THE DRYCLEANER'S MESS

Trudging through the snow on a freezing January night was definitely not something Arielle was happy about but it was something that she had to do. Who would want to walk outside in a weather that could make blood congeal? As she continued moving, she could have sworn that she heard her bones make cracking sounds. So she kept muttering curses until she got to the glass doors of Propre et Fraîche. Rummaging through her backpack for about a minute, she muttered more curses before the key came into view. With lightening speed, she opened the door and plunged into the dark room. Arielle groped in the dark for the light switch and after a few seconds, the office lit up.

She took off her overcoat and tossed it on a seat in the waiting area. Arielle rubbed her numb hands together like flintstones, hoping they'd warm up quickly. She hated the winter season and she hated even more her job. Having to go to her job in winter season was a step away from suicide but there was nothing she could do about it. She was in dire need of money and her stupid tattoo artist job was a literal joke. The pay from this job was just enough for her basic needs and she couldn't afford to do without a cent of it. Deep down, she really needed to get some careless money and she'd be beyond elated.

"If only wishes were horses, even beggars would ride." She grumbled as she proceeded to the work area. The constant swooshing and humming from the machines made it hard for her ever concentrate. She hated the smell of the detergents and cleaning agents. Her asthma tendencies definitely didn't find it appealing either. The smell of hydrogen peroxide always made her think of funeral homes and mortuaries.

Her tattoo artist job gave her backache and her dry-cleaning job gave her nasal congestion. For the twentieth time in the last hour, she weighed the pros and cons of this job. She grunted when realization dawned on her. This job was her saving grace. She got this particular job just because the owner was from France and was a sheer jingoist. Although she hardly even sounded French anymore, he was unbothered and quite excited to employ a French from France.

"Je suis ravi de travailler avec vous, oui?" He chattered happily as he shook her hand.

"Oui, je suis tout aussi excité. Merci." Her accent was the most watered down version she'd ever heard but that didn't seem to faze Mr Raphaêl Monet. He happily gave her the job and convinced her to take the night shifts as they paid way more. She took the night shifts as he advised.

However if she had known the night shifts were super busy and stressful, she wouldn't have taken them regardless of the pay. Clearly the people in these parts were not normal, because what sane person decides to hurl hampers of dirty clothings around town at 11pm? No sane person. That's what made her treat and talk to those customers like the lunatics they really were. Some might call it rudeness but she thought otherwise.

Usually she cranked up the music while she worked, giving stink eye to the customers who wasted her time and eye rolls to the ones who tried to flirt, while bobbing her head to the beat and chewing on a piece of gum. However, the cold today probably froze the melody bone in her body because she suddenly craved quiet and serenity. Walking 20 minutes in the bitter cold could do that to anyone.

A lot of customers came in through out the first half of her shift and that was no surprise. Propre et Fraîche was a popular, 24-hour laundry house. People of all shapes, sizes, colors, income and mental conditions came bursting through the glass doors on a daily basis. She only saw the ones that came from 9pm to 5pm. Propre et Fraîche was always open but today was an exception since Heather from the shift before hers had an emergency and had to close up before she could clock in for her night shift.

So she went through her business in her usual monotone and lack of warmth. Someone once told her she'd make a terrible customer care attendant and she didn't dispute it. Pretending to be friendly when in reality she wanted to strangle the customers didn't sit well with her. Acting was a tough job and pretending was also acting, Arielle just wasn't cut out for that job.

Take for example, Mrs Bridgette. She had a habit of trying to haggle over the laundry rates. She was somewhat of a regular so Arielle had long known that indulging or reasoning with her was a colossal waste of time and source of migraine. So with Mrs Bridgette, she was extra rude.

"So I just want to wash my new coat." She takes out a leopard print fur coat from a black tote. Mrs Bridgette definitely got the coat from a thrift store. Being a regular in thrift stores, she knew a thrift wear when she saw one "You see, it's a designer coat. Yves Saint Laurent. You'll have to be extra careful with this one." With her nose stuck so high in the air, Arielle wondered if Mrs Bridgette ever watched those princess cartoons and tried to imitate them.

"Noted. What else?"

"Nothing, just the coat."

"Okay. $110." Arielle told her the price and waited for Mrs Bridgette outburst that was sure to come.

