"Sink" - Monster Fiction

by Luke Ramer

After dropping out of college in my sophomore year, I moved in with Tom, Eddie, and Eddie's girlfriend Clarissa. A bunch of misfits, but fun misfits. They lived in a huge off-white farmhouse with busted shutters and overgrown grass with a sprawling backyard next to the Lehigh River. Lots of space, cheap rent. The place was like a frat house, only no one went to college. They had another roommate who had recently been arrested for selling LSD, so they offered me the open bedroom, and I snatched it up and moved out of my parents’ house for the first time. I couldn’t wait to live the good life. Free from the pressure of my parents. It was time to be an adult.

I moved in just as Spring gave way to Summer. In the backyard, I could enjoy the shade under the tall Hemlock trees, listening to the river rush by. I didn’t have much stuff besides a bed, a dresser, and my grandfather’s old recliner, which he had died in, so I refused to throw the chair away, no matter how haggard it had become. My second-floor room was decent and spacious, with a few burn holes in the red carpet, and it reeked of weed smoke and incense from the previous tenant. But I spent most of my time downstairs in the open living room and kitchen. We had a wide oak dining table in the kitchen that we could all sit around and play cards, drink, and smoke. Any time of day, you could find a good conversation and some bullshit.

We shared food, drinks, and drugs, and there were no cares in the world—a permanent haze. It was a nice change from the oppressive atmosphere back at my parents’ house, where I was expected to help wash the dishes, take out the trash, and clean the house. Bunch of bullshit. Now that I was out in the real world, I didn’t have to worry about all that.

I enjoyed sitting on the front porch on the tattered couch at night under the flickering yellow light bulb, covered in cobwebs, smoking joints with Eddie. He used to be a professional golf instructor but had recently lost his job. No one really knew why he got fired, but we assumed he got caught getting high or drunk on the job. Now all he did was sit around the house, or out back at the fire pit, drinking and chain-smoking joints. He always wore a faded Titleist baseball hat to hide his thinning orange hair. He was a great dude. We’d bullshit easily and carefree for hours.

Tom was the outdoorsman with a thick mustache who always wore flannel. He made huge bonfires in the backyard where we could burn entire wooden pallets. I loved that backyard—high at night, passing joints around the crackling fire, the towering canopy of trees, with the soundtrack of crickets and the Lehigh River rushing behind us. Tom prided himself on being a magic mushroom connoisseur, and many nights we’d sit by the fire and zone out. He was the only person I could hang out with and just enjoy the silence.

I liked sitting up on the front balcony with Clarissa late at night, overlooking the street in front of the house. We watched headlights flash by all night while we drank wine and talked about life and all the gossip of the house. Sometimes she slid her chair a little closer to mine, twirling her blonde hair between her drunk fingers. I fought my instincts and played it off as she smiled and laughed. Life was good.

I loved my living situation so much that I started mowing the grass in the backyard just so we could have a nice fire pit without the itchy, overgrown grass. I went out and bought some spray cleaner, laundry detergent, and a gallon bottle of Blue’s Best Dish Soap. I spent a whole weekend cleaning the house so it looked respectable. I felt respectable. Chores were more rewarding when I took them on voluntarily.  

On the 4^th of July, we threw a blowout party. Lots of our friends, kids I hadn’t seen in ages, a bunch of people I didn’t even recognize. But I effortlessly got along with everyone, especially when I was a little tipsy. It was the first big party since I had moved in. We had beer pong on the oak kitchen table, keg-stands out back next to the raging bonfire, loud

music everywhere, and Tom cooked up a feast on the grill—hot dogs, hamburgers, ribs, and chicken legs. The weed and beer were flowing, and probably other drugs I wasn’t aware of, and we pigged out and partied into the night as the river roared and the bonfire flames reached for the sky as we celebrated our independence.

I woke up the next morning beside the smoldering fire pit. I sat up, and there was shit everywhere. Garbage, overturned lawn chairs, empty beer cans, cigarette butts, and someone had thrown our ratty outdoor couch from the front porch into the bonfire—only its scarred metal frame remained.

I stood up, wobbly and soaked in morning dew, braving the glare of the wicked sun, and stumbled into the house to the kitchen. There were dishes everywhere. We had forgotten to buy paper plates and disposable utensils, so everyone had used our dishware. It wasn’t my turn to do the dishes, but I couldn’t just leave the house in this condition. I sighed and gathered a bunch of garbage and dropped piles of dishware into the sink as everyone else slept. Random guests woke up and slipped out of the house, groaning and slobbering as I used the Blue’s Best Dish Soap to wash the dishes with a spike of hangover pain in my forehead. It took over an hour. When I was finally done, I dried my hands on the dirty dish towel and looked around. There were still a few limp bodies strewn across the couch and floor. The place was still a wreck, but I had done my part. I went upstairs, locked my bedroom door, and crashed into my bed.

