Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Perfect Wash Cleaners Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

PERFECT WASH CLEANERS

From behind my curtains, I peek out onto a world of unknowing, unsuspecting, pedestrian life. The kind of life I once knew and took for granted. There were the goals, lists I’d written, steps I’d taken. I never gathered the moss that is a wife and children, but I have a home, a car, and I had a job. I was on my way to a successful life.

It is bright outside and I see people, they walk dogs, they drive to work, they are children with bags strapped to their backs and books under their arms. I see them all going about their lives and I wonder if they know. Some of them know, some have to know.

My boss called this morning; I didn’t answer but dared to rewind the reel on the recorder next to the phone, listening for pertinent information. I say had a job, because up until this morning I had a job.

It all began thanks to an alternator problem three weeks ago; I was several blocks from my office when my air conditioning died, and then my radio died, and finally my engine. I knew the problem right off. A man idling behind me at the intersection helped me push to the curb. There was a payphone on the corner, and I called a tow. For about ten minutes I waited for a driver to arrive and drag the embarrassing situation away. It was a slow go of things. Traffic rode on bumpers and only bicycles managed any noticeable movement.

For me, work didn’t really mean a set time, I knew my deadlines well in advance and I pushed to meet them without any undue pressure on myself. Being late to work meant that I might stay late or work through a lunch in the coming days, not really much consequence in the scheme of my life.

So, I’d be late, not an issue.

The tow truck pulled up alongside my stalled car, caution lights flashing, frustrated drivers packed in made doubly annoyed by my presence. I handed off my keys and made for the subway less than a block away.

It was after 9:00 AM; the subway brimmed with life. Many faces spelled mornings rough as mine, but there was no acknowledgement; on the subway, there rarely is anything of the sort. We are all single pegs trapped in a can for convenience until the doors open and spew us forth to go about life in one of a trillion manners.

I hadn’t ridden the subway in many months. Although it is slower in numerous instances, having an automobile provides a wonderful case for the time lost. Near privacy, personal soundtrack, always an open seat, preferable scents, cup holders, on and on I could go about cars and the little ways they better a normal life over public transit.

I rode on the subway next to a man with a bulky coat and a scent difficult to define, like cigars, cherries, and fresh portable toilet; smoky, fruity, soapy, but not exactly. He had dark tinted glasses and an aluminum walking stick. I assumed blindness.

“You,” he said.

To which I replied, “Me, sir?”

His tone demanded attention, spoke of authority and I still thought him handicapped by blindness. I was being overly polite.

“You look like a man who ought to need a good cleaner.”

This threw my mind into a bend, either he was blind and ironic, or he dressed in that manner despite his sight.

I said, “I do?”

He leaned in. His scent stronger in my nose. “Sure. I see you aren’t married, no ring; a professional man like yourself, why, it seems odd.”

I looked down at my suit, considered the face I’d left in my washroom mirror that morning. “I suppose, but I’m only thirty-seven,” I said, “It’s not as if that’s unheard of.”

“True. No children?”

The line of questioning seemed a common thing for an older man to focus on while riding the subway and I saw no harm in continuing.

“No children, not that I wouldn’t like some, someday.”

“Hmm,” he lifted his dark glasses and spied me with two milk white balls, “maybe, someday.” He let his glasses drop and he reached into his pocket.

The robotic woman spoke through the airwaves and announced a stop. The old man thrust a battered cardboard business card into my hand.

“Try this one,” he said and tapped his way along, bumping into the backs of other travellers departing the car.

I looked at the card. Stains covered the surface, a variety of tones. Funny in a way, I read, PERFECT WASH CLEANERS, 2 for 1 Tuesdays. The old man had seemed so strange, feigning blindness, to what end I didn’t know, but I kept the card. It would add bulk to the lunchroom fodder I’d tell later that afternoon.

“Will you check it out?” Moira asked. She worked reception. “Two for one today.” Obviously, she enjoyed the story.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. I hadn’t really considered it.

“But you have to. Then you have to tell us how it ends,” Moira said, and I admit that the only reason that I went was to impress her with another tale. I assumed it would end with a bland dropping off and picking up.