"$110? For just a coat??? That's stupidly outrageous." Arielle shrugged calmly in contrast to Mrs Bridgette heated explosion. She definitely wasn't going to waste any unnecessary time on a bat crazy woman who walked around in a mini strap dress despite the horrible weather. Nope, she won't give her even a second. She'd rather read her emails than respond to Mrs Bridgette. So she whipped out her phone and started scrolling through her mails.

"…. Are you even listening to me?" Mrs Bridgette's annoyingly squeaky voice interrupted her mail reading. She was reading some interesting newsletter article she had subscribed to earlier and could barely mute her grunt of disapproval at the interruption.

"What?" She growled and Mrs Bridgette jerked reflexively at her tone.

"You're so rude, young lady and I'd have to report you to your boss. Raphaêl is a good businessman and won't hesitate to do the needful with you." The chime of the bell above the door reverberated through the office, slightly distracting her from Mrs Bridgette's rant about employee discipline.

"Uhmm, that's fine. Mr Raphaêl's number is on the signage outside. You can call him but I'll advise you not to do that this night, he'll probably be asleep with his wife and their little dog." She snickered inwardly at Mrs Bridgette's look of bewilderment. "You might want to take your fur ball along with you, it's so cold outside you might eventually need it. Have a nice day."

Mrs Bridgette gasped. "Such disrespect." Arielle rolled her eyes and turned away from her to attend to the person who had just walked in.

He was also a regular. He came only on Fridays, between 11pm- 12:30am. He always came with only designer suits and always paid in cash. He looked scary and intimidating with all the scars and old wounds and tattoos all over his body. He also always wore black and never spoke more than 5 words in every interaction. Despite his lack of communication, he was the only regular customer she found remotely interesting. His enigmatic vibe made her christen him as 'Mr Hyde' in her mind. She barely noticed Mrs Bridgette's exit.

"Hello, good evening." He nodded in response and dumped a full, black hamper on the floor in front of her desk. She knew it was going to be filled with just designer suits and dress shirts.

"How many?"

"30." He answered in that gruff, baritone voice that always made her insides dance in excitement.

"Okay. That'll be $1200." He nodded and brought out a wad of cash she'd kill to have. He counted twelve $100 notes and gave it to her. As she wrote him a receipt, she imagined running away with that money and never coming back. She scoffed at the thought and bade him farewell. He nodded wordlessly and breezed out of the office.

"Some man. Thinks this is a movie about the Mafia." She joked to herself as she continued her work. The second half of her shift was always way less busy. In the lengthy intervals between the customers' arrivals, she made new sketches in her drawing pad for tattoo designs. In the tattoo shop she worked at during the day, she barely had time for a water break, let alone draw new designs. Art was dynamic, always changing. Practice made perfect so she kept practising, otherwise she'd be as rusty as an abandoned bicycle in a Texas farmhouse.

These days, tattoos were almost gender based. The females had the flowers and butterflies and those corny quotes while the males went for the dark and gory themes. Today she decided to practise the male-type sketches. That meant drawings of skulls, bones, dripping blood, wild animals, optical illusions and stuffs like that. A certain customer that came in around 2am leaved through her drawings, complimented them and promised to come over to get a tattoo drawn.

"I want this one. Exactly like this." He pointed at a skull drawing with blood dripping from it. "This one's fucking sick."

Her ears warmed at the tips because of the accolades. "Thanks man. Where would you want it?"

"Uhmmm, maybe on my calf or abs."

"No problem. Just let me know when you're ready." He nodded and took away his laundry. At 4:30am, the shop was practically dead so she decided to use the last 30 minutes of her shift to sort the clothes that she received in the last 7 hours. She sorted the clothes in the piles of denims, chiffons, blacks, whites, leathers, furs, suits and polyesters. Whenever she sorted the clothes, she made sure to check all the pockets of each clothes. On her lucky days, she could get between $40-$70 in those people's pockets. She didn't consider it stealing. Nope, not at all. If she didn't take it, the machine would ruin it anyways.

She was already in the last few laundry hampers when the bell above the office door chimed indicating the arrival of someone. She was about to waddle through the pile of clothes around her when a voice called out.

"Arielle."

"Ohhhh, Lydia. What's up?" Lydia was the person who worked the next shift. 5am - 1pm.

"Good. Actually not good. Damn, the cold outside is stupid. At this point, I think I finally lost my last brain cells. They're froze up." She barked out in laughter at Lydia's joke.

"I think you lost them a long time ago though. Definitely not the weather." She shouted her reply and got a loud gasp as a response.

