Laundromat

A long week at work and a whole lot of thesis procrastination resulted in several stories tumbling out all at once this weekend. Read Strays and Whodunnit? if you’re so inclined, but this week’s official Odd Prompt challenge was from nother Mike.

“At the coin laundry, you had just put your clothes in the washer and sat down when one of the big dryer doors opened and a voice called out…”

I hate the laundromat. Who doesn’t? Trekking through mushy, dirty snow, lugging oddly-shaped bags and boxes. Hoping you don’t drop anything clean on an ancient linoleum floor, covered in stains decades old. Scrounging for quarters and hoping they aren’t Canadian coins that roll through the return endlessly.

Weird encounters with strangers, hoping they don’t think trading a Canadian coin for a real quarter is an invitation. Wondering why their clothes are being pretreated to remove bloodstains, choosing to believe they must be a doctor or a butcher.

The whole deal makes me understand why people used to avoid taking baths. Being clean is hard, and even I have to admit we have it way easier than the days of washboards and brushing clothes. It’s certainly less stinky with public hygiene being generally accepted. But there’s something about it that brings out my inner, muddy three-year-old self.

Don’t get me wrong. I love having clean clothes. I just hate the process. But it’s not up to me when I do laundry anymore, no matter how I feel about it.

So I got a great big whiff of rancid gym clothes when I finally made it there with my haul, bag nearly bigger than I am, staggering with every step, carefully not dropping or squashing the box in my free hand. I slammed the lid down with a wrinkled nose, sighed, yank it back up, and drop a candy-coated pod inside.

I slumped down on a mustard-yellow plastic chair that must’ve been there since the seventies. It’s cracked, but I trust its resilience. It’s survived this long, and I know I only have five undisturbed minutes to get a catnap in before the dryer door opens.

My spine popped in the lower vertebrae pleasantly, and I smiled as I settled in by the dryer labeled out of order, knowing I’m safe to let my guard down in public. She only texts me to come when she knows I’ll be alone in the laundromat.

Must be nice to foresee situations like that, but she won’t share anything else.

All too soon, the dryer door bangs open, and I open my eyes reluctantly. The voice that emerges from inside the portal is like walking on cracked New Hampshire crushed gravel roads mixed with broken glass and sticky rock candy that melts to your shoes on hot days.

“You have it?” A delicately clawed hand emerges, brown and covered in scattered scales that look like peeling leather.

“Not only do I have it, they were testing a new flavor and giving out samples,” I answer.

I pull out the box, slightly battered despite my best efforts. “Brown butter sea salt caramel popcorn on top of vanilla bean cake and brown butter bourbon frosting. You want the lemon meringue cupcake first, or the new one?”

“New!” The voice cackles, the tackiness pulling at my ears like those price stickers you never quite get off dishes, undertones like sugar about to burn, sharp and crackling. The hand’s imperious, beckoning and eager.

“Tell me what mop corn is,” the voice instructs. It rolls around the room, swirling around my head, and splinters the glass under the out of order sign on her dryer on its way back. I hand over the cupcake.

“Pop corn,” I correct. “It’s from a plant known as corn or maize. You dry it out, and then heat it so it puffs up and is edible. When that happens, it happens fast, so it explodes with a popping noise.”

I hear crunching from inside the dryer. I don’t look, and try not to think about why it’s so loud. That’s part of the deal. Never look, and try not to imagine.

“It is a weapon?” The hand beckons for the lemon meringue, claws dancing impatiently. Light flashes multicolored on the water-stained drop ceiling, too fast for my eyes to follow, so I don’t try.

“No, it’s just a snack food. There are different flavors.” I have to stop myself from pondering how weird it is to be explaining common movie nibbles to a creature from another dimension.

The slurping stops, although the dryer makes it echo for a few more seconds. This time her voice is static and firecrackers, squealing brakes and screaming cows. “I want to try a doughnut next. With sprinkles.”

There’s a pop, painful like a rapid altitude change, and she’s gone. I reach to open the washer, eager for clothes I know will be perfectly clean and dry, unwrinkled and lightly scented with soothing lavender. They’ll be perfect until I wear them.

Then a heaviness weighs into the air. She’s never come back before, and I tense, uncertain.

The roar of an avalanche and a landslide combined echo through the room, the crashing of a seven-car pile up with horns blaring and tires melting rubber onto the road, skidding out of control.

“I also desire more weaponized corn.”