This is a short story I wrote recently. It is just a little side thing I worked on at University. It is presented in a variety of different formats and styles, all intended to work together to show a complete story. Give it a quick read. It isn't anything big or important, just something I wanted to try out. Please let me know what you thought.
Stains
....a spot not easily removed
[1]
Till Death Do Us Part
It is Thursday Evening. A small Laundrette sits on a street corner, its bright lights igniting the dark street. The winter night is dark and a wind is howling along. As a kind, miserable woman oversees the laundrette, a young, beautiful lady strides through the doors with a terrible secret.
“Good evening. How can I help?”
“I need to clean some dirty laundry,” said the woman softly. She unbuttoned her long black coat as she spoke.
“Well thank you for choosing Lynette’s,” said the older lady, smiling. “I’m Lynette, the owner of the laundrette, but I’m afraid all our machines are being used at present.”
“I see.”
The young woman’s deep blue eyes sparkled as she looked around. Her scathing disapproval at the lack of service was evident in her face. Like a cat sprayed with a jet of water.
“Sorry, I think number 4 will be free soon,” Lynette added, looking over. She examined the new customer, who was looking at the bigger, cheaper and slightly nicer laundrette across the road. Biting her lip in worry, the woman took action.
“What awful rain we’re having,” she murmured.
“Rain has its uses,” replied the customer. “Everything does.”
“Oh, well yes. I suppose it does."
Awkwardness ensued.
"Er. What was your name then?” Lynette asked.
“Eden,” she replied suddenly.
“What a beautiful name,” Lynette replied warmly, like a mother to her favourite daughter. “Well your hair is just beautiful, Eden. I really need my roots done – I’m grey as a mule and only forty-six!”
“I got it done at Salon De Belle in London,” replied the woman stiffly. “I’m not from here.”
“So why are you here?” Lynette asked bluntly.
“I have to clean things up,” she murmured, smiling to herself. The man at machine number 4 walked towards the door, a smug little stain splashed across his face. Lynette thanked him for his custom.
Eden walked powerfully across the room and took the machine, setting her bag down. She slipped a coin into the slot and opened up the drum, slyly pulling out a dirty top and putting it inside. As her hand delved into the bag a second time, she spied a newspaper on the floor. Grabbing a t-shirt with one hand, Eden tossed it into the drum as she grabbed the paper.
“Hello…” she said absently, staring at the headline as she grabbed the bag by one handle and pushed it against the mouth of the drum.
‘MAN FOUND DEAD IN HOME’
Eden read, tipping clothes into the machine as quickly as she could. A pair of jeans and a white jumper fell into the machine, soaked in copious amounts of someone’s blood. It appeared this was all Eden was washing.
‘Police investigating a domestic situation in London were horrified to discover a dead body lying in the bathroom. The man, who is now identified as Mr Dean Bradfield, was stabbed late last night. Initially the Police were called after a series of loud arguments that night, but when they intervened they found only Mr Bradfield’s body upstairs, with no sign of anyone else. It is believed he was stabbed with something large and blunt, due to the gaping wound in his stomach –’
She continued to read as she pushed the button on the washing machine. In no time squirts of water sloshed over the clothes and gradually filled the drum up. Her reflection was slowly drowning as she watched the blood fuse among the water, creating a pinkened liquid that soaked her clothes.
‘Unavailable for questioning was Jamie Bradfield, wife of Dean. Police are treating her absence as suspicious. No family members currently know where she is.’
“’Till death do us part, Dean,” she whispered. She held tightly onto her umbrella and looked outside to see rain beginning to pelt down against the windows.
“Oh how the rain has its uses.”
*
[2]
People-Watching
My name is Robin Vaughn. I started writing in this diary because my bus journeys are never really that fun. I always get sat next to a nutter. Or a tramp. Or a tramp who is an absolute nutter.
But it's useful, sort of poignant, writing about where I go and who I see. I don't really have many people to talk to since I got a place of my own. The only people I see are the people at work - and I hate them all.