"Fuck you, Arielle. That's all I will say right now." Arielle snickered until the thought of the cold outside creeped into her mind, quickly changing her snicker to a grimace. She needed to quickly sort this clothes and go home. Her tattoo artist job starts by 12 noon and she needed all the sleep she could get before then. She had barely 5 hours in a day to sleep but she was not complaining. She had mild insomnia anyway, so the fatigue made sleeping a little easier for her.

Arielle was at her last two hampers, Mr Hyde's big, black hamper and another little hamper. She opened the little one and took out the contents. Four white dress shirts that she quickly threw on the white clothes pile. She opened Mr Hyde's hamper and started opening the suit bags inside it, throwing the jackets and dress pants on the suit pile and the white dress shirts in the white clothes pile. The suits were in different sizes so they couldn't all be for Mr Hyde.

Halfway down the hamper, she took a suit bag that didn't have a hanger on it. Raising her eyebrows slightly, she wondered what moron would put a suit inside a suit bag without first putting the suit on a hanger. Before unzipping the bag, she eyed the bag curiously. It seemed full but it wasn't particularly heavy and it had lumps all over like someone stuffed clothes inside the suit bag. She muttered curses for whoever was responsible for the madness as she pulled the zipper.

A white bedsheet came into view as she opened the bag and she frowned. Mr Hyde didn't ever bring any other clothings except suits and dress shirts. She shrugged and started pulling the bedsheets from the bag. Immediately she grabbed the sheets, a weird smell hit her nostrils. It wasn't an an totally revolting odor but it wasn't pleasant either. It was a familiar smell but she couldn't quite place it.

When she finally pulled out the whole sheets, she gasped at what she saw. Her eyes bulged out the sockets, her breath quickened like a sprinter's after a 100m dash and her nose crinkled at the sight. The white sheets had a map of red in the middle and blotches on every other part. Some parts of the red looked sticky. She fought the urge to throw up and struggled to keep her calm.

However immediately she looked back into the suit bag, she couldn't help the scream that escaped her. When she heard Lydia's panicked steps, she quickly bunched up the bloodied sheets and squeezed them in the bag. Lydia appeared at the door in seconds with a heaving chest and looked at her searchingly.

"What the fuck happened?

Arielle opened her mouth to respond but no sound came out. Her body was having a hard time with the adrenaline influx. She closed her mouth and tried again.

"N-no-nothing." She cringed as her croaky voice.

"What???"

Arielle cleared her voice and thoughts before responding. "Y-yeah, nothing. Actually, I hit my little toe. That's why I shouted. Yeah, t-that's it."

Lydia looked at her stupidly and scrunched her face in utter confusion. "You're in the middle of piles of clothes, Arielle. What are you talking about?"

Mentally facepalming, she unceremoniously kept up with her story. "Yes, I'm in the middle of clothes and yes, I hit my little toe. How that happened, I don't know but it happened."

Lydia stared at her blankly and she just shrugged in response. She prayed that her face didn't give away the turmoil in her insides. After a staring battle that lasted a lifetime, Lydia huffed and turned to leave. "You must really think I have no brain cells, huh?"

Arielle forced out a laugh and Lydia just grunted. "Please get out. It's 5:13, your shift's over."

"In a minute."

Immediately Lydia left, her bones melted like wax in fire and she slid to the floor in an inelegant fashion. She ran her clammy hands through her hair and inched away from that suit bag. She's been in terrible predicaments before, dangerous ones even but right now, she felt like she'd seen her life flash before her eyes at least 200 times in the last 5 minutes. She never thought she'd ever be in a situation where she'd have to make a life-and-death decision, but it looked like she was in the situation at the moment.

She stuffed the sheets into the suit bag and zipped it up. Leaving the remaining suits unattended to, she took the suit bag with shaking hands and walked out of the work area. She met Lydia at the front desk fiddling with her phone.

"Imma head out now." She struggled to keep her voice cherry. Lydia barely spared her glance as she was engrossed with whatever was playing out on her screen.

"Bye." She headed out into the bitter snow with a death wish in her hand and a panging ache in her head. She sped walked, if not ran, all the way home. Suddenly, the winter didn't feel as cold as she knew it really was, the paralyzing fear building up in her brought enough warmth to her body. Even as she walked in that early morning, she was so certain someone was following her. She regretted why she didn't go to work with at least a pen knife. The 20 minutes walk to her home felt like 4 hours.

