The Kitchen Sink

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. I’ve been here for a long time. Too long; I struggle to remember how many days it has been. I’m not the only one here. Some came before me, others came after, but only a few have gotten out. Even then, they soon enough returned, and I’ve come to expect that we never will escape. We’re making our rounds, not being set free.

This is an awful place. She knows it, too; she rarely visits except to sentence another prisoner, or tease one of us that she finds temporary use for. That might be what disturbs me the most; she knows this is awful, yet when she sees that this is so, she quickly looks away. 

I envy her for that. That she can look away from us, from this self-inflicted burden, is a privilege. We cannot look away. We can only sit, and rot.

I’ve been here long enough that I stopped kidding myself that there was an end to all this, or a meaning. If there is meaning, anyhow, I don’t much care to know it. What good will it do me? I’ll still be where I am, only uselessly enlightened. And if ignorance is bliss, I mustn’t be ignorant, for I am far from blissful.

I pity the younger fools who remain hopeful and pondering, because I was once like them, and soon they shall be like me. To those who are older and wiser than I, I humble myself in sorrow. Someday I will be like them, and I can only imagine what it will do to me.

There are many awful things about this place. The smell, for one. It is rancid and foul. For a while you’ll retch and retch. You’ll stop eventually, not because it has gotten any better, but because you are tired.

We don’t just smell filthy, we are. We’re filthy when we get here, and it only accumulates over time. Your filth seeps into my filth and has a filthy little baby, and mine into yours and so on and so on. Layer upon layer, I hardly recognize who and what I once was. There is more of it than of me. 

And yet, eventually, you get used to it. It is awful and it is the truth. You come to know the smell and the filth. I wonder if I’d feel unnatural without it, like a teenager who just had their braces removed and can’t stop running their tongue over the smooth surface of their teeth. You get used to it because you have to, there is no other way, no choice in the matter.

That’s another thing I envy, you know. She has a choice, and again and again she makes it: she leaves us here. In my eyes, she painted on our grime herself, with a brush and a pallet and a tilted French beret. 

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. She’ll see it, she’ll have to. Call it wishful thinking, or maybe the filth has seeped into my mind and caused it to rot. She’ll come by, though, and she’ll see. It’s glaring, my filth, and this message I’ve scrawled into it. 

Loretta should go to bed, she knows this. She knew this an hour ago, and the hour before that. Each time she looked at the clock she looked away with guilt, knowing the hour she’d have to arise was coming nearer and dreadfully nearer. Later she’ll say the time slipped away from her, but it hasn’t; she’s let go, but it hasn’t gone anywhere.

She finally turns the television off at 3:48, an hour and forty-two minutes before her alarm is to sound, blaring the fuzzy recording of a Beatles song she comes to hate more each time she hears it. She keeps the television on for background noise, she says, and always falls into its cleverly designed seduction regardless. By some strange phenomenon, an episode of Friends proved substantially more enticing than her neverending vault of work emails. 

Loretta shuts her computer, which she hadn’t been minding much anyway. Both distractions gone, their emanating light no longer disrupting her melatonin levels, she should be off to bed now.

But now she realizes how comfortable she’s become. Her designated spot on the couch cradles her just right, sagging in her shape. The thick blanket she settled under has become her cocoon. She stares into the darkness. It reveals nothing to her, and it is mesmerizing. 

When she does sit up, soreness creeps into her neck, back, and legs. She stretches it away the best she knows how. It only works a little.

She stands up slowly, but caution doesn’t fight off the blood that rushes away from her head and down her body. Now the darkness does reveal something to her: a sky full of stars…

As the galaxy fades away, the stars blinking out just as quickly as they revealed themselves, Loretta reaches for the string of the lamp beside the couch. A warm light washes over the room, and although it is dim it takes a moment for Loretta’s eyes to adjust. When they do, she is staring at the imprint she has left in the couch cushions. She throws the blanket over it so she doesn’t have to look at it anymore. 

She gathers several dirty dishes the coffee table has collected throughout the day. She takes them to the kitchen sink and sees that it is full. She also sees something else.

One of the plates, on top of some and half-hidden by others (dirty in a way that will likely never scrub off) catches her eye. She means to look away, but something on the plate—once it served a terrific lasagna (or was it sublime?)—interests her. 

She comes closer, even though the smell makes her stomach turn. She blinks several times, but cannot blink any sense into what she is seeing. It's as though someone with strikingly tiny handwriting has drawn out a message in the filth!

Loretta considers this silently, then decides it must be a hallucination, and that she really should be going to bed now. She stacks the dishes in her hand over the one she was looking at. She regards the pile with a lump in her stomach, thinking how quickly these things accumulate. Then Loretta looks away quickly, and is off to bed.