—

At four o’clock, the garage called: I could pick up my car before 5:00 PM or wait until tomorrow, which killed my plan to stay late. I took a cab across the city—$29—and picked up my car. I drove straight home after that, and upon emptying my pockets, I came across the card again. I pondered a moment and then rounded up a suit fit for the cleaners. The address was on the outskirts of the informal Chinatown we have. Most of the cleaners I’ve used have been of Asian descent and hail from one far-eastern place or another. Why this is, I’m not certain.

I left the house once again.

—

I fed the meter and stepped inside the door below a sign reading: PERFECT WASH CLEANERS. There was that smell again, the smell from the old man. That smell and many more, faint, but there. I began to wonder if it wasn’t just a clever way to drum up business. There was a counter in the small reception area, a cash register and light-colored wood paneling on the walls. Behind the counter a little ways was a door. On the counter was a silver bell.

I hit it and waited.

A young woman walked through. She was magnificent; tall beautiful, curvy, and very dark. Not what I’d come to expect of dry cleaners in the city.

“Yes,” she said, her voice was light and curious.

“I need this cleaned,” I said and handed over the suit. I’d only brought one, the two for one aspect would matter in the future if they did a good job.

She laughed. “This isn’t dry cleaning.” She lifted the countertop and came toward me, almost floating. “Come with me,” she said and took my hand.

Her skin was soft and warm; I didn’t say a word and let my body follow the woman. She was so beautiful I was rendered powerless…or, more likely, too hopeful for my own damned good. But how could I have ever guessed what was about to happen?

It was dark beyond the door, the walls had draping red silk. We passed four doors on our way to the end of the hall.

“I’m surprised you would come alone, two for one Tuesdays,” she said, “but I guess you thought this was something else.”

I swallowed and my mind jumped to a prostitution conclusion. I’d never been with a prostitute before and I admit it, I was willing to pay for the woman’s services. Probably anything she’d ask…she was the most beautiful woman I’d seen outside of television.

If only it was about sex.

“Usually, people bring someone. They take it and pass it on. May I see the card?”

We’d stopped in front of the door at the end of the hall. It was non-descript steel. Nice and heavy, more like an outside door rather than inside. I handed over the business card.

“Oh my, you want to take this all yourself?”

Still thinking along the lines of sex with this goddess, I nodded.

“Very well,” she said and opened the door.

It was a pale room with steel walls a steel bench and a grate in the cement floor.

“Do I just sit?”

“Yes. Sit and wait. I’ll let you know when it’s through.”

I’d begun to sweat in anticipation. The floor drain made me feel dirty. How many other men had sat on that bench and let fluids fall down the drain? It looked clean enough, but nothing’s ever too clean. Too clean is an impossibility when bodily fluids are concerned.

Again, if only.

I sat. Fidgety. Alone in the room with the drain. I heard the lock latch and my heart played The Little Drummer Boy. Pa-rum-pa-pum-pum.

Overhead a vent opened, and I smelled wood. For the next twenty-two minutes, the air shifted scents more than a dozen times: plastic, fire, fur, ozone, grass, coffee, curry, oil, butter, sand, cat, it went on, hundreds of scents. Too many, I could never place them all. And not even a whiff of sex.

—

The door opened and I came out, feeling like a zombie. The woman looked at me with sad eyes.

“I’ll need your credit card, that is, should you choose to clean it forward.”

I handed over my wallet. She slipped out my VISA and copied the card with a slide-copying machine. She handed me the pink copy with the charcoal lettering after I scribbled a close approximation of my signature.

“Here you are.” She handed back my wallet and then the dingy business card. “You’ll need this. Don’t lose it or it’s all yours forever.”

I looked down at the card, it was dirtier than before. There was a fresh damp grease mark near the corner.

“Of course,” I said, sleepwalking.

—

That night, my dreams were scattered. The images rushed at me and it was as if I dreamed the dreams of other people, of places I’ve never seen, of lives beyond my reach.

I awoke still in my suit from the evening before and that gave me further unease. I sat up and stretched, looking at the clock and it would be two days in a row I was late.

