Washing Machine Holocaust

by Alan Spencer

  The sounds he made, it was agony personified.

  The moment the waters reached critical mass, Larry retreated. He picked up his feet and kept picking them up. Lunging behind him like a boiling, hissing, deadly tsunami wave of washing detergent water from hell, the brick walls fizzled and burned. If the stuff touched him, he'd be vaporized.

  Larry lunged into the great room of washing machines. He dodged body parts congealed in blood. They were dead, and dead for good. The great wave of deadly blue water surged, tossing machines about the room. Larry dodged the flung machines. He was nearing the exit doors. So close now, he could see arcs of sunlight ahead of him. Moving faster, feeling way older than his age, he felt the heat at his back. It was already scalding without touching him.

  He closed his eyes, made one more great lunge for the door, and hoped to outrun death.

  38

  He shouldn't be alive. He wouldn't be alive if it weren't for the van that pulled up near the doors. Larry jumped right in. Hands helped him inside. The back doors slammed closed. The van tore up clods of grass to avoid the flood of blue water. They were a quarter of a mile out when the entire warehouse exploded in a burst of the blue water. Bubbles shot up into the sky like balloons full of helium. They reached up so high in the sky, gathering speed, reflecting all the colors of the rainbow, before finally popping and vanishing.

  Larry remained on the floor of the van to catch his breath. His body was so sore. Exhaustion was setting in. There was a new ache in his bones. He knew it was from dying multiple times and being brought back to life. If these people who saved him were more bad guys, there wouldn't be anything he could do to defend himself. He was that depleted.

  Six people were in the back cab. They had M-16's slung across their backs. Military packs with grenades. They were the equivalent to regular Joe freedom fighters. Insurgents against evil. They introduced themselves. Larry would remember their names later, just not now. He only listened to what the person who called himself Duke said: "We were going to overtake that warehouse, save who we could in the process, and level the place. You did that for us already. Good job. You're one badass motherfucker. I take it you didn't like what they were doing to you. We didn't either. We escaped one of the warehouses about a year back. We teamed up, and now we're working together to take them down. It's one sick operation. I can't guarantee your safety. Our life won't be pretty. We'll be eating out of cans and sleeping in tents. About the only thing I can guarantee is you'll get to kick some ass. We hunt them down, end their operations, destroy those washing machines, and save who we can. That's our goal. Slowly, we're saving humanity from these savages. So how about it? You with us?"

  A woman he would later get to know as Grace was massaging his arms and legs. She was saying words of encouragement to bring him out of his pain. Grace was beautiful, in a real world woman kind of way. She knew what he was going through. The pain was so intense. He felt the wounds from dying dozens of times come and go constantly. It'd take a full month before Larry recovered, when the pain finally went away for good. Grace was there every step of the way. He would fall in love with her. She would fall in love with him.

  He thought about Duke's question.

  Was he in?

  There was no going back to the life he was once knew. He couldn't apply for some lazy ass job or live in his apartment and fritter away the rest of his life. He wasted enough time doing nothing and being okay with it. He had a higher purpose. Fiery ambition burned inside him. He was ready to kick some sadist ass. Hell's elite had no idea what kind of beat down was coming their way. The washing machines would only be used to clean clothes by the time he was through with the sons-of-bitches.

  Larry heartily shook Duke's hand.

  "I'm in. It's time to hang these assholes up to dry."

  A Special Bonus: A Short Story from the Anthology "No Need to Breathe"

  The Gravity of the Situation

  This was bound to happen. Nobody's been happy for far too long. This wasn't how life was supposed to be lived. We've abused ourselves and each other. Our misery isn't just in our minds and bodies. The earth can feel it. It's in the air.

  And now we're in the air.

  My commentary may be inappropriate for the situation. I write columns for The Daily Sun, so I can't help it, even in dire situations like this one. Commentary is entrenched in me. It's like one of those thoughts of the day kind of pieces I churned out on a regular basis for many years. Fluffy as hell pieces. I see people, I read the daily news, and I react. But it's been lies. I've sugarcoated the truth. Life is shit. Life sucks. I know our society as a whole isn't happy. We're miserable. Too many kids. Too many bills. Too many dreams left unrealized. Our bodies get fatter, our minds get softer, and when we get older, our bones ache when they didn't used to. Some life affirmation, right? It's all worth it in the end, isn't it?

  Fuck no.

  It's fitting a higher power would pull the plug for all of us way ahead of schedule, seeing as we're so unhappy, so overtired, so over-caffeinated, so over-prescribed, and so emotionally strung out. We needed divine intervention. It makes my blood burn to think our creator was cruel enough to decide for us whether we want to live or die. Who gave Him the right to give us life just to take it away?

  Or am I looking at it at the wrong angle? I read somewhere one time when the body is about to die, the body is designed to release some drug that sends you into a euphoria. What a gift, right? You die a peaceful death, even if it's the body pumping out some synthetic form of mental peace. But that's for people who die slowly, I think. It's not for those who die instantly. No, it doesn't apply here at all. We won't experience that wonderful euphoria.

  Or am I looking at it at the wrong angle still? Our death warrants have been signed. Our fate is like one of those women in an abusive relationship. The earth, the world itself, can only take so much bullshit before it actually does something to fix the situation permanently. We had this coming for a long time.

  I'll keep commentating, because that's what I do. Writer's instinct. Journalistic integrity. Fear of death.

  I haven't made it to work this morning yet. I'm in a crowded street in Cincinnati's business district. Tall buildings. Mounting traffic. Busy crosswalks and thoroughfares. Unhappy faces in skin-tight suits walking one way or the other, acting as if they're in some slave labor camp and not the good ol' U-S-of-A. The right to pursue freedom and happiness. Look what we did with that. Look what's going to be done with us!