I do enjoy people-watching whenever I go to the laundrette. It’s like having audio commentary on everything around you. What better way to whittle away the 42 minutes until my washing has finished spinning? You get such a colourful cast of weirdo’s wherever you go. Well, wouldn’t you? This one, Lynette’s, it’s just a bit cheap. There's a foul smell, and I’ve spotted the culprit. Is it irony that people come here to wash their clothes clean, yet they themselves reek of last night’s dancefloor vomit? I wish he’d jump into one of those cylinders. Now he's staring at me. What are you looking at?! It’s like when you go shopping, and everything you buy is there, for all to see…and there’s that horrible, gut-wrenching feeling that someone might judge you for what you’re buying. You almost feel like justifying what you’ve bought. Is it lazy to buy ready meals? Am I poor and stingy if I buy the cheapo cola? And here, if there’s a stain on my t-shirt, I get a glare. If I get out my cashmere sweater (real cashmere, I might add) then people stare at me as if I should be paying someone to pay someone to do my laundry for me.
There’s something nice about coming here when it’s quiet. Like you’re dumping a body in a lake…yea…let’s get in, out, no fuss…what am I saying…they’re only socks. I’m getting in way too deep. Back to people-watching.
Like that woman, for example. She has a collection of skinny jeans and skimpy knickers but she’s got the figure of a fat pear. Then again, she doesn’t care. She’s dragging those sodden jeans out the drum by force; she doesn’t hastily stuff them in her basket and wobble out the laundrette like she’s concealing vital evidence. She’d be shit at dumping bodies because she’s so bloody slow. Is she proud of her size? That prima donna isn’t impressed, using the machine next to her; peeling dental-floss-thongs from her drum. When did women get so cheap? Oh Christ, she’s looking my way. She has crazy cat-like eyes. I’ll see how my cycle’s doing. Funny how all the colours swirl around inside a drum. I’m sure there’s some racial metaphor there, about how the blacks and whites mix or something. And now I’ve just realised I’ve put whites in with colours. Bollocks. I liked that t-shirt. That foul-smelling man has gone. But his legend lives on in the form of an awfully pungent odour. Come on…ten minutes to go.
I hate this place.
If we could wash away every sin we’ve been stained with, and start fresh every time we’d probably do bad things more often. I say this because that mysterious man has washed the blood off all his clothes and just slipped a gun in his pocket.
*
[3]
The Away Game
My name is Harrison Smith. And twice a week I come to a small, insignificant laundrette in the evening to wash some clothes. I have a washer at home - a perfectly good washer at home. But there are stains I need washed out that I don't want some people to see.
“Evening,” I said lazily, my eye on the spinning cycle. Lynette, the owner of the laundrette had just walked past.
“How are you today?” she asked politely.
“I’m fine,” I replied.
“Busy day?”
“Very,” I replied, looking over. “The firm is getting taken over. Massive job cuts. Had to tell one of our new recruits we were letting her go. She was devastated.”
“It must be so hard,” Lynette said thoughtfully. “Being the bearer of bad news. And that woman probably really needed that income to support her family.”
“Thank you Lynette,” I growled. Her lack of interpersonal skills were not helping the flooding guilt. It wasn’t just anyone I had fired. It was someone special.
“Still, I suppose in your position you don’t get too attached to your workers,” Lynette pondered. If only she knew…
My phone rang suddenly. Lynette took a step back, giving a quick nod of her head. Was this her way of giving me space? I’ve known Lynette a while. She always reminds me of an old bird; she spends her time stooped in the corner watching her prey scuttle around. Kind, but in a slightly ominous way. She lives alone, I recall.
“Hello?” I asked, pressing the phone to me.
“I’m not okay,” she said suddenly. Elaine.
“What?” I asked, turning away from Lynette.
“I said I’m not okay,” Elaine repeated.
“What do you mean?” came my reply.