“Dammit!”

I hopped off my bed, still somewhat woozy, but it seemed to be passing. Through the house and to the washroom I ran, stopping only momentarily to turn the taps. I stepped into the shower and began the ritual, always the same. As I lathered the shampoo into my hair, eyes closed, I heard a voice.

“When you sleep, I climb into your mouth.”

I snapped open my eyes and glared through the minor sting of the soap running down my face. I thought about what I’d heard, it seemed like a lingering dream. I rinsed further.

“You are a great incubator for my people, last night I—”

“Who’s there?”

I opened my freshly rinsed eyes and turned around twice, two full revolutions before I noticed the black speck on the shower wall opposite the showerhead. I leaned closer, not thinking about the voice, side-tracked by this spider.

“I think I hear my family,” the voice said.

The spider leapt at me and landed on my lip. I swatted it away, spitting, and it was washed down the drain.

Physically I felt okay, but this was messing with my head. Something was fishy. That’s when I considered all those smells I’d endured at Perfect Wash Cleaners.

I got halfway out of the shower. As if from down a great distance, I heard the voice, echoing amid the drainage pipes.

“Free yourselves!”

The TV or maybe my radio, what else could it be?

I tossed the towel over my shoulder and stood in front of the toilet. My stomach bubbled. Suddenly, my urethra felt packed solid. I pushed and then coughed, once, twice, three times. I groaned as I pushed and then coughed again. Three spiders landed in the toilet from out of my mouth and I shivered in revulsion. The shiver shook something loose, and the flow began only to stop after a few seconds. I shook myself, coughing more, thinking that it was true that people ate spiders in their sleep and that I’d have another story at lunch.

“Come on!”

I started yanking and squeezing, stretching and shaking. I felt something lodged inside slide forward. A soft white ball dangled by a thread and then burst open. Spiders ran frantically up my penis and then all over my naked body. I backpedaled and landed in the shower again, screaming at the sight.

“Ah! No! No!”

I swatted and ran the tap as I absentmindedly pissed all over my bathroom. The shower water was cold, but it washed away the creatures. Nature had never violated me in such a way and I felt sick, honest to God sick.

It took some time to bring my heart rate back to normal, but it slowed eventually. I called work, stated I’d be in after lunch, had a household emergency with my plumbing.

I sipped coffee and considered skipping the entire day to visit a doctor. Instead, I did nothing unusual.

—

In front of the parking garage across the street from my office, a slim man with hotdogs was often what I settled for during a workday. This was my first stop.

“Can I get a dog with ketchup and mustard?”

The man nodded as if what I’d said was music. “Right on, brother.”

I paid the buck and took a step back before I bit in. It was as always. A little bit of reliability was going a long way that morning. Until…

Halfway through the dog, I looked down. It had transformed, wasn’t what I’d ordered. The dog fell from my hand as I stumbled in reverse, shaking my head and moaning.

“Jesus. Jesus.”

People were looking at me. The hotdog vendor was pointing and saying something. None of it made sense, so I fled from that half-eaten dog that had become a baby leg, so chubby, so infantile.

—

At the office, Moira sat behind her desk. “Figure things out?”

“What?”

“I said,” she started, paused, and her face shifted. Suddenly here was my ninth-grade teacher, Mother Joan. Her eyes narrowed. “Michael Thomas told me what you did, told me it was your idea.”

I gawked, helpless, the face, the voice. “It was him, I didn’t. I only went along.”

Michael Thomas and I had been classmates throughout grade school and high school. He was a bad one and it drew me to him. He’d stolen a copy of Cavalier Magazine from his father, and we stood in a toilet stall looking at the pictures. There were men and women, and one picture was of a big orgy. Michael asked me if I ever jerked off. I didn’t answer. I didn’t have time to. The washroom door clanged open, and Michael dropped the magazine and rushed out of the stall. I stared at some kid, and he stared at me. The magazine was on the floor, and I looked guilty.

I never told, he never told, but I always worried that the little kid would come forward and rat us out. The single biggest fear of my childhood was that Mother Joan would learn the truth and tell my parents of the disgusting things I looked at in the boys’ washroom, looked at with another boy.

