Roger Bundridge is currently a senior at the University of Iowa obtaining his Bachelor's degree in English & Creative Writing. You can find him writing, or reading or watching, transgressive queer body horror anytime of the day. He lives with his partner and his Pitbull, Harley, who supplies soft snores while he writes.
WASHER THOUGHTS
by
Roger Bundridge
No one believed me, and then it happened again. The scratching noise emanated from the silver tube behind the dryer, making me pause. In my pajamas on a quiet Saturday morning, down the hall and down a flight of stairs from my apartment, I stood at the old washer and dryer units while the plastic of my laundry basket dug into my skin, and I listened. The scratching noise came again.
I thought about tearing the reflective tube from the wall, thinking an animal was trapped; however, the scratching wasn’t consistent. It didn’t translate to desperation in my mind, to dying; instead, the sound was inconsistent like a breath of wind was blowing in through a crack in the wall.
I opened the washer closest to the wall and propped the basket on its corner. I’m curious, but not curious enough. Lilith’s Lettuce is waiting for me. Get the chores done. I smiled to myself and dumped the clothes into the mouth of the machine.
I would become a ragdoll in this.
The thought latched onto the folds of my brain, scraping and digging and burying.
I pictured it: my body folded around the pole in the center of the cavernous, two decade old washing machine. My head would be touching my knees, my arms would be stretched and grabbing my toes. The darkness would settle over me like a blanket, and I would probably drown first.
It depends on what load size they pick, I guess.
My mind traveled two different paths at that thought. The first was my actions from last night; my neighbor walked through my front door, drunk, his shirt running up over his hairy belly. He caught me with my pants down around my ankles, the leather of my couch sticking to my ass. We stared at one another for a second, his round eyes unfocused while a bulge in his pants grew to a formidable size. Slowly, I moved from my couch and sank to my knees. I looked up at him, his face full of a red beard, the fingers of his left hand inched to a nipple, his right unbuckling his dark denim. He never shut the door. He wasn’t quiet. He kept me quiet. I listened. I took it all. He shut the door on his way out. I liked the flannel I had to grip onto, striped maroon and mustard yellow, the extra buttons dug into my palm.
The second path was much darker.
I’m an average heighted guy with some thickness in the hips and stomach area; my arms are thin-ish, and I have a head of sleek black long hair that would probably need shaved before I were to step into it.
The load would be heavy.
The water would pour and fill up my ears like a swimming pool, traveling deep into me and caressing my eardrums; a droning beat over and over again until all I could hear were my thoughts and those are what would have put me there in the first place. I would be able to cover them for a second, but when the spinning started, who knew where my arms would end up? I would become an outing for the bubbles, a relaxing cave escape. My head would scratch against the inside and peel itself away like a block of cheese against a grater. My hips would snap. My hand would be capable of grabbing my own ass and penetrating myself up to the loose elbow.
From the unevenness of the inside–my torso pressing the machine off its center–the washer would travel across the floor like a bumbling rocking chair, skirting and squeaking across the cheap tile. The washer, the color of a dirty marshmallow, would leak me along with it. My blood would bubble against the lid until it looked as if it was talking, or screaming. Screaming loud and clear like a mother at her child, a child who simply wanted to see the lemur’s at the zoo, their ringlet tails. A child who didn’t deserve to have their arm bruised in her anger; fingers grip like immortality, her nails biting into themselves over my gooseflesh.
Get in the car. Get it all done. Get over it and shed the tears later.
The noise came from behind me again, but if I moved, I would die. A part of me knew I would. A part of me heard it in the scratching that got louder and louder in my ear, and I see her at my door, scratching the wood of the doorway, inconsistently, raggedly breathing, telling me to do it.
Get it done. Get it done, get it done, now.
“I don’t want to, Mom. I don’t want to. I want to see the lemur’s.”
The ringlets of a lemur’s tail stared up at me from the bottom of the washer, beckoning me to see them.
“Get it done, then. Get it done. Go and see the lemur’s.” The scratching was in my ear now, and I flinched away from it like a bee sting.
I always had an issue with obedience, with complacence. I knew what came from submission: prison. But would she smile if I listened this time? Would she laugh and tell me that for once, I had done something right; afterall, I had found prison in other ways: maybe my neighbor would find me like this and leave new lemur marks on me, more important ones, ones that I could live with and want and be okay from. She didn’t have a say anymore, she wasn’t here. She would never be here, the scratching couldn’t be her, back for me. It wasn’t desperation. The scratching wasn’t a liar.
The ring of quarters vanishing into the bowels of the machine replaced every sound in the world.