Sink: Flash Fiction

Down into the subterranean belly of the city

Endless — the piles, mutinous — grimed plates and crusted pans and glob-bottomed pots. Congealed with grease and slime of oils and butter — a compost of bacterial growth from the moment a meal is made. One mob ploughed through, need for sustenance bellows again from the belly, and another mound rises to taunt, marauding into the sink, a stink of chaos.

And doesn’t the floor dip, worn just below this sink? Stood here, marooned here, oh the hours of a life, eroding here, hands drowning in an endless stagnant sea of dishwater.

Peer down through its geometric guard — a reverse-periscope into the subterranean belly of the city; winding entrails of waste. Murky masses of detritus, composting in the dark, like mushrooms. Fungus. Mould. Alive. Growing — but what?

Feeding. An offspring of everything I’ve ever poured down its insatiable throat.

We never think, do we, what might be down our sink, lurking, in our self-created stink?

I shake my head. Silly.

The sink too small, the mess too large. Smash it all up, to porcelain mulch. Force it down the drain. But the pieces won’t fit. Shards edged red fingers bleeding from trying, my blood trickling down into its belly. Take that.

When my back is turned, I hear it. Burping. Gurgling. Angry. For feeding what it could not digest. Or feeding it something it wanted more of. I edge to stand over it, peering down — something moves or is it a trick of the — darkness?

The sink.

New solution. Don’t cook. Don’t heat. Drink milk from the carton. Eat carrots raw. Eggs too. Why not — they’re good for you, I read it somewhere. No dishes. No pans to wrestle with in that sink, where I don’t want to stand anymore.

Sink, empty now — I keep its plug in, firm. To stop the oxygen getting in. To keep anything from crawling out.

Silly.

From my bedroom, I hear it at night. Churning, like a primordial sea full of prehistoric monsters. Evolving. Teeming, they swim with blind sinkhole eyes, spawning through my dreams.

Gulp milk. Crack eggs. Eat the lettuce, roots and all. Slice the steak to eat raw, thin as I can, for protein. I scrub the kitchen, from floor corners to ceiling. All the surfaces, chlorinated clean. From a place of relative safety near the fridge, I toss bleach into the sink. Maybe I can kill whatever’s down there. I stand, dizzy with ammonia fumes, admiring my dishless, potless kitchen. So pristine. Except for the sink.

At night, I hear it. Swirling. Belching. Craving. Starving.

I think about the last thing I fed it.

It’s got a taste for me now.

My stomach hurts — from the raw meat, I suppose. When I vomit, it’s down the toilet. Avoid the kitchen. I pass my reflection in the hallway mirror, admire the hollows in my cheeks. I take up so much less space now. I’m lean meat.

Through the closed kitchen door, I hear it breathing.

I dream, murky blooms of nighmare. I’m bent over the sink. And suddenly I’m falling in. Falling down. Fingernails catch at ancient slime on walls as I plummet down to whatever waits, voracious. Waking, my screams are underscored by groans of its incessant, unfed hunger.

I don’t go into the kitchen now. The last time, I grabbed what food I could to keep in my bedroom. I’ve eaten the last of the crackers. Can’t leave my upstairs apartment — I’d have to go past the kitchen.

Past the sink.

Lying in my bed. Five days? Six? I’m too weak to move, and then I hear it. A long, belaboured slither. The thud of weight on the floor. It’s finally found its way out. Found its way in. To my kitchen.

Dripping with the leavings of my own devourings, craving a feast. I hear it in the hallway, sliding its way to my door.

I close my eyes, and pray I’m too thin now — too thin for the appetite of the thing I created.

Birthed.

Brought forth.

It pulls me from the bed, drags me down the hallway.

I scream — as its teeth — into me —

Sink.

© Melissa Coffey 2021

Melissa Coffey is a Melbourne-based writer, editor, poet & performer. She is fascinated with the place where words emerge from our most visceral of experiences. Her short stories, creative essays and poetry are published in numerous international and Australian anthologies (sometimes incognito).

Big thanks to J.D. Harms for another prompt that pulled strange things out from beyond the cellar-door of my imaginings. The provocation? Pretend you’re mad.

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