Down the Drainpipe

By Rita H. Chen

Her hands trembled as she tightly gripped the edges of the sink, the knuckles of her fingers turning white from the strain.  She retched once, her body convulsing as she tried to coax up what felt like a sharp, sour poison from deep within her stomach.  When nothing came up, she heaved again but it was still dry, too dry, horribly dry.  All she could force out was a harsh, croaking noise that seemed to echo and reverberate throughout her tiny bathroom.

Feeling exhausted and unsatisfied by not being able to throw up the acrid liquid that was currently roiling inside her stomach, she slouched over the sink and stared blankly down the drainpipe.  She couldn’t help but notice that the prongs of the drain’s strainer body had rusted around the edges, the original silver of the metal pieces now browned and crumbly looking.  She realized then that this very sink had been the catalyst of their first meeting.  If her apartment hadn’t been so old, if the drainpipe hadn’t been so clogged, she would have never have called him – she would have never have invited him – into her home.

As if being directed by a being outside her body, her gaze then shifted right as she focused on the shimmery pale pink drop of nail polish that had fallen close to the right-hand curve of the sink basin.  She remembered that polish.  She had splurged on getting a fancy department store brand polish that day, instead of the cheap drugstore brands she usually used.  It was her first date with him so she had wanted everything to be special.

Her eyes then wandered over to the 2 haphazardly-splashed splotches of white paint in the middle of her sink.  The paint was symbolic of the day they had painted the washroom together, both of them wearing dusty overalls and big grins as they celebrated their first month of living together.  The white paint had fallen unnoticed from their paintbrushes and was so similar to the colour of the enamel coating of her sink that most people tended not to notice these marks.  However, these stains never failed to stand out to her.  In the beginning, she always saw these marks as being yellow, like the soft bright sunlight of a warm afternoon.  However, as time wore on and she gradually began to see the darkness in his soul that he tried so desperately to hide, she began to see these splotches as being red, piercing and glaring like red sirens always telling her to, “Get out!  Get out!  Get out! ”

She shuddered then.  She was already too late.  He had ingrained himself physically into her apartment and mentally into her mind.  The nick in the enamel, a few inches to the left of the white paint testified to that.  Unbidden, she ran her fingers over the nick, feeling the rough texture of the cast iron underneath the cheap white enamel coating.  She shivered again as she recalled how he had wrestled away the scissors that she had grabbed from the bathroom cabinet to protect herself.  As the scissors slipped from her hand, the pointy end of the blade had struck the sink, taking off a small chunk of the enamel as it had bounced a short distance to lie uselessly on its side inside the basin.

She felt the roiling sensation in her stomach return and she heaved, her throat feeling dry and abused as she forced air through it. She had to get this out or the acid inside her stomach would eat her alive.  She repeated this action once, twice, until finally her stomach pushed up a little bit of sour liquid into her mouth.  She spat, wiped a thin trail of saliva from her lips, and then pushed herself away from the sink.  Sinking to her knees, she slumped to the floor and leaned her head against the wooden door of the cabinet below her sink with a dull thud.

She just couldn’t bear to look at all those marks again – all the reminders of her happy fairytale gone terribly wrong.  She especially couldn’t stand to see those marks again – the ones that had sprayed out of his chest as she pulled out the scissors she had embedded deep within his flesh.  Even now, she almost couldn’t believe that it had been her who had grabbed the fallen scissors out of the sink and had driven the sharp blades into his body.  She still couldn’t believe it was her who had continued to stab him as he had staggered away in shock and pain.  She was usually so docile…it was almost like an animal had taken over her body, a savage beast that wouldn’t stop until he lay still and unmoving on the tiles of her bathroom floor.

Who was she anymore?  She didn’t know.  The only thing she knew was that they were still there.  Even though she had scrubbed away all the red flecks and had watched the reddened water going down the drainpipe, they were still there.  Even though she had then polished the sink so that it gleamed and sparkled under the fluorescent light of her bathroom, they were still there.  She would never be able to get rid of them.  Like all the stains in the sink that told the story of her failed life with him, she knew that these were marks that would never come out.

END

Rita’s Musings:  In the sink of my current apartment are two white paint blotches from what I assume to be past upkeep efforts.  I looked down at the blotches two nights ago and suddenly thought of Lady Macbeth’s infamous line, “Out, damned spot!”  (Don’t ask me how or why I made this connection, I just did. )  At any rate, I suddenly felt inspired to write this story.

This story is significant to me in that it’s the first time in over 4 years that a story has flowed so quickly and naturally to me.  Due to my lack of practice in writing these last couple of years, it’s been a struggle to create the right imagery using my words.  This story took only 2 days to complete and I am fairly satisfied with how this story has turned out.  While I recognize that I still have a long way to go and much of my writing skills to develop, I finally feel as if this is a step in the right direction.