrift Bay, summer did not arrive quietly.

It arrived as a rumor, then a smell, then a public event no one had approved with sufficient caution.

This year, it arrived in the form of Thorvald’s Viking pool party.

By noon, the backyard of Valhalla Motors had been transformed into something between a suburban cookout and a Norse fever dream. Thorvald had spared no expense, mostly because he had no useful instinct for restraint. Shield-shaped floats drifted in the pool. Dragon heads had been mounted at either end in what he insisted was a “ceremonial aquatic posture.” Plastic torches ringed the patio, their fake flames flickering in broad daylight with all the confidence of decorations that had never been challenged.

Thorvald himself stood at the center of it all in rune-patterned swim trunks, sandals, a horned helmet, and a bright blue swim cap that somehow made the helmet look more sensible.

He had one hand on his hip and the posture of a man waiting for historians to arrive.

“Today,” he declared to no one in particular, “we swim as legends.”

No one answered because several guests were still processing the helmet.

The first wave of arrivals came up the stone path in a loose cluster of towels, sunglasses, and varying degrees of skepticism. Brenda showed up in a glittery swimsuit with her purple hair tied high and immediately started critiquing the decorative choices out loud. Philip followed in black board shorts patterned with little skulls, carrying a beach bag like he was attending a funeral that happened to include sunscreen. Yorn came in Hawaiian swim trunks that somehow still looked modest on him, while Elara appeared beside him in an elegant black one-piece and wide-brimmed hat, already carrying herself like the most composed person at a poolside disaster.

Fabian arrived looking offensively appropriate for sunlight. His swimwear was blindingly colorful without technically being illegal, and he had somehow coordinated a cover-up scarf to his drink before even receiving the drink. Clyde came with him, built like the physical embodiment of a summer sports montage, wearing swim trunks custom-fitted for a centaur and the expression of someone prepared to cannonball with moral purpose if required.

Barnaby Blackbeard stomped in not long after with a rolled towel over one shoulder and the unmistakable smell of rum punch trailing behind him like an alibi. Pierre appeared in silence, of course, already miming a perfect swan dive before he had even reached the pool deck.

For a little while, the party was exactly what it should have been.

People settled into chairs. Drinks appeared. Thorvald boomed at everyone about aquatic valor. Brenda judged the snack table. Fabian kept trying to reposition people in lounge chairs because “the tableau lacks intention.” Barnaby and Clyde were already debating the ethics of a cannonball competition. Elara reclined beneath an umbrella with a dark red drink in hand, looking like the concept of expensive shade.

Yorn, for perhaps six blessed minutes, thought the day might simply be fun.

That was his first mistake.

The second came when The Old Lady arrived.

No one saw her come through the side gate. She was simply there all at once, in one of those old-fashioned bathing costumes from a bygone century: dark wool, striped trim, thick shoulder straps, knee-length bloomers, and little bathing shoes that slapped angrily against the patio stone. She looked less like a party guest and more like someone who had stormed out of a 1924 seaside postcard to settle a grudge.

Her eyes found Yorn instantly.

“There he is,” she barked, pointing one rigid finger at him. “The oversized menace.”

Yorn, who had been in the middle of lowering himself into a deck chair with a paper plate of chips, froze in disbelief.

“What did I do?”

“You know perfectly well what you did.”

“I absolutely do not.”

“You arrived! You loomed! You started upsetting the proportions of the afternoon!”

Yorn looked around for help.

Brenda raised her drink and mouthed, sorry.

The Old Lady advanced, her bathing shoes smacking the stone with righteous fury.

“You can’t just haul that much yeti into a social event and expect the atmosphere not to curdle!”

“I was standing by a cooler.”

“You were standing by it aggressively.”

Thorvald, to his credit, made an attempt.

“My honored guest,” he boomed diplomatically, “today we celebrate fellowship, water sports, and the temporary suspension of petty grievances.”

The Old Lady swung toward him. “I have never suspended a grievance in my life.”

“Fair enough,” Thorvald said.

Yorn, still holding his plate, tried one last time. “I really was just standing here.”

“Exactly,” she snapped. “With that attitude.”

She kept going.

She did not need replies. In fact, replies only seemed to feed her. She pointed at Yorn, then at his drink, then at the sun, somehow making all three seem personally offensive. Guests began drifting subtly backward, not out of fear exactly, but because she had reached that very specific frequency of uninterrupted public yelling that made everyone feel like collateral.

Elara lowered her sunglasses and watched for another ten seconds.

Then Oyuki arrived.

She drifted into the yard in an airy cover-up over a dark swimsuit, which is apparently something ghosts can do. She was cool and pale and entirely unbothered by heat, noise, or social breakdown. She took in the whole scene at a glance: Thorvald in his helmet, Yorn holding chips in a state of confusion, The Old Lady in antique swimwear screaming at him like a scold from another era.

Oyuki sighed.

“Still doing this?” she asked.

The Old Lady rounded on her at once. “And now you’re here. Wonderful. The dead one.”

Philip raised a finger and said, “Several of us are technically dead.” Brenda slapped him with a pool noodle.

Oyuki tilted her head.

Then, with no rise in expression and no warning whatsoever, she gave the Old Lady a small ghostly shove.

It was not dramatic, nor was it a blast of spectral energy.
It was just a neat, tidy little push.

The Old Lady let out a shriek of outraged surprise and toppled straight into the pool.

The splash was spectacular.

It surged up over the edge and slapped across the patio in a wave that rocked the shield floats, soaked Thorvald’s shin, and sent a cup of punch tumbling off a side table. For one shining second, the entire party froze in collective anticipation.

Then The Old Lady exploded back out of the water.

