The Cleaning Cabinet
December 10, 1989
I have no idea why I wrote this story. It’s miserable and captures the most desolate parts of my life, and I guess you don’t see this very often. Fortunately I survived and all the worry this created among my parents was unnecessary because it was just a story.
How many kids have felt like this? It is becoming easier and easier to forget our kids at home while we go about our lives and jobs. But what really is going on in our sweet little kids head? This is what I was thinking at the time. I still remember the cleaning cabinet in my childhood home. I remember every detail of that room, the way the dryer sounds when its off balance. The smell of bleach and soap. Yah, freaky huh?
She was dressed in white, frilly tights with a little tutu and shiny black ballet shoes. Her face was a placenta of happiness; blissful merriment in which she fantasized that she was Katy McLaren, the ballet queen. She twirled around her room, her mind off in a faraway world where audiences cheered and whistled at her. As she spun about, throwing her arms in the air to signify the end of her routine, she accidentally hit her knick-knack shelf sending a small, crystal bottle tumbling to the floor. It hit and sent an array of thousands of deadly shards across the room. They struck Katy in the legs and feet, causing bright beads of blood to surface on her skin. The Barbie Doll perfume immediately saturated the air with a sickly sweet fragrance.
'Uh oh." Katy murmured in surprise, awakened from her fantasy in a maze of terror. "Uh oh, uh oh." she repeated as she backed away from the growing, stinking puddle. She just stood there in a daze, not knowing what to do or where to turn, breathing in the too-sweet aroma and hearing her mommy's high-heeled shoes clank across the kitchen and clatter up the stairs. Her mother opened Katy's door, sniffed the air like a hunting dog, and started yelling.
"I told you not to break that! I told you but you didn't listen to me. I knew you were too young to own expensive perfume like that!" she commanded in an I-told-you-so tone as she pointed at the shattered $3.50 bottle, "Now look at it!" She peered down at Katy and her arm shot out and pushed the little girl's head down. "Look at this!" she screamed, spittle flying out of her mouth and lodging in Katy's hair "Go clean it up, you clumsy bitch!"
Katy, now in tears, slinked across her room and out into the hall, her breath hitching in short, sharp rasps. Her mommy glared at her through thick horn-rimmed spectacles.
"Hurry up, we don't want this house smelling like this shit. Run!"
So Katy ran.
She tumbled, almost slid, down the stairs and streaked across her mommy's newly waxed floor. Then she realized where she was and stopped about as a loaded Mack truck stops on ice. She skidded across the linoleum and crashed into the banister dividing the kitchen and the living room.
But she stopped.
Katy looked around for signs of her mommy but all she could see were the flies buzzing around the fluorescent lights on the roof.
"Hurry up you ugly slob, hurry up!" she heard her mother yelling at her from the top of the stairs. But she couldn't hurry.
Not now.
Not when she was this close to THE CLEANING CABINET.
Katy hated THE CLEANING CABINET as much as a cat hates water. It was because of all those strange, noxious fumes floating around it that she was paranoid. Her mommy had always told her never to go near that cabinet. To never touch that cabinet and above all to never, ever open it.
Because she would breathe those fumes. And those fumes could kill her.
So Katy never went near it and when she had to get downstairs she crept along the walls as far away from THE CLEANING CABINET as possible, holding her breath as she went. She even had nightmares about the cabinet. Nightmares where she was walking by it and it's door was open. She could see the glimmer of moonlight reflecting off of the glass and plastic bottles and as she looked at the containers she could see the grim smiles of the skeletal faces.
Then one of them winked.
It always raised the left side of it's face, closed it's eye and smiled a huge, toothy grin.
Always.
Then she'd gasp. She would open her mouth and let go of that breath of fresh air that she was saving and get another, this one of the dirty, poisonous air. Then Katy would feel the stinging pain as she let the poisons penetrate her body, filling her pores with it’s deadly fumes.
Then she'd always wake up screaming.
And her mother would always yell at her for waking her up.
Always.
