Olivia Olsen: My Greatest Fear

I hesitate to admit this, but my greatest fear has always been water, water of all kinds, but particularly the open sea. So great is my fear of water that I bathe only once a week, and only in the form of a brief shower, never in the bathtub. I wear a heavy perfume to disguise my body odor. I do not know why I so fear the water, but I suspect it may have something to do with an unfortunate incident during my childhood. My family owns a small cottage in the mountains to the north, and each summer we would spend our holidays there, frolicking in the sun and swimming in the small lake that was all our own. My brother Johann and I would play all day, riding the cows about the meadow and making garlands of daisies for our hair. One horrible day during the summer of my tenth year, when Johann was eleven years old, late in the evening, just before we were to retire to bed, as some clouds crosssed the sky, Johann dared me to race him across the lake to our cottage. I was a strong swimmer and knew that I could beat him easily the few hundred meters across the lake. A light rain had started and we were to not swim while there was bad weather, but our parents were already inside with Uncle Gustav, sipping dandelion wine and listening to his stories from the war. It was a tight race, and I was not sure that I would win, but my breaststroke was stronger than my little brother's and even as the rain began to pour I emerged on the other side of the lake, victorious. As I turned behind me, there was a flash of light that illuminated the whole lake. I screamed as thunder clapped through the air and saw to my horror that my darling brother Johann had been hit by a lightning bolt and electrocuted in the water. He floated to my feet, dead. Ever since that day, I have not fully immersed myself in any liquid.