Washing of the Waters
By Marion Pitman
Tom went to the launderette after work. He’d become embarrassed about letting his mother wash his underwear. He watched his pants and socks and t-shirts and jeans revolving in froth; his eyes wandered to the wash in the next machine – would it be frilly knickers or children’s pyjamas?
It was red. He couldn’t see anything except redness, with vague cloth shapes in it. Someone must be dyeing something. You weren’t supposed to do that – there were notices.
Wishing he’d remembered to bring his iPod, he resorted to thumbing through an Argos catalogue someone had left on the bench. He looked up when a woman came in: youngish, very pale. She went to the next-door machine, which had stopped, opened the door and took out a shirt. It wasn’t dyed. It was – still – badly blood-stained. She shook her head, and turned and looked at Tom.
His vision filled with darkness and roaring waters; his heart was a cold weight inside him, pressing on his lungs; then he was gasping for breath, and the launderette was empty, and his washing had stopped.
***
“Thomas! There’s pork chops for your tea.”
“Mum, I told you, I’m not in for tea. I’m going round Alison’s. We’re going to the pictures.”
“Oh. Oh, I see.” The words would’ve frozen a chicken.
***
And Alison’s Mum–
“He’s shiftless and gormless. What’s wrong with Trevor? He’s got A-levels, he’s going into computers.”
***
They missed the start of the six twenty showing, so they walked by the canal. There was a pigeon sitting on a bollard.
“That reminds me of my Mum.”
“Don’t be soft. Your Mum’s not got feathers.”
“Soft yourself. I mean the way it looks at me.”
“Oh. Yours too.”
The pigeon brooded. In its little bird mind it soared above the town, with the eagles, that are the souls of airmen who flew into the sides of mountains or crashed in flames.
“…she thinks he’s going to be Bill Gates or something.”
“Uh. Mine doesn’t want me to go out at all. Wants me to sit in front of the telly all night.”
“I had this really gruesome dream last night. I was in this room full of animals, the smell was just gross, and they were all grunting and that, and then I heard you, calling me, and I tried to answer, only I couldn’t, and then when I got my mouth open all this really gross stuff sloshed into it, and it was blood.”
“Oh, ugh. Then what happened?”
“Well, I started choking, and I woke up.”
***
Two jealous hearts and their subservient minds wove a dark entangled web above the town. It stirred the murky water of the canal, to roil and heave, suck and swirl. Cloud straggled across the moon. Beneath the turbid quotidian ocean, the kraken sleeps with one eye open.
***
“That wind’s cold. Let’s go and get a coffee.”
“All right. What’s that?”
“What?”
“Who’s that woman? She’s looking at you; she’s shaking something–“
“Where? – Bugger.”
“What?”
“My cap’s blown in the canal. Hang on–“
“Oh, leave it.”
“No, hang on; I can get it if I just–“
“Leave it, Tom. That woman – where’s she gone? – I don’t like the look of her – oh leave it, for God’s sake – please–“
The darkness wound about him like convolvulus, like brambles; his breath came short. He leaned out over the oily water; his foot slipped, and his arm and shoulder slipped under; the water was freezing; he gasped and then clamped his mouth shut as the water came up to his face. Alison screamed. She had grabbed his other hand just before he slipped, but lost her grip; the water swirled up; he was falling, he grabbed for the bank as his legs went under; and then his feet met something solid.
The water sucked at him but Alison had got hold of his hand again, and his head was out of the water. His feet rested on something that rocked, likely a supermarket trolley.
With Alison’s help he struggled on to the bank, gasping, on his hands and knees. Once he was out, she was angry.
“You are an idiot. Just because of a bloody cap. You might have drowned.”
He took a few minutes to get his breath back. She was still glaring.
He stood up, looked at her eyes. He wanted to say, “I didn’t mean to fall in. It was an accident. Don’t be like that,” but her eyes unnerved him. Instead he said, “I’ll have to go home. They won’t let me in the pictures like this.”
Alison drew in her breath, as if to shout, then shut her mouth tightly, and flounced off. Tom stood and watched her go.
Despite malevolence thwarted, possession threatened, the darkness above the town wore a small double smirk of satisfaction.
© Marion Pitman, 2010. Used with permission
The Alchemy Press 