{"id":8987,"date":"2025-04-30T23:58:22","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T05:58:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=8987"},"modified":"2025-04-30T23:58:22","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T05:58:22","slug":"hell-is-other-peoples-laundry","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=8987","title":{"rendered":"Hell Is Other People\u2019s Laundry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Alyssa Beatty<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farah watched the washer spin. Once vibrant colors, muted by water and soap, twined together and twisted apart: a hypnotic soggy kaleidoscope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cClothes\u2019ll get clean without supervision. Don\u2019t lollygag,\u201d Sadie barked from just behind her. Farah jumped. Sadie was surprisingly stealthy for a woman of her heft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farah inhaled a blast of menthol. Sadie kept an endless stock of half-crushed packs of Parliament Greens stashed around the laundromat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m waiting to transfer it over to the dryer,\u201d Farah lied. The machine had five minutes on it; so, eight in laundry time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sadie grunted and shuffled behind the counter to count change, her favorite pastime. She was a mystery to Farah. Who used words like lollygag without irony? And she was always here. No matter when Farah came in, Sadie was behind the counter, smoking and counting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She also claimed to be psychic. Farah saw no evidence of this. Sadie said she refrained from reading Farah\u2019s mind out of courtesy, a statement so blatantly out of character it was clearly a lie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, she did have an uncanny ability to predict the cost of every load of laundry dropped off, to the cent, without looking at the scale. Although that might just be experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farah hated working here. The heat, the noise. The smells. Sure, there was a voyeuristic satisfaction in handling other people\u2019s dirty clothes. When she got bored, which was almost always, Farah extrapolated stories from the stains. Was that ketchup or blood splattered on the cream blouse? She could see the petite blonde with the razor-sharp bob committing murder. To be fair, she could see any woman going full murderess. Her divorce had taught her that if you hadn\u2019t felt the urge to kill, it just meant you hadn\u2019t met the right person yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Farah took this job, she thought it would be a good way to meet people in the neighborhood. Six months working here, and Farah still didn\u2019t know anyone. She was just a thing people shoved their dirty clothes at. A washing machine with a face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat do you do on your time off?\u201d Farah asked, unloading a bag full of children\u2019s underwear printed with grinning ducks into the washer. Why were there so many? And oh god, what was that smell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d Sadie said, past the cigarette dangling precariously from her lip, an ability Farah secretly admired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor fun? What do you do?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sadie glared at her through mint-scented smoke. \u201cThis.\u201d She gestured to the rows of stacked quarters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Okayyyy. Farah slotted coins into the machine, holding her breath. The smell would follow her home, she knew it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do I do for fun?<\/em> she thought. Her mind went blank. She couldn\u2019t picture herself outside of this room. For the life of her, she couldn\u2019t remember her last day off, either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCan I have tomorrow off?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sadie squinted at her. \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d These conversational cul-de-sacs were not uncommon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCan I not come to work tomorrow, so I can do something else instead?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sadie squeezed her eyes shut. \u201cYou forgot again. Why do they always send me idiots?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHey.\u201d Even for Sadie, that was harsh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCome here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farah wove between towering stacks of laundry bags to reach the counter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m only doing this one more time. Then you\u2019re on your own. No skin off my teeth.\u201d Sadie pressed a yellowed fingertip to Farah\u2019s forehead. \u201cClose your eyes. It don\u2019t work otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farah closed her eyes. A movie reel played against the dark of her eyelids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There she was, in her old house, folding laundry. Her most hated household task. She\u2019d washed the shower curtain liner with bleach and Borax\u2014it was sparkling white again, all that nasty orange mold washed away\u2014and she knew Marvin wouldn\u2019t notice. He never noticed, and it drove her insane. She could kill him. Honestly, she could. She heard him slamming the front door behind him; he always <\/em>slammed it no matter how many times she asked him not to, and that drove her insane, too. She picked up the knife she used to open the Borax and went to meet him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farah opened her eyes. \u201cOh my god. I murdered my husband, didn\u2019t I?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYep. Thirty-two stabs. Impressive. Overkill, literally, but impressive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut\u2026then I moved here. I got a new apartment, and this job. I must have served my time and blocked it all out. Right?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sadie snorted. \u201cSure. You moved <\/em>here. Look out the window, dimwit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was nothing. Just a white void.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor the eighty-sixth\u2014no, wait\u2014eighty-seventh<\/em> time, welcome to the afterlife. Hell sweet hell. You\u2019ve been sentenced to an eternity of punishment designed just for you. Aren\u2019t you a lucky duck?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farah remembered it all, then. Her trial. The humiliation, neighbors whispering in the courtroom. Hastily knotted sheets tied to the bunk in her cell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut, the people who come in\u2026the laundry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll for you, sweetums.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It occurred to Farah that perhaps Sadie was a demon. That would explain her general air of contentment. \u201cWhat did you do to end up here?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSwindled old ladies out of their life savings. They all wanted to talk to their dearly departed husbands. I could do it, mind you. I really am psychic. But all the men did was bellyache about being dead. So, I told their widows pretty lies and took all their money. Died in my sleep and woke up with this peach of a job and all the Parliaments I can smoke. Afterlife is subjective, you ask me. This is my heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farah\u2019s knees buckled. She sank into an uncomfortable-by-design plastic chair. It made an awful kind of sense, really. Hadn\u2019t she complained to Marvin a million times\u2014not that he ever noticed\u2014that doing laundry was her exact idea of hell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

ALYSSA BEATTY<\/strong>\u00a0lives and writes in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has appeared in\u00a0Penumbric Speculative Fiction, Luna Station Quarterly<\/em>, and\u00a0Spread: Tales of Deadly Flora<\/em>. Find her at alyssabeattywrites.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alyssa Beatty Farah watched the washer spin. Once vibrant colors, muted by water and soap, twined together and twisted apart: a hypnotic soggy kaleidoscope. \u201cClothes\u2019ll get clean without supervision. Don\u2019t lollygag,\u201d Sadie barked from just behind her. Farah jumped. Sadie … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":8984,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-8987","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P15duy-2kX","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8987"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8995,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8987\/revisions\/8995"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}