Q-tip

It started with a q-tip. 

It sounds stupid now, but I genuinely thought it would be the way to get back at my shitty landlord. Keep dropping used q-tips down the hole and once my lease was up and I was out, it would be their problem. 

She did keep telling me she’d tear the house down the moment I was gone. Something about opportunities for apartments, I guess.

The hole wasn’t big, maybe an inch or two across, but it seemed deep. Probably was a bubble in the concrete that wasn’t caught in construction, I reasoned. It did rest in the corner of my bathroom, and the poorly placed tile wasn’t urging me to give the build team much credit. I tried to shine a flashlight down it once, but the beam faded out quickly, the size of the hole not helping to pull the light in. 

When summer started creeping in, it started to worry me that maybe the q-tips would start to stink, heating up in their little crypt until they sweat out all the ear-wax and dead skin they carried. They didn’t though, and I got a little more bold in what I threw down there. A few summer nosebleeds later and some stubborn curiosity on my part, three wads off blood soaked toilet paper now called the dark hole their home. It probably should have worried me how easily they slipped down the tight tunnel, but I was just stupidly proud that I had somehow done it at all.

Nothing really happened in the following weeks; the hole actually got some attention from my friends, who would put their soda can tabs and cigarette butts down it whenever they visited. 

The actual thing that made feel like I had, maybe just a little bit, messed up, was when I put a 

scab down it. Maybe it was heat, but it looked like the whole floor bent itself to ease the skin’s descent. I had brushed it off, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it wanted more. 

I texted my friends about it, but all that did was give the hole a name: Audrey II. I didn’t find it very funny.

Things progressed, though, and I ended up drunk and bored one night, struck with the intense desire to know how far down it went. I knew I had my old fishing pole and at least one weight in the shed, which wasn’t helping the ‘against’ side of the argument happening in my brain. Once I was back inside with a very poorly tied drop weight on just the first half of the rod, it didn’t take long for me to let it go down the hole. It felt like it was hours of being crouched, the uneven tiling dizzying to look at while the reel just spun away. When it stopped I nearly cheered, and I tied the line where it rested at the top.

It took three rotations of the reel before the weight came back up. It was coated in grime and reeked like a infected wound. I almost threw up, and rushed to the kitchen sink to do so, knowing from experience the bathroom sink would most certainly plug.

The rest of the night was hazy and full of dry heaving, and it was only until the morning that I’d realized I’d just left the weight on the floor. 

I rushed to go clean it up, dreading a new stain or smell that’d make me have to buy a fancy new cleaner just to live with. When I got there though, the line was still in the hole, my messed up knot resting an inch outside the edge. There was no smell, but I didn’t dare pull it back up.

Taking it as a blessing, I had cut the line with my teeth and let the rest join the weight. I moved my little bathroom houseplant over the hole, hoping the heavy pot would cover any smell that may come out. The thing was almost dead anyway, so I didn’t feel too bad depriving it of a little bit of sunlight.

My lease was up in August, but the hole made it feel years away. The contract had back rent if I left early though, which was absolutely something I couldn’t afford. 

I spent less and less time at home, but my plant was growing again. 

After a few weeks I arranged to spend a couple of nights at a friend’s place, under the guise of my pipes being broken, but it was really just that my skin crawled every time I looked at that room. I hoped some time out of the place would soothe my anxieties enough to go in and actually plug the thing.

I told myself I would pick up the sealant on my way home, and just burst in there, move the plant, and drown Audrey II in quick expanding foam. I would pick up masks, too. Something to breathe through in case the smell was overpowering. My mood was lightened when I considered that a smell that bad was a good revenge for the amount of times my landlord had screwed me over. I even made a list of what I needed and picked out the store I would stop by. 

Half-way to my place my head gasket blew. At first I was so preoccupied with calling my car insurance and the fact the repair would cost a good chunk of what I’d saved up to move, that I didn’t realize I wasn’t within walking distance of any stores. I begged the tow truck when he got to me to just stop by somewhere, anywhere, but he gruffly told me he wasn’t allowed to make detours unless I specified it in the original request.

So I sat in the truck’s sticky passenger seat, feeling my skin crawl with every mile closer to home.

He drove off quickly after unloading my car, and I got the feeling he didn’t like being near the place either. It stood there, dusk casting eerie shadows every which way. It made me feel like a kid again, afraid of their own laundry pile without the nightlight.

I stayed out for a few hours, using my phone light to check my car’s engine, trying to distract myself from the house. I even considered sleeping in my car, reasoning that it would be a warm summer night. I changed my mind when I realized somewhere along the line the passenger door would unlock if you pulled hard enough.

The bathroom door was closed, I had made sure of it when I left. I would just go straight to the bedroom and lock it, tuck a towel under it, anything to shut myself out from the rest of the house. It sounded like a good plan, plus, what was I scared of? A gross bathroom? I’d worked a few jobs at fast food places on bathroom duty, it wouldn’t be anything I couldn’t handle. 

I had opened the door and twisted inside like I was ripping off a band-aid, holding my breath and preparing for the worst. I don’t know what I thought the worst would be, but all I got was my dark, and surprisingly cold, living room. It felt empty, and the tension left my body immediately. I took a few deep breaths before locking the door behind me. I shivered, unaccustomed to the cold as the old house never had a good venting system to get rid of the extra heat even deep into the night. 

The walk to my bedroom was uneventful and went miles to ease my anxieties. Once I was adjusted in my sheets I texted my friend to ask for a ride to the store. When I told them I was going to plug the hole, they playfully mourned Audrey II. I had laughed, and everything felt so mundane. It made me feel so stupid, being worried about the hole. I did sleep with the light on though. 

When the time came to actually plug up Audrey II, my friends were with me. We moved my plant, more dead than I remembered it, and shoved the nozzle of the foam dispenser as deep as it could go. We drank that night, everyone but me dramatically mourning the plugging of the hole. I tried to play along, but I think they sensed how just plain relieved I was about it.