THE LAUNDROMAT

“Man up,” Kim said, finally frustrated with my neuroticism.

Up until this point, she had been patient with me. Maybe even coddling. I hated both of those ex­tremes.

She had me at a loss. I wanted– I needed her to come over, but fuck her for saying that. If I addressed it, it would show I was giving in to my sensitive urges. If I let it slide, it would build up inside of me until I hated her. 

I forced a laugh and the coolest, neutral answer I could find.

“Yeah, you right,” I said.

I could tell her that I was tired, so she wouldn’t come over, but she would read that as me passively ag­gressively telling her to fuck off, which would go back to my point about giving in to my sensitivity. 

The pause that followed was filled with internal questioning. Did she feel bad about what she said? Am I acting weird now, taking too long to answer, showing that she got to me? Was she distracted by Netflix again? I grit my teeth. I couldn’t tell. I could never tell with her.

“All right,” I finally said, “Lemme go ‘head and get this shit done right quick.”

“Okay,” she said, “How long do you think it’ll take?”

“Gimme about an hour—” I decided to pad my time, “Gimme about an hour and a half.”

“Okay,” she said, “See you soon.”

When she hung up, I shook the conversation out of my head. I had shit to do.

I held my breath while gathering dirty clothes. My favorite black paisley button-down was the last thing I tossed in before tying the nylon bag and sling­ing it over my shoulder.

I glanced around my bedroom. Passable. Living room? C-plus. Kitchen? Most dishes were done; the dirty ones were stacked in the sink. That’s something. Now for laundry.

Two things scared me about the communal basement: one, I might find someone who’d realized this was all life had to offer, hanging from an overhead pipe; two, the washer or dryer would be broken again for the umpteenth time. I’d counted before. It was ex­actly umpteenth times.

I charged downstairs to eliminate both fears, popping my revolting clothes into the first machine. Quarters clinked and clunked until I heard the hiss of water. So far, so good. Upstairs, I set a timer and re­sumed Night of the Living Dead.

When the alarm went off, I pressed pause and returned to transfer the load. I dropped the first quar­ter into the dryer. Clink—no clunk. The digital display still read $2. I pressed the “Well, shit then, give me back my money” button. Nothing. I tried another quar­ter to dislodge it. Another clink, no clunk. Still $2.

After depleting more of my hard-earned coin, anger welled up inside me. I imagined toppling the machine and stomping upstairs to type a furious letter to the apartment office: “Remove washer and dryer from your amenities list. False advertising.” In real life, I did nothing. Dam­age was a crime, and a complaint would only make things awkward with the landlord.

Instead, I trudged upstairs with wet clothes. If I weren’t such a selfish loner, I might’ve left a note to warn my neighbors. But I didn’t.

I turned off all the lights, tossed one of my blackout curtains to the side, peered out my window, and stood watching the goings-on of the night. The sidewalks were crowded with young revelers, travel­ing between bars, letting their lush-filled excitement build until it erupted in involuntary yells. I stood per­fectly still and tried to blend into the darkness. 

Across the street, there was a glowing gas sta­tion with a few drug dealers posing like doormen. A small, dark laundromat was tucked into the side of the building, like an appendix. The door to the laundromat was far enough away from the dope peddlers. I should be able to enter and exit with no problem.

I just had to worry about the bum sitting off to the side, slumped in his soiled, mismatched clothing. He used the concrete like a human would use a chair. I looked at his face to see if there was any semblance of shame or embarrassment. From this angle, it almost seemed like he was staring at me with the precision of a sniper spotter.

I lowered the bag to the floor and noticed how sweaty my palms had become. Humans are unpre­dictable, which is probably why I chose a job where I could work from home and rarely had to interact with anyone. Since COVID, delivery services that leave your orders right on the steps have made it too easy. With dating apps, you can choose who you want to interact with. Why go outside? To do laundry, I guess. That’s why.

I stepped into the night, determined once more to confront my trepidation. Taking a deep breath, I be­gan zig-zagging slowly through the crowd. I felt fabric, hair, and skin brushing against me, and a thousand and one warm breaths enveloped me. I didn’t realize how much I sought after the light pollution until it be­gan growing dim as more bodies pressed in, smiling, laughing, oblivious to whom they were suffocating. Or were they pretending to ignore so they could claim reasonable deniability while squeezing the life from my body?

There were rising sounds of laughter and con­versation, along with creepy whispers. The air got heavier, the atmosphere grew darker, the people got closer, the noises got louder and louder until I heard–

“Psst. Are you okay?” 

I looked around. I had made it through the crowd, and I was standing next to the street.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said to… nobody.
I squinted through the moving silhouettes. I couldn’t see the laundromat, but I spotted the bum again, looking in my direction. He seemed young, maybe in his thirties, which made me uneasy. It meant he hadn’t completely given up yet. If he really was watching me—if he had seen me leave my apartment unattended—I didn’t even want to think about that.

As I crossed the street, his expressionless gaze followed me. I deviated slightly from my path to dou­ble-check. His eyes tracked my every move. I gripped my laundry bag tighter, clenched my teeth. The nerve. Why should I give him my money for doing nothing? Staring at me like I owed him something, as if I was supposed to take care of a grown man. A grown-ass man who wasn’t even family—a total stranger. I stepped closer, his eyes piercing like lasers. I shot my stare back at him, intimidated but unwilling to back down. As I neared the entrance, he began to reach for something under his coat. Then suddenly—

“Hey!” a college bro shouted to his friends. I jerked my head around instinctively, redirecting my icy glare at his dumb ass for startling me.