Not all the way out of the pool. Just upward enough to stand waist-deep, hair plastered to her face, striped bathing costume dripping, eyes blazing with fresh and somehow wetter fury.

“YOU FROZEN HARLOT!” she screamed at Oyuki. “I OUGHT TO HAVE YOU EXORCISED! AND YOU—” she whipped back toward Yorn, still somehow staying on message, “—DON’T THINK THIS GETS YOU OFF THE HOOK!”

Barnaby doubled over laughing.

Fabian actually had to sit down.

Clyde made a noise halfway between a snort and a cough and covered it with his drink.

Oyuki, floating serenely at the pool’s edge, looked mildly pleased with her own decision-making.

The Old Lady sloshed toward the shallow end, still yelling at full volume.

“This party has no standards! No discipline! No respect for age, posture, or poolside dignity! And that yeti is still standing there like a blue courthouse!”

Yorn looked down at himself. “A courthouse? What does that-”

“Don’t interrupt me!”

She reached the steps and began hauling herself out of the water, still shouting without even the courtesy of pausing for breath.

Pierre, who had been watching all this with the concentrated joy of an artist presented with a perfect final beat, moved.

Without a word, he darted to the side of the yard, seized the garden hose, and whipped it around with astonishing speed and purpose. He planted his feet wide, braced his body like a seasoned firefighter, and yanked the nozzle open.

The hose roared to life.

A hard, cold stream of water blasted straight across the patio and hit The Old Lady directly in the face just as she got one foot onto the top step.

The effect was magnificent.

Her head snapped back. Her arms flew wide. Her whole body rocked backward with the sheer force of it. Water flattened her already-soaked hair against her skull and drove her, shrieking and sputtering, right back into the pool in one enormous, deeply satisfying collapse.

The blast did not stop there.

Pierre kept the hose trained on her with the absolute seriousness of someone who had found his calling.

The stream hit her square in the face again as she resurfaced.

And again.

Each time she tried to rise and resume yelling, Pierre adjusted with professional precision and blasted her right in the mouth, the nose, the eyes, the forehead—wherever the outrage seemed about to organize itself.

She never stopped trying to yell.

That was the beauty of it.

Every attempted insult came out as some variation of:

“YOU—GLRKH—INSOLENT—PTHHH—WRETCHES—”

“THIS IS—BLAAAGH—AN OUTRA—KHHH—”

“YETI, I’LL—PTHH—REMEMB—”

The crowd lost its mind.

Brenda bent over laughing so hard she had to grab Philip’s shoulder to stay upright. Barnaby pounded one fist against the railing. Clyde actually stomped a hoof. Even Elara laughed openly now, one hand over her mouth, sunglasses tilted down her nose so she wouldn’t miss any of it.

Thorvald raised both arms to the sky.

“YES!” he bellowed. “WATER COMBAT!”

Pierre, utterly locked in, narrowed his eyes and advanced one measured step, never lowering the hose. He looked less like a mime and more like a man defending civilization from one particularly persistent woman in a 1920s bathing costume.

At last, The Old Lady gave up trying to stand and simply floated near the side of the pool, furious and sputtering and intermittently taking fresh blasts to the forehead whenever she looked like she was regaining rhetorical momentum.

Pierre, satisfied, finally shut off the hose.

Then, with grave dignity, he slung it over one shoulder, struck a pose, and mimed hoisting a championship belt around his own waist.

The yard erupted.

People cheered.
Barnaby stomped.
Fabian nearly slid out of his chair.
Thorvald shouted, “A HERO OF THE NORTH SEA!” despite the complete lack of sea.

And from there, the party resumed at once, as though the attempted drowning-by-social-conflict and hose-based suppression of an elderly woman had merely been an unusually vigorous icebreaker.

Barnaby and Clyde began a cannonball contest. Fabian organized a conga line around the pool that lasted until someone slipped on a wet chip and turned it briefly into emergency choreography. Elara resumed her place under the umbrella with the (suspiciously) dark red drink, watching the whole thing with detached pleasure. Yorn, once certain the day would be simple, gave up and joined Thorvald in throwing foam axes at a floating shield for points.

Oyuki hovered near the pool, looking pleased with herself in the calm, understated way that suggested she would absolutely do it again.

As for The Old Lady, she remained the day’s central weather pattern.

Someone eventually fished her out with a pool skimmer pole and settled her, still dripping and muttering curses, into a deck chair with two towels and a plate of fruit she did not want. Every so often she would gather enough strength to point at Yorn from across the yard and resume some thread of accusation she had apparently never abandoned.

“YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID,” she shouted once, thirty minutes later.

“I still don’t!” Yorn shouted back.

“EXACTLY!”

At sunset, the whole party softened.

The water turned gold. The fake torches flickered more convincingly now. Guests collapsed onto chairs and towels in states of happy ruin. Even The Old Lady had gone quieter, though the continued motion of her mouth suggested she was still cursing internally.

Thorvald, still in his helmet and now wetter than any Viking had ever needed to be, raised a glass of sparkling water toward the darkening sky.

“To Snowdrift Bay!” he shouted. “Where glory and madness remain properly intertwined!”

The crowd raised their drinks and shouted back.

Even The Old Lady, wrapped in towels and glaring from her chair like a damp Victorian hex, lifted one hand an inch off the armrest in what might have been involuntary acknowledgment or simply an attempt to continue pointing at Yorn.

No one asked.

And in Snowdrift Bay, where a Viking pool party could hinge entirely on one furious old woman in antique swimwear repeatedly trying to restart a public grievance and one mime repeatedly denying her the breath to do it, that still counted as a very successful afternoon.