I woke up and came downstairs late in the afternoon. Eddie, Clarissa, Tom, and a few people lingering from the night before sat around the oak kitchen table playing poker. Cigarette and weed smoke choked the entire kitchen. The house was still a mess. No one had picked up a thing. The party had just continued without cleanup. I spoke up, but Tom raised a fat cigar, rubbed his mustache, let out a plume of smoke, and said, “Come on, dude, don’t be a buzz kill, join the game.”

I looked around and sighed, said fuck it, and sat down at the table. I took a joint and a beer from Clarissa, who smiled at me, and I got started on feeling good.

By nightfall, the house was packed with people again, the bonfire blazing, the grill cooking, but tonight Eddie was just warming up leftovers from the previous party, the hot dogs and burgers that had been lying around on trays all day long. I refrained from eating any of that food. I hid in my bedroom, eating Slim Jims and Doritos and drinking Mountain Dew that I had stashed in my closet. I could hear the pulse of bass from the stereo downstairs, the shouting, raucous crashing of glass. Screaming, louder music, sounds of people vomiting in the hallway outside my locked door. I couldn’t bring myself to leave my room, so I peed out the second-story window onto the grass below.

Early the next morning, I cracked my bedroom door and crept into the hallway. The carpet was slopped with purple and black vomit. The walls streaked with dirty fingerprints. I went down into the kitchen, and it was worse than before. Strangers sleeping on the linoleum. Dishes everywhere, empty cans and bottles, cigarette butts, a broken ashtray with ashes everywhere, empty chip bags, and empty ice cream cartons. The reek of garbage hung heavy in the air. I sighed and collected all the dishes and piled them into the sink, again. I pushed all the garbage I could into the kitchen’s rubber receptacle until it bulged. I stood there and thought, fuck this. I went upstairs, took a shower, and left for the day. Hoping someone else would clean up the mess this time.

But I came back later that night, Sunday night, and my roommates and guests were watching football, the house still a disaster, no one had lifted a finger. I went straight to my room even though Tom called out, “Hey, dude…dude?”

Every morning, I came down hoping for a different result, but I guess that’s the definition of insanity. The house only got worse. The sink overflowed onto the counters now. There were no clean pots or pans or dishware in the cabinets anymore, so everyone just ate snacks or delivery food with their hands. The trash can disappeared under the mountain of garbage, which had overtaken it. People started dropping trash into the sink. Roaches began colonizing in the corners of the kitchen.

But I refused to clean again. I had to take a stand; I refused to fall into the routine of being the housemaid. But the stench grew unbearable. I noticed flies hovering over the sink and garbage like storm clouds. I opened the microwave to reheat some pizza, and a mouse ran out, so I just ate my slices cold from then on.

People filed in like usual, cards and smoke and cookouts. The same thing all summer as the heat got more and more oppressive. I looked in the sink and saw thick white mold sprouting. It looked as if the plates, forks, and glasses were starting to fuse together. Still, I refused to face it. Not my problem.

By the next weekend, roaches and mice were openly strolling around the house. Our tiny new roommates.

Another party. A real rager. I didn’t even recognize half the people shuffling in and out of the house at this point, smoking blunts and drinking forties, and now people were taking ecstasy. On the living room couch, a guy wearing nothing but a leather jacket and a yellow bandana screwed a naked, bony girl who sniffed up lines in between her moans, while everyone else in the room slouched around, smoking joints and cigarettes, watching with varying degrees of interest.

I walked outside, took a deep breath, and lit a joint, listening to the river, wondering if I could manage to move out of this house. I even considered moving back in with my parents as I heard a commotion from inside. A scream. A crash. More screams. I nubbed out my joint on a tree and ran inside the house. I heard metal clanking, dishes screeching together like forks across a plate, the rustling of plastic. '70s rock blasted from the stereo in the living room, echoing around the house. I walked into the kitchen and saw Clarissa, well, half of her, writhing on the floor, her guts like raw sausages wiggling in a pool of rotten ketchup.

Screaming people ran everywhere. I looked toward the sink, and I saw it. Almost as tall as me. A plate for a head, cups and drinking glasses meshed together for a spine, with flexible arms of garbage that twisted and twined together down to its bowl hands with forks and knives for fingers. Blood dripped from its blades. As it moved, I could hear the grinding of dishware, like the Devil’s nails scraping along a chalkboard from Hell. Thick, fuzzy white mold held the pieces of the Dish Monster together like glue. It moved slowly but steadily as the hippy in nothing but a leather jacket and bandana walked into the kitchen, his stone-cold hard-on pointing towards the ceiling as he spotted the Dish Monster.

