Soap Suds and Bloody Palms

The rumble of the washing machine was the only thing that could drown out the noise of my guttural sobs, oh the poetic justice of it. As I took in shuddering breaths, I made myself listen to the hypnotic drone of the second cycle I’d just started. Hours had past since I’d started on my list of chores and yet the breakdown I was currently having had managed to stick around through every one of those tasks. Whoever said that doing chores was cathartic had obviously never done them in such a high-strung situation. My eyes were as drenched in water as my favourite jacket was right now, only my eyes stung with guilt, not sudsy water and bubbles. The room stank of roses and after realising it I laughed at the irony. A thing so beautiful and yet so brutal, a description fit for a rose and right now fit for me also. This analysis of my situation distracted me enough to calm my sobs down to sniffles and short breaths. Right in time too, as a lone patron wandered into the laundromat, my attention brought to this by the pleasant jingle of the bell above the door. I wiped at my damp eyes as discreetly as I could praying that this person craved alone time as much as me. Thankfully something today went my way as the old and fragile looking lady bypassed me completely and hobbled over to a machine far away from me with a bag full of what I could only presume were cat hair covered clothing. The noise of my machine started to dwindle and I realised with alarm that I was about to have a dilemma on my hands. On the one hand I could insert a few silver coins into the machine and set the clothes off on another cycle, but that would look suspicious to any onlookers and I know from experience old ladies are notoriously nosey. On the other hand, and what would be the most natural thing to do in normal circumstances, I could take my clothes out of the machine and place them in the dryer above. However, that wouldn’t do, I couldn’t risk it. So, I thought quick on my feet and as subtly as possible reached for my phone in my pocket. Quickly, as to beat the machine, I went onto my phone settings and set off my own ring tone. Not too good at acting, I turned my back to the old woman and went about the façade of “answering” the call.

“Adrian, hello, what can I do for you today.” Going over to sit on the bench in the middle of the room, I then continued to spend the next half hour on a “business call”, constantly throwing quick glances at the lady hoping she was going to be finished with her laundry before I ran out of things to advise the imaginary Adrian on. Thankfully I managed to pretend my way through the phone call all the way until the little old woman with her laundry in her roller bag had left the laundromat with the same little jingle she entered with.

Quick not the make the same mistake again, I jumped up and rushed back over to the machine, now completely finished and anxiously yanked my small amount of wet washing out of the circular door. I sighed in relief and in irritation as I saw the clothes had come out completely clean. If only I had risked it, embarrassment now washing over me as I realised my past charade was actually pointless. But how was I to know that two washes and a whole lot of vanish would actually do the trick and that opening up the machine while someone was here wouldn’t end with me in a whole lot of suspicious questions. I let out a shaky breath I didn’t know I was holding and shoved the drenched outfit that I had only been wearing a few hours ago into the dryer. Popping in some change I set the dryer on and went back to sit on the cold metal bench. Now that the adrenaline of the last half hour had started to diminish, I was able to think about the day’s events more clearly without the risk of sobbing uncontrollably. This was unfortunate however as I quickly started to spiral in my own head, the situation growing impossibly more dire inside my mind. My eyes shot down to my lap as I felt a sharp sting of pain, a dark red dripped from my palms, my fingernails a bloody mark where I had clenched my fists intensely, wrapped up in the stress of my situation. After running my hands under cold water in the stainless steal sink located in the laundromat’s ironically unsanitary bathroom, I glanced up mistakenly into the cracked bathroom mirror. My reflection was unrecognisable, my eyes sunken into a dark circle of tear stain mascara and tiredness, my nose red and blotchy from the hours I spent snottily sobbing. My hair looked as if I had lost a fight with a big bird that nested inside it when it had actually just been dishevelled by my own hands in fits of stress. Yet underneath all that, when I looked even closer, I still didn’t recognise the girl stood in front of me. And that was because she wasn’t a girl I knew anymore; she wasn’t even the girl I woke up as this morning. A white-hot shiver ran up my spine and I looked away disgusted, guilt now more then ever washing over me like a scolding rain of acid. I forced my way out of the bathroom, my feet trudging heavily as though they were nailed to the linoleum flooring. The dryer had stopped now, and so I made my way over to it and grasped at the handle to pull the door open even as my hands stung in protest from their new markings. The smell of warm and fresh laundry stopped me for a second, and for the first time since it all happened, I felt a wave of calm wash over me. I pulled out clothes one by one to fold them, now in an almost dreamlike state. Each item of clothes I grabbed, I stopped first to bring it up to my nose and take a deep breath of the calming scent. Reaching in to pull out the last thing, my grey cotton roll neck, I go to do the same only to freeze with it held up almost to my face as I spot what I was dreading to find. The calm now washed over by that same acid rain as before as my eyes focus on it. There on the neck of the jumper, were three little dots of blood. And maybe they were small enough that no one but me would ever see it, but as I collapsed to the ground a sob ripping through me like an animalistic scream, I knew that no matter how many times I washed those clothes, even if I get every last dot off of them from the spray that covered them from before, I would never be able to wash away what I had done.