“Today, at work,” Elaine said, “You asked me if I was okay when you told me the company was letting me go. And I said nothing. But I’m ringing you to tell you I’m not okay, Harry. I need that job and I…I want that job. I enjoy working for you.”
“I…enjoy it too,” I argued back, in an urgent, rapt hiss. “But it wasn’t my decision.”
“You had a say in it!” She protested.
“That’s true, but you are the most recently employed member of the company,” I told her. “Therefore when we faced job cuts you had to go. If all my peers agreed to it and I argued, do you know how that would look?”
“Spare me,” came a vitriolic fizz from the other end.
“Elaine,” I called. “Please…”
But she hung up. Pulling the phone away in defeat I looked away; this wasn’t good. However as I slipped my phone into my pocket, I recalled a certain proprietor was still standing behind me.
“She sounded awfully bitter,” Lynette mentioned. “That the girl who you fired?”
“Yes, she is,” I stammered.
“Elaine…” recalled Lynette. “What did you say your wife was called, Harrison?”
“Sarah,” I answered, all too fast.
“I see,” Lynette thought. “I see.”
“What do you see?” I asked her hotly.
“That you come here twice a week, every week,” Lynette told me sagely, the innocent, middle aged and kind façade beginning to melt away beneath her sharp and sinister core. “And you ring your wife, Sarah, and someone else, a mysterious someone. Every Tuesday, every Friday. You wash your shirt, your socks, your underwear, but never your trousers because they never get dirty. I see a man who is playing ‘The Away Game’.”
I stared at the woman who was still wearing a comfortable, relaxed smile, as if we were discussing a particularly delicious Victoria sponge. Everything was summarised succinctly; my regular visits to see Elaine, the lipstick on my collar, the call to Sarah about my extra shifts and the calls to Elaine recalling our flaming passion and lust, arranging the next meeting. We didn’t really arrange anything, it was more of a ‘see you Monday’ or ‘see you Thursday’, but nevertheless hearing her words wrap around my ears was enough to drive me wild.
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” I said firmly.
“Please,” Lynette laughed. “You’re as red as a tomato. I know about your affair, Harrison and if you don’t want me to blow the whistle on your bi-weekly misdeeds then you need to listen very carefully.”
“Fine,” I snapped. I couldn’t look at her. I stared at my washing whiz round and round. I flickering reflection of myself sat among the sodden clothes.
“I want money in addition to your service at my laundrette.”
“How much money?” asked Harrison.
“I will need £200 this week – my electricity bill is on its third notice and it needs to be paid.”
“Fine,” I said begrudgingly. “And how often do I have to come to your laundrette?”
“Twice a week,” replied Lynette. “Tuesday and Friday. If you don’t come in on either of those nights, I will call Sarah and tell her everything.”
“And how will you contact her?” I asked curtly, standing to my feet.
“07864634505,” she said absently, looking at something written down on a discreet slip of paper. I looked at her in alarm but she casually re-tied her apron busily. “Do you remember two weeks ago you lost your phone, when it was actually in your laundry basket? I took it and copied down a few important contact numbers, because I was having suspicions at your devotion.”
“You freak!” I cried. “You…steal numbers, spy on people…what the fuck?”
“My ex-husband cheated on me. Ran off with some tasty little tart and took with him his salary. This laundrette was supposed to be something to do in my spare time, not my every source of income! Now I’ve bills, more bills and a crumbling little house. I do not forgive people easily, especially if you have a single thought about leaving your wife.”
Lynette turned to leave.
“I will be in touch with you about my money,” she said curtly. “Until Friday, Harrison, feel free to sin as often as you’d like.”
Five minutes left, five minutes until I could collect my belongings and head home to my wife. The thought of seeing Elaine made my insides go cold. The smell of her made me feel sick. All I wanted was to go home and see Sarah, feel my child, be safe.
I don’t want to play this game any more.
