Monster

A monster lives with me. It hides somewhere within these walls and appears only on the weekend. No matter how often I kill the thing, it always lives again. Stalking me in my hallway, I become its Saturday prisoner. Large white appliances are its devices.
The monster didn't always live here. In a not too distant past I sought occupation during weekends that stretched forever. Now, weeks pass as hours and there's never time enough for things that have to be done, let alone things I want to do.
"Let's go to the mall on Saturday," my friend suggests.
"That sounds lovely," I say, noncommittally. "I'll think on it." She isn't married, doesn't have kids, is what I think.
I turn down the hallway and there it sits. The Monster. The hallway is its favorite trap because it knows I must at some point leave my bedroom. The monster's height is always no less than four feet, its girth the same.
Its name is Laundry; The Monster That Cannot Die.
Its power of regeneration is so strong there is never a "done" involved in its doing. Upon the finish of the final load of the weekend a casual check of laundry baskets will bear evidence of the monster's regeneration. I have learned not to check laundry baskets while the last load is drying.
I tried a daily battle against the thing, doing a single load every day instead of seven loads on Saturday. Whites on Monday, colors on Tuesday, jeans on Wednesday, and so on. Invariably, a certain pair of jeans will be required on Tuesday morning instead of Thursday, meaning that instead of jeans on Wednesday I do jeans Monday which means that there'll only be four pairs to wash since I just did jeans on Wednesday so on Tuesday I must do colors because a certain green shirt is required on Wednesday morning so whites aren't done until Wednesday and by then everyone is out of socks and underwear. I could do two loads Monday night, but won't.
It was utterly exhausting waging a constant attack on the Monster.
"Get these kids to help you," my mother chastised.
It sounded like a good idea, employing younger and more agile beings to tackle the Monster.
"How did my dry-clean-only dress end up in the dryer and who put the red shirt in with the whites?"
No one did, of course. That's how tricky the Monster is. It has targeted me for its prisoner and it will accept no substitute.
"Honey, I'll take the kids fishing," my sympathetic husband offers. "You can have time to write."
I wake up after they've gone, rising leisurely with expectations of coffee, keyboard and a Great Idea. I turn down the hall and run headlong into the Monster. I try to avoid looking into its eyes as I wade toward the kitchen. I make it to the coffee maker and from the corner of my eye the washer and dryer loom, expectant. I ignore them and go to my desk in the living room.
I hit the space bar and format page one. I shuffle through a few pages of notes, trying to find a thread, any thread, of thought, story or rant with which I can begin. I sit back and stare at the screensaver.
I feel as if I really am traveling through dark space.
I hear the Monster writhing and hissing in the hallway. I go for another cup of coffee and the washer and dryer appear to have grown taller, bending menacingly by the door, distorted like the reflection in a fun-house mirror.
From the front entry, the transitory hub of the house, my desk appears to be disappearing into a distance I did not know existed in my living room. The Monster's hissing becomes louder as my desk becomes smaller and I am overcome with murderous intent.
It laughs as I'm compelled toward it by invisible chains it has somehow fastened to my wrists. It merely angers me as I violently dismember the Monster. Throwing the load of whites into the washer, I hope the water is searing, the bleach scathing, and I vow not to use softener but in my soul I know I am the one who will suffer for this.
While the machines run, I'm granted respite in which I can finds words again. When the machines stop, I must heed the Monster's beckoning, or suffer guilt and depression that only those imprisoned by such beasts can suffer. In the time it has taken me to write and revise these passages, only two parts of the Monster have been vanquished and I have five to go. A poem sits on my desk, begging me to breathe life into its verses, but my preoccupation with the Monster isn't the best state of mind for verse. Dirty limericks, perhaps, poetic verse, no. This explains my often descent into obscene limerick.
I hear the car in the drive and the voices of my children as they return from their Saturday at the river.
"Hi mom!" they yell on their way through the house and back outside.
"Hi honey," my husband bends to kiss me. "Any luck?"
Luck, I think. If I'm lucky, someone will invent cheap paper clothing that can be burned after wearing.
"Oh yes," I lie. "Thanks for the break." I kiss him back.
He walks down the hall and into the bedroom and from the sudden quiet in the living room I hear the sound of the clothes-hamper lid slam shut at the exact moment the dryer buzzes.
The Monster lives.

The Harrow's Copyright Information and Disclaimer.