Time Stood Still In The Laundr-O-Mat

Time stood still in the coin-op laundr-o-mat.  Large fluffy comforters froze mid-toss, framed by thick circular doors with inset glass windows.  Banks of washers stood silent and still, forever locked in their various phases of cleanery.  A single woman stared blankly at a single word on a single page that, like her love life, would never be turned.  

Spouses, other peoples' spouses, sat close together.  The innocent flirtation that led to an unspoken desire, that led to a series of coordinated laundry schedulings, would now forever be unrequited, though on that very last cusp before requited.  Their hands positioned but a micron away from contact.  Their hearts, once pounding soaring with a combination of guilt and desire, stilled mid-beat.  Their minds trapped and forever echoing each others' names.

Time stood still in the laundr-o-mat.  Piles of angrily dumped clothes waited upon the floor.  Their owners had, in total disregard for social norms and appreciation of others' time, gone off for much longer than the duration of the dryers.  Impatient laundeaurs had exacted their revenge, not without an impending sense of schadenfreude.  It remained unclear if the owners would be able to return.  Would they too freeze upon touching the door?  Or would they make it all the way in first, piling upon themselves as their time stopped?  Perhaps they would simply freeze in place mysteriously, wherever they were when time stopped at the laundr-o-mat, being so intimately connected to their belongings.

Dryer 17 was mid-failure, a small dancing flame caressing uninsulated wiring as a guitarist's skilled finger would pluck a wound string, sparking a fire that was to burn down the entire block, killing 55, when time stood still.

A sad and lonely man had finally given in to his isolation from God and peeled open a Watchtower pamphlet and was moments from reading the very words that would unite him with his maker when time stood still.

The local busybody was scanning notices pressed onto a cork-board by red, round-headed pushpins.  She had just realized that the sweet cat she'd found and named Sheila was actually Zipper and was much missed by the lovely looking family in the photo.  Acting on that realization, she was in the process of removing, and disposing of, the notice when time stood still.

Time stood still in the laundr-o-mat and, in a darkened corner, upon a cold bench, a too young woman clung to the second half of her very last breath as the fentanyl laced into the heroin finished shutting down all her vital systems.  The word that rode that eternal final breath was "More".

Lights stopped flashing and buzzers ceased their buzzing and tumblers froze mid-tumble.  Words remained unspoken and emotions unknown.  Great awakenings stopped in their tracks and all sadness was put eternally on hold.  Voluminous to-do lists remained un-done and friends and family waited unanswered, worried, checking hospitals and police precincts.  Never laundr-o-mats.

Time stood still in the coin-op laundr-o-mat and with it eleven souls, six sets of bedsheets, forty-five pairs of pants, sixty-one shirts, thirty-nine pairs of underwear and seventy-three-and-a-half pairs of socks were removed from global circulation.  

The world would hardly notice and would make up the difference almost immediately.

Reviews

[Myra Fellows]

I see you made the edit.
This is truly an incredible and sobering look at reality.
I have sat in a laundr-o-mat. In many towns, in many states. The observations are spot on. Yet, not many see the world this way. I am not sure how-but they stay light and fluffy. Ignorant and blissful.
It gets a bit heavy-yet if you truly do live in this city, I imagine you do witness these people. Over and over.
The opioid crisis, suicide, loneliness, infidelity, unsafe situations. All there.

[Charles Miller]

Great stuff Phil! One thing...in the paragraph about the Watchtower pamphlet, 'pealed' should be 'peeled'. Peal is what a bell does. Keep it up, my friend...Chuck