The ceiling shook from the bass of the neighbors' speakers. The vibrations kept Daniel awake. He sighed and yanked his body out of bed. He looked around the messy room, paper and loose napkins were on the floor. The empty Chinese food container sat on the small nightstand and the many half-drunk water bottles were scattered everywhere. He made direct eye contact with the overflowing bag of dirty clothes.
He shoved his feet until his sneakers and picked up the bag. The bag spilled clothes everywhere so he thought it best to put it in the shopping cart. He grabbed his keys and the small bag full of quarters and headed down the hall. The laundry room was filthy. People left food and clothes lying around.
Daniel walked over to the two big washing machines and quickly shoved his clothes in. Just as he was putting his quarters in, a man wearing nothing but sweatpants and sneakers walked in. He took his clothes out of the washers and put them into the two big dryers.
Daniel sighed again and shook his head.
He hoped the man wouldn't take a long time coming back to take them out because he needed to use them. The smaller dryers didn’t dry anything and it would cost him more money, which he didn’t have.
The man left in a hurry, Daniel added the detergent and fabric softener then pulled up a chair and waited.
Thirty minutes pass and Daniel's clothes are about to stop. He walks over to the door to see if he can see the man coming to remove his clothes from the dryer. Unfortunately, the hallway was empty.
The lights in the laundry room flicker, Daniel gets frustrated.
“Crappy ole building can’t even afford good wiring”
Daniel waits 45 minutes, but no one is in sight. He decides to remove them himself. After all, there is a rule about leaving clothes unattended, written on the signs on the walls. He puts his clothes in and puts them on high heat. As soon as he pushes the button the man arrives. He walks in and immediately notices his clothes on the nearby table. He balls up his fist.
“Nobody asked you to touch my clothes!”
“I needed to use the machine”
“You could’ve waited”
“I waited forty-five minutes for you”
The man walks over to Daniel aggressively.
“Look I don’t want any problems” Daniel takes two steps back.
“Too bad”
The man swings and punches Daniel in the face. Daniel falls back and his head hits the top dryer. He tried to block the hits but the man is extremely strong. He continues to punch Daniel everywhere. After about five minutes, he stops and spits on Daniel.
“Don’t touch my shit again”
Daniel takes in a bunch of rapid breaths. He stands up, hunched over; his head is pounding. He notices a huge piece of glass sitting on top of one of the washers and grabs it. His teeth clench and the veins in his face appear as he charges straight at the man holding this glass piece with both hands.
He pushes the glass into the man’s neck from behind. The man falls over, frantically trying to cover the wound, he gargles on his blood, Daniel pushes it further. It doesn’t go through because the man’s neck was so thick, Daniel used all his strength to push the glass all the way through for a clean cut. The man’s head falls over while the rest of his body slightly twitches. Daniel picks up his head and throws it in a washing machine. He checks the man’s pockets for quarters and turns the machine on. The head spins around and around and water starts to surround it. Daniel looks down at his shirt and sees blood.
“Great, now I need to wash this shirt too”
The laundry door opens and another man walks in and sees the headless body lying on the floor. He freezes, Daniel sees the man and realizes it’s his noisy neighbor from upstairs. The neighbor stares at Daniel in shock. Daniel smiles at him.
“You’re next”
The neighbor drops his small basket of clothes.
“You should run”
The neighbor takes off running, screaming frantically down the hall for something to help him. He bangs on every door asking for help as Daniel casually walks behind him.
“HELP SOMEBODY PLEASE!”
The neighbors all ignore him, they are used to having people yelling in the halls due to the type of people that live there.
“PLEASE SOMEBODY HELP!”
He pushed through the halfway open staircase door and began running up the stairs. Conveniently somebody had a crowbar propping open the door. Daniel picked it up. He started chasing the man smiling menacingly at him. The man struggled to open the staircase door to the second floor due to his fear which was messing with his intelligence. He kept trying to push open the door that had always been a pull. With Daniel just a few steps to him, he screamed to the top of his lungs and swung open the door. Running for his life to the end of the hall, banging on the door, pleading for his girlfriend to help him.
“BLAIR! OPEN THE GODDAMN DOOR!”
Unfortunately for him, Blair couldn’t hear him over the music he loved the play all day and all night.
“BLAIR!”
Daniel started to drag the crowbar on the ground slowly walking his way down the dimly lit hall. The lights flicker and then a couple shut off. The man cowers in the corner so scared to even scream. He tries to talk to Daniel.
“Listen man, how much do you want? I’ll give you whatever you want just relax.”
Daniel laughs.
“What’s your name?”
“It’s… It’s Bryce”
Daniel nodded.
“Okay soooooo we’re cool now? Or?”
“Oh, we will be!”
Daniel cocked back the crowbar as if he were about to hit a home run and swung. He kept bashing Bryce’s head, until he was covered in his blood and his face was almost unrecognizable. He threw the crowbar down.
“All I wanted was some peace and quiet Bryce”
Daniel wiped his face and Bryce’s door opened. A woman stood there blank face and frozen in place.
“You must be Blair”
Blair nodded.
“Right. I should be mad at you but you don’t live here do you?”
Blair shook her head no.
“Alright Blair, you can call the police now but just know they’re not coming to this part of town.”
Blair fainted.
“Welp”
Daniel slowly took his time downstairs back to the laundry where his clothes and the head had come to a stop.
“Time to dry”
He put his clothes in the big dryer and the head in the small dryer. He watched the man spin around and around until his eyeballs liquified and blood ran out of his nose.
“I was hoping you would explode. How disappointing… cheap machines.”