*
[4]
£1 Profit
Dear Diary,
Good day so far! Alice McDermot only gave me two evils at the bus stop. Bitch. I wanted her bus to crash but I was on it, too, so that would be more like a suicide mission. I don’t really fancy that. I’m writing this at the laundrette while I get my Kate Moss skinny bootcut jeans washed. I like this place. It’s so noisy! I really like a noisy ambiance. I wish I was poetic, and then I could write something with a bit more punch, a bit more pow, a bit more shabazz. I can write metaphors. Like how a washing cycle is like a car tyre spinning around. The drum spins around, and so does the wheel of a car. You know I could have completed that English A-Level, I really could.
My day took an unexpected turn today. I found a pound on the floor! I didn’t realise at first; you spy a shiny morsel on the floor and your hand dives down to grab it – but you don’t realise what it is until you clench it in your hand. I felt it pressed against the inside of my fist and I knew. I said to myself, ‘Lisa, your luck is in’. You just don’t find one pound coins on the floor! Coppers, yes, and often a silver. But a gold coin? It’s a treasured sparkle of a memory, even though I’m going to inevitably part ways with this coin. Sitting here, letting my jeans spin around in the drum (or should I say car tyre?), I like to think about the fate of my queen-faced friend. Will she roll into a vending machine? Slide into a till when I buy my weekly glossy magazine? Maybe I’ll give it to a beggar on the street – oh who am I kidding. I don’t give money to homeless people! I buy them a cup of coffee and say politely ‘There. Now you can change your sign. You aren’t cold and you aren’t thirsty’. It has never gone down well, but I am a Good Samaritan and that’s what I do. I can’t get a real job.
But this coin represents something I find, and something I lose, because really, I’m not going to have this coin long. It will go into a cash register, which will be emptied, and maybe it will be given out as change to someone else, if they had to break into a £20. What could they spend that pound coin on? The new bell-bottom stone-wash hem-less hipster Kate Moss jeans? Obviously they would cost a few queen-faces! Maybe the coin would be used at the laundrette…or it got eaten by the machine. The owner could get mugged and hand it over to an unsavoury character, who would no doubt buy drugs when he’s sitting on a street corner. Who knows how many hands this coin has passed through? Maybe Kate Moss has held it! Change from a pack of fags she’d bought. Oh the possibilities.
I’d better sign off for now, diary. The cycle has almost finished and thankfully, when these jeans dry, nobody will know what stains I amassed onto them. Dog vomit is a very ominous smell and I know I can smell it a mile off. And that shaving cream. Anyway that man is looking at me rather angrily – he’s after my machine. I had a run in with him before, and he seemed like the sarcastic type. I’ll write in you later after X Factor!
Lisa
x x x
*
[5]
The 42 Bus to Maplethorp
It is mid evening in a busy city. Robin is a young man in his late twenties stuck in a pointless job, with a twisted, sour outlook on life and everything in it, and has just spent an excruciating hour at the laundrette. He sits on the bus, thanking his luck at getting the last seat, until he realises he is sitting next to overly-bubbly, overly-everything Lisa, a girl he got stuck with at the laundrette.
Lisa: Fancy seeing you here!
Robin: Yea.
Lisa: Same laundrette…same bus…hey, might live in the same house!
Robin: Hmm [he smiles politely]
Lisa: I’m room 4.
Robin: What?
Lisa: Floor 5, Magistrates Housing, 42-44 Whittaker Street, Newcastle, United Kingdom. I think my postcode is NE1…or NE2 – no, no, it’s NE1…and the second part has an L in it somewh-
Robin: I don’t live there.
Lisa: Where do you live?
Robin: Hell. [He gives a hollow laugh]
Lisa: You can’t live in hell.
Robin: [Laughing] Oh yes I can.
Lisa: You can’t. I don’t believe in hell, therefore your house would not technically exist.
Robin: I hope for my sake it does.
Lisa: Who?
Robin: Never mind.
Lisa: So what were you washing?