“What the f—”

The Dish Monster swung its arm through the air, and its pizza-cutter middle finger sliced the hippy’s hard-on clean off. The fleshy member hit the kitchen floor with a thud. Leather Jacket Hippy began to scream, but the Dish Monster jammed its tablespoon-thumb into his throat. Leather Jacket Hippy crashed onto the oak dining table, the spray of his jugular ruining the whole deck of playing cards.

Drunk people clawed over each other trying to flee the house, and the Dish Monster shoved its elbow—a jagged shard of broken ceramic—into a girl’s back, tearing off her halter top along with her tattooed flesh, slashing up and down, revealing her vertebrae before she crunched to the floor.

Eddie came out of nowhere with a golf club and swung, shattering part of the Dish Monster’s face. The creature stopped for a moment, took notice of its broken dish of a face. The Dish Monster let out something like a growl as it stepped forward and shoved its broken forehead through Eddie’s eyes and out of the back of his skull with a loud POP that sprayed blood and brain across the cabinets. A terrified rat scurried across the counter, covered in the yellow pus that used to be Eddie’s eyeball. I thought about running for my life, but it was time to take care of this problem once and for all. It was time to take responsibility. Time to be an adult.

I ran to the sink and grabbed the gallon bottle of Blue’s Best Dish Soap. The Dish Monster spotted me and started scraping across the kitchen floor, dragging entrails with its cookie tray right foot. I ran out of the kitchen—urging the monster to follow—through the back door, and into the backyard. The bonfire still flashed in the night, but the sun threatened to peak over the horizon at any moment. I could hear the river rushing nearby, along with a chorus of deafening crickets.

Tom sat next to the fire, high as fuck on mushrooms, along with some teenager in skinny jeans named Adam. I tried to explain to them what was happening, but it was useless. Tom just kept saying, “Huh, dude? What?”

Adam started to giggle as he adjusted his oversize glasses.  

The Dish Monster stepped outside, spreading its reek across the night, like a fermented, demented skunk. Tom and Adam saw it. They started laughing and freaking out; they thought it was the coolest thing ever.

“Bro, what in the Hell is that?” Adam howled, eyes wide, a joint dangling from his lips. Laughter bellowed from his belly as the Dish Monster approached the fire pit. The creature reached down and plucked the joint out of Adam’s mouth and tried to take a puff, but the creature had no mouth on its plate head. In frustration, the Dish Monster lifted Adam by the balls with its steak knife and fork fingers. Adam’s eyes shot open as the blades ruptured his testicles and intestines, his howls of agony echoing across the early dawn as his bloody bowels sprayed into the dirt below. The Dish Monster threw Adam ten feet into the air, and he landed in the bonfire, right on the charred metal frame of the old couch. His screams waned as he crackled and eventually went silent as he faded into a well-done piece of human BBQ.

“Dude…” Tom stood, half in shock, half in wonder, tugging on his mustache, trying to process what he was seeing through his hallucinogenic state.

I ran down the grass bank towards the Lehigh River, calling out to the Dish Monster, luring him away from Tom, who didn’t stand a chance of surviving. The Dish Monster turned its broken plate face and started stumbling after me. I squirted Blue’s Best Dish Soap all over the grass. The Dish Monster got closer as I stepped into the water and waded backward through the river, the water soaking up to my waist. The Dish Monster’s salad-bowl left foot slipped on the slick, soapy grass, and the creature fell onto its back. It clamored and clanked, trying to get to its feet as it scrambled down the grassy embankment into the river.

The Dish Monster stood up in the rushing water as I got to the bank on the other side. The Dish Monster tried to step forward, but the mixture of soap and running water began to loosen its legs. I unloaded the entire bottle of Blue’s Best all over the foul beast, then chucked the empty plastic bottle at the creature’s broken dish face. The Dish Monster let out something like a howl and wriggled as the soap bubbled up on its ceramic and garbage flesh. The river made it hard for the abomination to balance, and it rocked side to side before falling into the water up to its neck. I saw the mold washing away. The plates began separating from the garbage, the forks from the knives, the coffee mugs from the serving trays. The monster crumbled into pieces.

Finally, all the dishes were clean as they floated off down the river.

I collapsed onto the riverbank and lay there for several minutes, looking up at the sky. Dawn had broken, and the deep pink sun splashed over the tree line. The morning birds began chirping a beautiful chorus in the warm morning air. Tom stumbled down to the other side of the riverbank, which sat quiet now after all the commotion.

“Dude, what a fuckin’ party,” he said and laughed as he lit a joint. I laughed too as I stood up and waded back across the river. Tom passed me the joint. I took a deep puff. I always loved marijuana in the morning.

“Shit, dude, thanks for cleaning up,” Tom said and patted me on the back.                                                                                  

“Yeah, man,” I said. “No problem.”

A couple of days later, I got my own studio apartment with a dishwasher.