The moment she got home, she quickly did all the locks and double checked them before racing to her room. Her shaky hands worked as quick as lightening, locking her room door and windows. She reasoned that the florescent light in her room would be too bright so she used her phone flashlight instead. She dropped the bag on the floor and opened it. The metallic smell of the sheets made her face scrunch in disgust. She threw the sheets and shone her flashlight at the other item in the bag. Bile shot up from her belly to her throat but she gulped it down immediately.

It was a hand. A human hand. A human hand cut from the middle of the forearm. It was so bloodied and she wondered if the owner of the hand was alive when it was cut off. It was a man's hand obviously. The size told her that. The hand was light-skinned with a slight tan. As she shook her phone flashlight, some twinkles appeared. She wrinkled her nose as she drew closer to the butchered hand to look at it.

A bloodied watch with encrusted diamonds in it sparkled and twinkled in the light. Despite the gory situation, her mouth involuntarily watered at the sight of such a treasure. On three fingers of the hand sat five rings with mighty crystals. She wasn't rich but she knew wealth when she saw it. Even though they were only 6 pieces, she knew they cost close to a million dollars, if not more.

She knew jewelleries cost a lot of money. Years of pickpocketing back home in France taught her that. The first time she took a tourist's gold watch and gave it to her dad to sell, he threw her up in the air gleefully and praised her.

"L'amour dans ma vie, ma chèrie, je suis fier de toi."

"Merci bien, papa." She beamed when he ruffled her hair and pecked her forehead. Later that day, he came back with a beautiful purse for her.

"C'est pour toi, ma chèrie."

As she accepted the gift that night, she swore to keep stealing jewelries. The smell of the blood intruded her nostrils, drew her out of her reverie and brought her back to the present. She felt a little guilty about having such thoughts when there was a dead man's hand in front of her. A dead man's hand that had money all over it.

Her mind wandered to Mr Hyde and she shook reflexively in fear. She knew he was cryptic, but murder? That was beyond her wildest imagination. He might have already found about the missing hand and was out for her. At this point, he could be anywhere, plotting anything. If he found her, would he try to silence her? Threaten her? Kill her too? Or maybe he'll just apologize for the mix-up and take the butchered hand and bloodied sheets. She scoffed at the thought. Apologize, her foot. Years of watching movies told her that he'd kill her.

"All because of a damned, stupid suit bag." She whined and furiously wiped the tears from her eyes with a shaky palm. This was not time to cry, it was time to act. Thankfully her mom lived on the other side of town with her stepfather so one less problem for her to worry about at the moment. She made an at the spur of the moment plan.

With shaky hands, she reached for the butchered hand. Her lack of grasp made it fall back into the bag and she screamed inwardly. She wiped her now dirty hand on her jeans and reached for the hand again. Unlocking her room door, she ran to the kitchen and put the hand in the deep freezer. She squeezed her face in revulsion at the sight of it close to her favorite juice can. Quickly, she removed all 6 jewelries from the hand and closed the freezer door.

Racing to her bathroom, she questioned all her life decisions and wondered if she'd made a terrible one. She winced at the thought. Of course, she'd made a terrible decision but then she was between a rock and a hard place. She was damned if she did and she was damned if she didn't, damned either way and damned both ways. So she pulled up her big girl panties and did it.

She put the jewelries in a bowl and ran it under the water. Now to clean the blood from them, she used a wet, soapy loofah. The rings were easy to clean, the watch however was tricky. So she got Q-tips and did the best she could as fast as she could. Time was ticking and Mr Hyde could be on his way to her house that very moment. After wrapping the jewelries in a soft, dry towel, she quickly changed her jeans and arranged her hair in a neat bun.

She put the jewelry-filled towel in her chest bag, donned an oversized overcoat over her sweater and wore combat boots on her freezing feet. She was too impatient to wear a pair of socks. Raising up her mattress, she took out a dusty case from beneath it. Inside it was a glock 19 that her ex boyfriend got her. She quickly loaded it and put it in her pants. With that, she was out of the house and on her way.

On the way to Jeffery's place, she cursed the fact that she didn't have a car. Running for your life was harder on foot. Jeffrey was a jeweler/coke dealer. Most of the kids on the block pawned stolen jewelries to him for coke. Although it's been a while since she went to Jeffery's, she knew he was still in business. She hastened up with that thought.

She was going to sell the jewelries.