  I'm at one of the many Starbucks sipping on a tall something or other, and when I put change in my pocket instead of the tip jar, the change doesn't want to stay in my pocket. It floats right out of my pocket and hits the ceiling, stuck as if magnetized.

  Amazing! Everybody's change is on the ceiling. So are their keys, their purses, their wallets, their cell phones, (and that makes everybody fucking stop in their tracks and really check out the strange things going on) and their personal effects. Napkins, stirrers, creamers, sugar packets, it's all on the ceiling.

  Everybody runs outside after viewing through the glass window what's happening. A mailbox outside is leaking out letters through the top slit and sailing high up in the air. Sighs of astonishment turn into shrill screams of terror. A woman loses her infant. It's floating out of her arms and already moving like a helium balloon up up up into the sky! My baby, she cries. Someone help me get my baby!

  Everybody's in a panic. Briefcases, important documents, and more children pried from their strollers are sailing higher and higher. Some laugh when a self-important looking business man's toupee is ripped from his head, and the varmint fur heap is flailing upwards for all to see.

  I start to feel a tug on my clothing. My skin tingles strangely. Everybody else is going through this too, and before I know it, before everybody knows it, we're in mid-air. Weightless. That's the feeling people in space experience. Zero gravity. Imagine thousands and thousands of people floating above the streetlights, and now six flights up high. Floating wit
hout a reason.

  Those who aren't outside, I watch them slowly drawn out of buildings, doors opening on their own for a burst of air to expel them into the open and draw them up high.

  The horror dissipates. So we're up high, everybody thinks. Well—so what? Nothing bad is happening. And I feel great! It's a hell of a sensation being weightless. Add to that not having to carry money, personal effects, or any business related items. It's truly liberating. People are spinning in place, flying like they always wanted to when they were children. Thousands and thousands of people everywhere are experiencing zero gravity.

  I've reached the highest point on the AT&T skyscraper. That tiny flag flapping in the wind, I touch it, and I keep going higher.

  The altitude is starting to effect me. It's a happy dizzy sensation. Everybody's dizzy stupid. It's like that moment I was talking about when the body knows it's about to die, and it injects you with a calming sedative. Hey, what do you know? It really does happen!

  A couple I recognize from the office, they're tearing each other's clothes off and having sex. Zero-gravity sex! What bragging rights! People are hugging, embracing, dancing how people dance when air is at their feet. Children are romping and playing. Infants left behind by their mothers are even giggling and bubbly. It's a happy party.

  Higher and higher we go.

  Zero gravity is in effect.

  The building tops are well below our feet. Are we going to break the earth's atmosphere? Nobody seems to really care, though the party has taken a turn for the worse. Those who have had sex with people they don't know have spent their passionate moment. Now what? Oh, we're way the fuck up here. How the heck are we getting back down?

  The city below is a diminishing speck.

  I keep waiting for it.

  One guys is prattling about the lies he told in his lifetime. He's using this zero gravity situation as a confessional. So many others are taking his example. I've wasted my life, my life is worth nothing, I'm so lonely, why did I do this with my time, I never mourned the loss of so and so, I miss my kids, I miss my parents, I miss my wife, I miss my husband, money means nothing, so much time I wasted, I swear I'll do this, I swear I'll do that, I swear I won't do this, I swear I won't do that, the high altitude party is all over the place with raw emotions. Tears are met with fuck you middle fingers, ass flashings, genital flashings, and mean cruel laugher from self-satisfied people who refuse self-reflection of any kind.

  We're as high as airplanes go. We're not breathing. So the fuck what? People reach out and touch the clouds. Those who've sexualized the situation stand there limp and confused. What now? What else? Will you put us back down now? People are coming back to themselves again. Why can't we breathe? We need to breathe! Why is this happening? What happens now? What's being done to stop this?

  Expletives explode off lips. No we're realizing we're in serious trouble. What we've done with the last moments of our lives is a true reflection of why we're being wiped clean from the map. Everybody everywhere is going through this, I know it. Everybody.

  That floating feeling is beginning to subside.

  The euphoria is turning into a wicked hangover.

  It's happening so fast, it's difficult to process. The air is flying through our bodies, ripping through us, because we're coming down, and we're coming down hard!

  Screams. Cries to God. Cries bemoaning themselves. Wails of children. It's doesn't matter because it's too late. We're all going straight the fuck down.

  The end isn't from Biblical or Mayan prophecy. No floods, or famine, or droughts, or war. The amount of time we've wasted decoding the end to be so totally wrong!!!

  Gravity has returned, and we're going to be its victims. Those buildings are coming back into sharper detail. The beautiful clouds are above us again, where they've always been and shall remain. People are clawing at each other as if trying to climb back up, using people as step ladders. Those who are naked look ridiculous. Those who thought they knew the meaning of life have the grimmest expressions. The reality check's a bitch.

  I'm not among the first to hit. The sound is like crunching bones. Like wood striking wood at accelerated speeds, a collision where both sides end up damaged. Bodies go up like pink mist. Bones fire out of the skin. Screams abruptly stop. We're rain striking roofs, pounding car tops, sprinkling the streets, rolling down glass, glistening on the pavement, pooling on rooftops.

  Is it too late to say I regret to say we've reached the end of our progress? No more industrial revolutions, or cultural renaissances, or creations of new technology we actually require. The only thing we've done is drum up new ways to keep money in circulation. No wonder we're dead. No wonder it ended like this. No wonder it—