Rain spatters on the windows as Elizabeth tries to concentrate on the book in her hands. It’s a pulpy, forgettable book, pages bowed and spine cracked and with a front cover so abstract it could mean anything or nothing at all. Like one of those Rorschach tests where one person sees a butterfly and another sees a knife, and their answers were supposed to give you some kind of insight into their mind. She wonders what kind of answer she would give tonight if someone pressed her to give one, and what that answer would reveal about her.
Her next thought is that she doesn’t want to know.
She doesn’t remember where she bought the book, doesn’t even remember picking it up as she left the house tonight. But she’s glad she’s got it with her now to keep her distracted in the empty night laundrette while she waits for the wash cycle to finish. The book is the only thing she has to keep her occupied. In the rush to get out of the apartment, she left her phone behind, and she hadn’t the nerve to go back. Not after what she’d done. So she’d kept walking, her little bundle of clothes to be washed all wrapped up in a black bin bag and hugged tightly to her chest. She could smell the coppery scent of blood through the plastic.
Again, she tries to force her mind back to the book. It keeps wanting to return to the reason she was on the streets at two in the morning in the cold and the rain, the reason she had desperately needed to leave the apartment—
(don’t.)
With an effort, she forces herself to read instead. The plot is simple, but holding it in her mind tonight is like a dream where she’s trying to get to someone, but they kept slipping around corners and getting lost in the crowd. Every time she finally catches up to them, they’re suddenly far away again, disappearing around another corner.
For just a moment, things come together, and she manages to make sense of the words a little. It’s a detective novel and the main character is looking for someone. Or maybe a clue. Someone’s been murdered, and he’s on the case.
Far too late, she realises this was probably not the novel she should’ve brought with her tonight. Her stomach heaves as sounds and images flash across her mind: a breaking plate; a chair tipped over and fallen to the floor; a scream, then sudden silence.
She knows she’s going to vomit, and her legs take her outside without conscious thought. The contents of her stomach hit the ground with a splat that is nearly drowned out by the rain, which has become heavier in the time she’s been inside the laundrette. She heaves a few more times, stomach clenching until there’s nothing left inside of her to come out, and all that drips from her mouth is a stringy bit of saliva and mucus.
She stands and closes her eyes, unsure if that’s the end of it. A second later, she opens them again because all she saw was the wrecked apartment and the shapeless lump she’d left lying on the floor. The rain is cool on her hot face, and she looks up into it, not caring for the moment that she’s going to be soaked and uncomfortable later. All that matters is how refreshing it feels as each droplet hits her face. She can still taste the sourness of bile in her mouth but this helps to suppress that a little.
When she feels somewhat steady again, she turns back and, ignoring the pile of vomit that is already being washed away by the storm, reenters the laundrette. She’s lucky there’s no one here. Often, back when she would pass by the place when she was returning home late from a shift or the library, she would see at least two or three people here, waiting like she now was for the laundry to be done. Sometimes they would be chatting easily with each other, maybe a laugh or two as someone told a joke.
Tonight it’s empty save for her and the thoughts of what she’s done.
She doesn’t know what she’s going to do when she’s finished here. Returning to her apartment seems out of the question, but where else is she going to go? She can’t go to her parents’, and finding a new place will take weeks, if she’s even lucky enough to find something, the market being what it is right now. One of her friends, earning very good money in a very secure job, was rejected for a tiny shitbox of an apartment because someone else equally desperate had offered the landlord an extra $500 per week. Elizabeth doesn’t have that kind of money anymore, not since Emma moved in, and so she’d probably end up living in her car long before she found a new place.
It’s inevitable, she knows, that she’s going to have to go back and face what awaits her in the dark apartment. The awful truth sprawled on the floor, a charnel tableau of her own making.
But, for now, she can just sit and wait for her laundry to be done. Lose herself in the quiet of this place and forget everything for just a moment. All that exists right now, she tells herself, is the dim and faintly flicking fluorescent lights on the ceiling and the gurgling of the machine as it washes her clothes.
(washes the blood from her clothes.)
And so her mind inevitably returns to what she has done, like a tongue probing a sore tooth over and over. She can’t erase the memories that keep flashing across her mind: Emma storming through the apartment in yet another rage, more terrible than it has ever been before; Emma’s hands around her neck; the knife in Elizabeth’s hand, her heart pounding in her ears and the edges of her vision blurring in her fear; a crimson pool on the floor; Emma’s eyes wide in shock.
She had seen the way Emma’s heart had kept pumping, valiantly trying to keep her alive but only accelerating her death as it pushed more and more blood out through the open wound. She remembers Emma’s final breath, a dry shuffling like someone flicking through the pages of a book.
She drops the book as if it has burned her. She looks down and sees her hands are shaking. The memory of scrubbing the blood from them before she left the apartment comes to her, just for a moment, and then it is gone again. She wonders if the police will find traces of Emma in the creases of her skin and beneath the nails, and then tries not to think of that.
Instead, she closes her eyes again.
The bell above the door rings as someone steps through, the only other customer this place has seen tonight. The sound of the rain briefly rises until the door closes again, and the subdued ambience of the night laundrette settles over her once more.
It’s peaceful here. For a brief moment, she imagines her life as the owner of this place. She wouldn’t leave it empty like tonight. No, she would always be here, standing behind the counter and chatting with the many characters that came in. A different book in her hand every night, for the times when things got too quiet, or the customers weren’t up for conversation. A coffee from the night café down the street sitting beside her on the counter. A simpler life than the one she’s been leading up until now.
Something at the edge of her consciousness niggles at her. An unsettling feeling growing in her stomach. She opens her eyes, sure she is about to see something terrible. Instead, she sees the laundrette, flickering lights and low hum of the sole machine as it cleans her clothes.
It takes her a moment to realise what is wrong.
She hasn’t heard any sound from the person who entered. No shuffling steps. No banging of a laundry basket on the counter or metallic thunk of the washing machine as it is opened, filled, and closed. No clinking of coins in the slot to start a wash cycle.
She looks to her left.
It’s standing there, staring at Elizabeth. Rainwater drips from its body, falling to the floor, mixing with the blood from its neck to become a pinkish pool on the faded linoleum. It tilts its head like a confused dog.
‘Emma?’ she whispers, barely able to speak.
It stumbles towards her, the movements jagged and imprecise like it isn’t Emma at all, but something wearing her skin. There is an inhuman rictus carved across its face. When it reaches her it places a cold hand on her shoulder, the wetness of it seeping through her shirt like icy tendrils.
‘Darling,’ it says, as its grip becomes a vice.
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