When I turned back to the door, the bum was gone… then I saw him creeping off around the side of the gas station, drinking some MD. But still, how’d he get over there so fast?

Inside the lonely, lifeless laundromat, flickering lights cast strobing shadows that danced in and out of view. There was the steady hum of electricity. Other than that, it was a sound vacuum, with only muffled laughter and chatter from outdoor partygoers. The air was thick with the scent of bleach and damp laundry, mingling with a foul odor, like a dead rat in an air duct when the heat is on—but worse. Maybe two dead rats.

I felt exposed. I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be here. With so many different types of people outside with unclear motivations, I felt like prey in a spotlight. A group of the drunkards could decide, through ine­briated logic, to target me for some kind of viral mo­ment or worse.

I found a machine in the corner, away from the windows. I loaded clothes and poured detergent. As I picked the first quarter from my hand, I forcibly dis­missed the thought of another broken dryer and told myself this one would work. I plopped it in, heard the clink followed by the satisfying clunk, and saw the digi­tal tracker tick down. I continued until it became automatic.

The next quarter slipped from my fingers when I pressed it against the slot. It bounced onto the floor and vanished into a crack. I heard it land in a room be­low. I reached for another, but found only pocket lint. 

I looked up, envisioning my apartment. There might be a quarter or two in the organizer where I kept my checkbook and extra key fob. I looked across the street at my building, but the massive crowd cram­ming the sidewalks obscured the front door. No. If I went back, I’d stay inside. I’d rather just order new clothes online.

Then I noticed an ominous stairwell in the cor­ner. I stepped over a chain so easily that it clearly was­n’t meant to be a barrier.

As I descended the stairs, the two dead rat and chemical smell grew stronger. I ducked under the first floor and spotted my quarter in the middle of the room. Soft light filtered through a crack, illuminating it like a heavenly spotlight.

“Easy enough,” I said, moving to retrieve the coin. All of that worry for nothing. All in all, a pretty uneventful–

The first sense that came back was hearing. I heard whistling. I had a disoriented feeling, the feeling I get when waking up: nothing known but a familiar blur of unconsciousness and consciousness. I opened my eyes, but everything was still dark.

My body was cold, but my head felt warm, heavy with pressure as if I had been holding my breath. I tried to put my arms down, but they stayed floating above my head. It felt like something was pulling at my legs—the weight of my own body. I real­ized I was hanging upside down from the base­ment ceiling.

Across from me, another man had suffered the same fate. I studied his entire body to gain a better sense of how I looked. He was chained by the ankles to a wooden joist. His eyes were wide and terrified. Tape covered his mouth. I had felt something pressing against my lips. I guess that’s what it was. There were a few spots of blood on the tarp beneath him, but aside from that, he didn’t seem too badly hurt.

I looked above my head—well, below—and saw a few spots of my own blood. Probably from when I was rendered unconscious. Off the tarp was a perfect stack of quarters, surrounded by piles and piles of folded clothes. On top of one stack, I saw my favorite black paisley button-down, perfectly folded. My cube of clothing was colorful, while the others were all simi­lar, only slightly different shades of beige.

Something was behind me. It was alive. I could­n’t turn my head to see, but I didn’t have to. The dark­ness around the other hanging man began to take shape. Contours and dimensions of small bodies ap­peared. They stood three to four feet high and wore white blank masks. There were dozens of them, which meant dozens more at my back.

“Enough,” a cracked voice commanded. “Back to work!”

As the small figures dispersed, I realized by their movements that they were children. Once they were completely swallowed by shadows, I heard chop­ping, cutting, scrubbing, and spraying.

A small, withered old lady approached from the background, sharpening a knife. I quickly re­assessed, noticing the hanging position of my fellow hostage, the tarps, the sounds, the chemical and dead animal smell. I looked at the clothes next to mine. It wasn’t laundry. It was neatly folded layers of dried hu­man flesh. 

Before I could panic, she sliced the other man’s throat in one smooth stroke. I squeezed my eyelids shut, but I still heard draining, skinning, whistling.

Silence. Then footsteps approaching. I tried to calm myself.

In through the nose, out through the mouth. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Maybe it won’t be that bad. I’ve had billions of seconds in my life. This will just be one drop in the bucket. It sounded like it took him about—one, two, three, four, five, six–Oh God! Seven seconds to die!

A sudden whoosh, like air forced from lungs, then a thud.

I opened my eyes. The old woman lay sideways on the tarp. Above her stood the bum, staring at me.

The walk back home wasn’t as dramatic as the walk to the laundromat, even with the flashing lights of cop cars behind me. I didn’t linger for the aftermath; I had no idea what happened to those kids or how many victims were in that basement. I didn’t try to fig­ure out the old lady’s intentions. Instead, I put on my favorite black paisley shirt and answered a few ques­tions. After getting medically cleared, I took my very clean-smelling clothes and left.

I did, however, ask the bum—the homeless man—if he wanted to stay at my apartment. He looked at me like I was trying to hit on him. If he doesn’t get swept away by local hero fame and fortune, I will defi­nitely be giving him something out of each paycheck for the rest of my life. Or at least until the memory of this night is far behind me.

Outside my building, Kim sat waiting on the steps.

“You did it!” she said, standing up and giving me a hug that could’ve been patronizing or sincere. I laughed. I couldn’t tell. I never could with her.

If your sick, demented ass liked THE LAUNDROMAT, get therapy. Then, come back and read SAVE THE CAT!