But she wouldn't look at the cabinet this time.
No, she wouldn't. Not even after dozens of relentless dreams where the same dark fantasy played over and over in her mind. Not even after years of torturing mind games with her mother and day after day of being locked up in her room because she had been bad.
She wouldn't look at the cabinet this time.
So Katy crossed the newly waxed linoleum and stepped into the laundry room. She could see THE CLEANING CABINET on the far wall, suspended as if by magic, and could feel the power of curiosity ebbing within her. All she had to do was to get to the bathroom where her mommy kept the rags.
That was all. Then she could turn around and run back.
She could see THE CLEANING CABINET in her peripheral vision and she couldn't think of anything else as she slowly tip-toed across the floor, hoping that it wouldn't see her.
She vowed that she wouldn't look at THE CLEANING CABINET. She said she wouldn't but she knew that she had to. She knew by some dark, evil force that she had to.
And of course, she looked.
Her head snapped around and she saw in full view THE CLEANING CABINET. It was a pale ivory with a mirrored door.
And that door was open.
Katy knew right then that her dream was going to come true. The door was open and the bottles were there, shimmering in the light of a single 60 watt bulb. She could hear her mother in her mind telling her to hurry and to go faster. Her mommy was always in a hurry, rushing from room to room and in Bob's Discount Mart, rushing from isle to isle almost in a panic with little seven year old Katy dangling from her arm. It was like her mommy was in fast forward all the time.
But now Katy would go very slowly. She would tiptoe and hold onto a very big, clean breath of air as she walked by the cabinet. So she breathed in and closed her mouth. She was used to this routine and was extremely good at it. She had never anymore air in after she had taken that final, huge breath.
Never.
But now, as she was walking as close to the wall as she could, looking solemnly at THE CLEANING CABINET, she could have sworn that one of them winked. It was a simple gesture for someone to make.
For someone who's alive that is.
Katy knew it would. She knew, as soon as she saw that the cupboard door was open, that one of the faces would wink. She also knew that she would gasp in surprise.
She drew in a big breath when she saw that face. A big, breath of the stale, fumigated air. She could feel it filling her, just like in the dream, and then she fainted, collapsing like a balloon with the air suddenly let out of it.
Her body hit the floor with a hollow, sickening thud; the noise a corpse makes as it it is tossed onto the table for an autopsy. When she woke up several minutes later she found herself in her room. Her own smelly, pale blue room. Her mother was leaning over her, forcefully prodding Katy's torso with a mop handle.
"I feel sick," whined Katy, "I want to go back to sleep, mommy? Please?" and her voice raised an octave, "Please, mommy? I feel sick."
"Only for a while. But only after you clean up this bloody mess!" her mommy commanded.
"But mommy..."
"Don't argue with me!" her mother cautioned
"But mommy..." Katy cried as her mother grabbed a hold of her ear.
"DON'T (pull) ARGUE (pull) WITH (pull) ME (pull) !!!" as she yanked ruthlessly on Katy's ear.
Katy was in shock now. She couldn't feel the pain in her ear or the glass in her legs and she could barely hear her mommy yelling at her. What she could hear was the faraway chuckle
of the bottles in THE CLEANING CABINET. She could hear them whispering in their dull, raspy voices over and over, getting louder and louder.
Come to us Katy. We're the daddy that you never knew and never will know. Come to us and we’ll treat you reeeeeel nice
"Mommy lied to me," said Katy, "she said that the poison would kill me if I breathed it but I did breathe it and I'm not dead."
"What?" asked her mother, almost snarling, her breath reeking of alcohol.
"Oh nothing, I was just thinking." Katy mumbled as a rash of premature knowledge came upon her. Her mommy left the room in a hurry, as always, her high-heels clicking and clacking rhythmically on the cheaply tiled floor
"Mommy lied to me. She lied to me about the poison because she wanted it for herself. She said it would kill me. But it didn't. I didn't kill me so it must be O.K." she thought carefully, "It's probably her booze."