Robin: Clothes
Lisa: Oh.
[Lisa’s beady eyes peer towards Robin’s washing bag. He firmly shuts it.]
Lisa: Well I’ve been washing my delicates. Don’t look!
Robin: I wasn’t going to.
Lisa: Good. Because they are my delicates. Men mustn’t gawk at them. That’s just rude.
Robin: Very rude.
Lisa: I was also washing three of my six pairs of skinny bootcut jeans – you know Kate Moss wears this pair? [She brandishes a pair of thin, sodden jeans. Robin is splattered with water] Well the other three pairs are fine but this pair got shaving cream on them – I have hairy toes, sometimes – those trim-cut slim-liners got curry and cheese on them, but not together – me and my mum went for a curry. But my third pair got vomit on. I think it was my dog.
Robin: Hmm. Best to get those sort of stains washed out.
Lisa: It’s quite poetic, don’t you think? We enter, dirtied and wronged. And our souls are cleansed…we leave the laundrette clean of stains and sins.
Robin: [Who had been thinking the exact same thing during his visit] No.
Lisa: No?
Robin: That sounds ridiculous. It’s a laundrette for Christ’s sake.
Lisa: You have to go beyond that. Look at the metaphor! The meaning, the agenda!
Robin: It’s a laundrette.
Lisa: You know I did one module of English at school before I pretended to have a baby so I could leave school and secretly train as a hairdresser. And we analysed stuff. You unearth so many things.
Robin: Some things don’t need analysing.
Lisa: Some things take too long to analyse!
Robin: [Glancing at Lisa] Too right.
Lisa: [Ratching through her washing] You know…I think I’ve got more socks than I did when I came. Cool!
Robin: You know it’s a successful trip when you poach other peoples clothes.
Lisa: My ring!
Robin: What?
Lisa: M-My ring! My engagement ring! It’s gone! [She rises from her chair as the bus turns a corner; she topples over Robin’s lap] Oh god, oh god, fuck, fuck…
Robin: I don’t remember you wearing a wedding ring…[to himself] unless you stole one of those, too…haha.
Lisa: Oh, that’s right…[she sits down calmly, applying lipstick as if the episode never happened]
Robin: Hm?
Lisa: [Pursing her lips] I forgot that I gave it back.
Robin: Was it too big?
Lisa: My fiancée did some soul-searching and found out he likes men. So he left me to go to Barbados with a small Filipino boy named Pedro. I’m not bitter…
Robin: [Knowing better] Lisa…
Lisa: Fine. I torched down his Mum’s Florist.
Robin: Jesus
Lisa: Well flowers are very flammable! A rogue spark would have burned the place down. It didn’t need a bottle of vodka and a box of matches. Bitch. Do you have a girlfriend?
Robin: No
Lisa: Boyfriend?
Robin: No!
Lisa: Sorry. You just remind me of Michael.
Robin: Look, I don’t have the time to push chocolate-covered something’s into someone else’s arms. Or the money. Or the patience! Or the motivation.
Lisa: How much do you pay for a haircut?
Robin: What?
Lisa: Hair is important. I judge a man by his hairstyle. How much do you pay?
Robin: A…few quid
Lisa: Well my fringe-cut dye job costs about £64.75
Robin: ‘about’?
Lisa: Kerry Katona once had my fringe.
Robin: My haircut costs £4. I get Monty to do it for me. He’s my dad’s old hairdresser. I just kept going.
Lisa: Does your Dad?
Robin: No. He’s too busy pushing chocolate-covered everything’s into everyone else’s arms.
Lisa: He sounds lovely
Robin: He’s a git
Lisa: But he's...single? [Robin frowns] Just asking…
Robin says nothing. Lisa looks around for some form of conversation but is aware she has crossed some sort of line.
Robin: Where do you live?
Lisa: Heaven.
Robin: You can’t live in Heaven
Lisa: I do
Robin: You don’t
Lisa: You can live in Hell but I can’t live in Heaven?