She never came forward, then, but there she was in the office, accusing me.

I ran from Moira, from Mother Joan, out past the hotdog cart and the baby leg in the bun on the ground where a pigeon poked and chewed. I got into my car and slammed the doors. I had to go home, take some sleeping pills, and let insanity’s blip pass me by.

It was gridlock. Every single person on the street, every face from behind steering wheels, and every head floating in bus windows stared at me. I read their lips. They knew all my secrets. They knew secrets I'd long forgotten. If I’d felt violated by the spiders, this was more. Deeper. They all had intimate knowledge of every vile and embarrassing thought or action I’d ever made. I faced forward, shaking. I had to get home and I had to sleep it off.

A minty scent flowed through my dash vents as the traffic moved forward two car lengths. A foot beyond my front bumper, a manhole cover shot into the air. A beastly humanoid with bulging muscles and a deformed skull climbed out and lurched forward on all fours. It continued onto my car, pounding my roof. The metal creased and the glass shattered around me. I screamed again and slammed on my accelerator. When I struck the bumper ahead, the humanoid flew into the air as if never there.

A door of the Buick I’d struck opened and a woman with the blobby head of a squid stepped out. She rushed at me and banged on my window. Ink shot from her mouth and the glass melted like wax.

“Glu bu croo!” she said…I think.

I used my door like a shield and kicked it wide, sending the woman sprawling. People were becoming things, their faces liquid and horrible. I ran and ran and ran.

All manner of monster chased and grabbed for me: slithering, slobbery, furry, scaled. None really got me until claws opened my thigh. Blood oozed and I stumbled. A skinny little thing with shit-scented breath exhaled upon me, raining gooey droplets onto my neck and back.

“No!”

I flipped over and, oddly, the thing relented. I ran and ran and ran some more.

—

Inside my home, was no better. Dust bunny beasts climbed from beneath the furniture, hungry for my emotion, my sanity. For days, I hid in a closet near the door, holding court with a collection of beady-eyed rats willing to argue their case for my body. I lived in my waste, surviving on canned apple juice and dry cereal.

The rats eventually advanced. I begged and moaned, but it did no good. I flung open the door and leapt out, back into the jungle. Creatures of all size and shape. Beasts of film, beasts of figment, beasts of memory, all knowing their roles and gouging bits of my soul with each strike.

“What do you want?”

They instantly ceased movement at the question. The telephone rang; it had for days, but it was the first time in days that I could reach it or bring forth the necessary capacity to understand its function.

It was a telemarketer. “Hello, I’m with Hendleman Carpet Cleaners—”

I slammed the receiver down and thought and thought and thought. I retraced the steps in my head, retraced them all the way back to the old blind man on the subway.

The creatures smiled, seemingly reading my understandings and the spinning of my thoughts. I had an idea then of how to rid myself of these horrid things.

I dialed the number on the card that I’d stuffed into my wallet after my visit to Perfect Wash Cleaners. That number which connected my world to something infinitely crazier.

“Hi, there,” that beautiful woman said, still sounding sad.

“Help me.”

She explained cleaning forward the wash, that the fear had to live somewhere and once it was gone, it was gone forever.

“They aren’t my fears!”

The monsters I’d seen, some I’d never imagine in a thousand lifetimes.

“They are now.”

The connection ceased

“Clean it forward,” I said to my home full of monsters.

For weeks, I’ve battled things I’d only thought existed in fantasy. I’ve battled myself and jumped mental hoops to make everything fit evenly in my mind. I thought of the man and how I’d like to give it right back to him, but it wasn’t his fault, not really.

I called the office and spoke to Moira, trying my best to keep her words alive over Mother Joan’s. This mess was her fault.

I told her I needed help and that she had to come by. It took haggling and begging, but she agreed.

As I watch out for her from behind my blinds, I wonder what I can say or do to ensure that she takes the card and pays a visit to the cleaners.

I will get my life back, my boring pedestrian life. Let Moira find out how that scene with the not-blind man ends herself.

XX