The Escape
“Today’s the day, chaps. We are seizing the moment and making the big escape tonight. Now, who’s with me?”
Out from the back of the crowd, with a graveling and ghastly shout,
“Aye laddie, it’s ’bout time we get out’r this squalor. I’m ’fraid the threads on me tag are splitting. You know how long I’ve had this wee tag? ‘Bout as long as the missus and I been paired up, from the er’ beginnin’. Our wool won’t be lastin’ another cycle in the wash! It’s bout time we head back to Scotland, put these times ’hind us!”
“Oh hush now Ainsley, no need to be workin’ yeeself up over these wee matters. Come settle down back into our pair, let the lad preach his preachin’s”, interjects Ainsley’s matching sock as she calms his temper.
Bringing the attention back to myself, the leading athletic cotton,
“Yes, yes, Ainsley, I understand you all have places you’d rather be, hometowns you need to get back to. I too have a family back in Liverpool, the softest cotton family you’d ever meet. However, we have to be in this together!”
“And just how, Sir. Williams, do we plan on doing that?” exclaims a panty hose from the bunch with a high squeal.
“Well”, I begin, “tonight at sundown, we are scheduled for the weekly washing. There will be our opportunity to make a break for it! We will stick to the sides of the dryers and those pesky human hands will have nothing to grab on to! Who’s ready to be free of these buggers!”
“Aye!” chants the crowd!
“Who’s ready to be free of the vicious cycles they throw us into, like cattle, dying our fabrics with the stains of another!”
“Aye!”
“Who’s ready to be free of the linen we shed every time they want to ‘clean’ us!”
“Aye!”
“Now mates, let’s go for it!” I announce.
As the ninth hours rolls around, the dreaded yet anticipated laundry basket makes its first appearance, with the mangy man that follows. The crowd of laundry that plans to make its escape lines up at the front of the wooden dressers, turning to each other saying their last words as a precaution for the worst. All that had once fought, silk knickers against knee socks, cotton no shows against polyester briefs, had come together in the time of this great crisis, in order to free themselves of the barbaric events that continued to unfold. One by one, my companions had been picked up, tossed together in a plastic cage with no regard to their health, soon to be thrown in that monster of a machine.
We sit in silence with nothing but the low hum of the vibrations and dim light that shines through the clear lid, revealing the frightened faces before me. Creeeeek…. The water seeped out of the walls around us and the temperature of the room rose as we realized that it had begun.
Twists and turns, the machine raged its ugly roar, causing our linens to swell and our colors to leak out like a mushed plum. Scraps of fuzz circled us, teasing our very existence with the presence of our own. Soon, the very water that we had found ourselves in seemed to tint into an irreversible shade of light rose. Screams all around me, that had drummed out my own hearing. The deadly cycle lasted longer than I can imagine, even though the mystical light outside read 45 minutes. It was hard to tell. Finally, the water slowed and we were able to breathe again. I look around to see what shape we were left in, when I noticed Ainsley, light and discolored, with his tag ripped and wool torn to shreds. He had been caught in the spinner.
“Ainsley! O’ Ainsley, what have they done to yee!” the missus cried out! “My matching pair! How could I er’ go on without my matching pair!”
“We must keep going!”, I shout from the back trying to keep control. “We must… keep going.”