Robin: I can’t live in hell BECAUSE you don’t believe in it. If you don’t believe in Hell then you cannot live in Heaven because it cannot exist. The two work together. You can’t have Heaven and not Hell; that’s implying that you can have eternal bliss with no repercussions. Everyone goes to Heaven, everyone gets a nice afterlife.
Lisa: Well they do!
Robin: I don’t want to go to Heaven then.
Lisa: Why not?!
Robin: Think about it! The people who died in 9/11 will be there. Everyone goes to Heaven, according to you. So they get to go, and every terrorist that’s ever blown himself up is right above us on some…stupid cloud. I won’t have eternal bliss with those buggers around. What if they’re plotting, right now, to blow up Heaven? Then what?
Lisa: I don’t –
Robin: I’ll tell you what. There’ll be no bloody Heaven because some idiot let terrorists in. And it’ll explode in a flurry of marshmallowy clouds and we’ll all be absolutely fucked because we’ve got nowhere to go when we die.
Lisa: No! Oh god. I don’t want that!
Robin: Exactly. So start believing in Hell you little retard or the terrorist plot to ruin eternal bliss is going to get underway.
Lisa: Ok! Ok! I’ll believe in Hell.
Robin: Good.
Lisa: But what if a bad man –
Robin: Be quiet.
Lisa: But I mean, if a really horrible –
Robin: I don’t bloody know. Go and ask a vicar.
Lisa: I will! I will definitely. As soon as I get home and shower and have some dinner and feed Mr Schneeps and call Mum and watch Corrie then watch X Factor then call Janice and ask about Denise and go to bed and wake up twelve hours later.
Robin: So…tomorrow, then?
Lisa: Yea, probably.
Robin: Finally. Maplethorp. How bloody long does a bus journey take?
Lisa: This…this is the end of the line, isn’t it?
Robin: Well the bus has nobody else on it, we are approaching a bus depot and our friendly driver Gus is already on the phone to his wife asking her to put the casserole in the microwave, cover it with cling-film and poke a few holes in with a fork. So yes, I would guess we are at the end of the route. Why?
Lisa: I missed my stop.
Robin: Jesus Christ…
Lisa: Can I come back with you, until I can call Mum to ask Debbie’s husband George if he’ll come and pick me up?
Robin: [Looking at Lisa] You have got to be kidding me.
[Robin gets up and takes his laundry, heading off the bus, which has now parked up in a darkened depot. He pulls his coat tighter and disappears into the night, leaving Lisa to grab her own laundry and heave it off the bus. She descends and walks out the depot, pulling out her mobile phone as the heavens open up and ran spills across the skies.]
Lisa: Hello? Mum? Yea, it’s me. Lisa. Lisa! Your daughter. No, no. That’s the one. Fine. The laundrette. Anyway, Mum, my battery’s low, so if you could get Debbie’s George to – no, I don’t care what Mr McDonald is doing now…or Michael. What? But he only just met Pedro! Is that even legal in the Fillipines?
[Her phone falters, beeping sporadically]
Lisa: Hello? Mum?
[Her phone is dead. Lisa stands in the rain, without a phone, without money, and with a lot more socks than she started out with.]
Lisa: Bollocks.
*
[6]
The Tragic Tale of Eden Maidstone
My name is Jamie. Or it was. I’m sitting in a Laundrette waiting for my cycle to finish so my secret can be washed away.
Tonight I plunged an umbrella into my husband, Dean, after two years of boredom and normality. I grabbed some of his vast fortune and fled.
The police are after me, and as far as I’m concerned, the Jamie Bradfield they’re looking for doesn’t even exist anymore. Enter Eden Maidstone.
I got the surname off the washing machine I’m using.
As for Eden, well, when did anything bad ever happen there?
And there we have it. Feedback much appreciated 
Stains [a spot not easily removed]
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Death by umbrella... damn. X3