Then she fell asleep on her lumpy, chipped bed.
She slept until the moon was at its peak in its arch and until her mom was sleeping a heavy, drunken slumber. And when she awoke it wasn't with a dream, it was with a sigh of happiness. Katy put on her slippers and quietly opened the door. Her room wasn't the only thing now that stunk of that cheap Barbie Doll perfume.
"I don't care what mommy says, the perfume still smells nice to me." she pouted as she snuck carefully down the dark hallway. The light from her window lit up the hallway with an eerie glow and she could see just enough that, even though the shadows were still there, nothing could harm her now. Any other time Katy would never have left her room without first turning on her bedroom light and then the hallway light but tonight she couldn't care less.
Because nothing could harm her now.
She also couldn't take the chance of her mommy waking up and hearing her sneaking down the stairs. She just couldn't take the chance. So as Katy crept down the corridor she didn't even think about the monsters or the eyes that she always saw, instead she thought about the cabinet and what was really in it.
She had reached the end of the hallway and set her slippered foot down on the stair. It responded with a very loud creak. Katy instinctively jerked her foot back and just stood there, wondering what she should do next, and scolding herself for not thinking about that before.
Then it came to her, striking her with the full force of it's power. When she was over at Neil's birthday party last year they all had to creep downstairs to get the extra bag of chips and Neil said that if you walked on the very edge of the stairs they wouldn't creak. And that was exactly what she did, first lowering her legs onto the very edge then crawling down the side. And all the way she was thinking how smart she was. How her mommy had put creaky steps in to fool her but they wouldn't anymore. No way, Jose. She could hear the quiet rasp of the things in the cabinet, whispering to each other in the almost calm of the night.
Katy was at the banister now and she had only a little ways to go. Down on the main floor she couldn't smell the perfume anymore, but it was there. The faded green linoleum disappeared into a paled yellow.
She was in the laundry room now. She had almost made it. Her body held a breath of air in but Katy let it out, knowing now that breathing the poisons couldn't hurt her. She was breathing heavily anyways, letting the air in and out very slowly in long, laborious gasps. She could see the cabinet now, casting off rays of moonlight. The door was closed and the mirror was facing her. She could see her face as small and as pallid as it was in the soft reflection and she looked like a dying horse, its face shriveled to the texture of a prune. Her hair hung past her shoulders in a frazzled, messy clump.
Then the cabinet door swung open by itself. Katy could see the bottles again but now they didn't look menacing at all; now they looked inviting. She thought of all the times that her mommy had gone up to the cabinet and had taken out some bottles.
But to drink?
She couldn't really say but she was almost positive that her mommy drank from them.
Almost.
A tiny flicker of fear popped up inside of her. She thought of how Bobby Cressner had to go to the hospital to get his stomach pumped. But why? She just pushed those thoughts away as she approached the cabinet.
The first bottle she picked up was large and full and said Lysol on the label. Katy took off the lid and poured the liquid down her throat. It stung and blistered but she kept on drinking it. She didn't mind the pain because she could handle it. She was the queen. She'd show her mommy who was boss. She'd show all those kids at school who laughed at her who was the real king of the castle. She was better than them.
Katy suddenly got a peculiar floating sensation. It was wonderful in it's own way. She could feel gales of laughter wanting to come out of her but she couldn't let that happen.
No way, not now.
The next bottle was named Draino and had an especially funny skeleton on the front.
Later, after the moon had descended and the first signs of morning flew up from the horizon, Katy stopped. There was a clutter of bottles around her feet and there were only three or four containers left in the cupboard and the main floor of the house held the fresh odor of cleaners - lemons, limes and pine trees.
Then she collapsed, sliding down the wall like a Slinky slinks down stairs, her face hitting the garbage can with a hollow ring. And she just lay there, not breathing, not thinking. Her heart barely pumping and her liver drowning in cleansers. Her body was covered in vomit and her new, white tutu was yellow and red with blood she had coughed up.
But she had shown them.
She had shown them all.