A Day Late, A Dollar Short

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He scowled down at the ticket in his hand. Why had it even been in Mandy’s purse? It wasn’t like she ever picked up his drycleaning anyway! She liked the place over by the Greek restaurant—the one time he’d gone there all his jackets had come back smelling of lamb and garlic. His stomach had growled through an entire client meeting, it’d been fucking embarrassing. 

The line ahead of him wasn’t long exactly, but it was enough to make him keep checking his watch. These guys were good, but they closed at six sharp, and it was coming up on five to. Stupid meeting running over, stupid traffic in the bus lane, stupid roadworks—

He thrust the ticket under the nose of the girl at the counter impatiently. “Hi, I was supposed to pick this up a week ago, but my stupid girlfriend lost the ticket. Do you guys still have it? I’ll pay the fine or whatever for late pick up.”

The girl barely glanced at the ticket, looking over her shoulder with a squint. He scowled at the clock on the back wall; it ran a little fast and was showing barely two minutes to close. If he had to come back tomorrow to have this argument again—

She spiked the ticket on the counter in front of her. “If it’s still here it’ll be in the lates pile, go down the back, it’s the rack behind the laundromat’s driers, you read the waiver, right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, knee jiggling and eye rolling as she stood up and lifted the board to let him behind the counter. “Any damages incurred by late pick up aren’t your responsibility yadda-yadda, I write those contracts for a living you know?”

“Cool,” she said, but if there was anything else he didn’t catch it as he bullied past her, barrelling down the short pathway to the back of the shop. 

He snorted as he turned to walk sideways, racks of dresses and suit jackets and coats brushing against him in the narrow space, the thick, waxy smell of fabric cleaners coating the inside of his nose. It was cute when you could tell a small business hadn’t consulted an actual lawyer on their paperwork. He did remember reading something about having to pick up the clothes yourself when you were late, but he’d mostly been stuck on the misuse of the word ‘waiver’. 

There was a mechanical grinding noise as he passed the range of what was presumably the laundromat washers and instead entered the zone of the dryers. The back of the shop seemed to go for an impossible distance. It was one of those ancient buildings crammed in between two other shops that went the length of the whole block, that had probably once been an alleyway.

The rack of unclaimed clothes was right there. He could tell because there was a sign that said ‘UNCLAIMED’ on it, but also because he could see his jacket.

There was a mechanical chugging sound and the rack moved. God damnit. 

Why would the unclaimed clothes be on a rotating rack? Was that just the only kind of rack they owned? His coat whisked around the corner and he stalked after it with a scowl. At least he could get out of here and go home now. 

The mechanical chugging noise happened again, echoing strangely around the cramped space, bouncing off the machines, wriggling its way wetly into his ears. He gnashed his teeth; he hated it when random noises set off his misophonia. He couldn’t even stand to eat with Mandy if the restaurant was too quiet. 

The rack didn’t move this time. Probably one of the ones with actual clothes that needed cleaning on it. 

It took a second for him to process what he was seeing. It was dark and crowded, musty, smelling of dank and not-dry polyester. The chugging and churning continued and he realised that it wasn’t coming from the moving rails, but one of the… dryers? at the back. 

Which was also right where his jacket was! Finally!

The chugging and churning continued and the mass of clothes near the back moved again. The dryer it was coming from was weirdly shaped and sounded wrong for all the ones running in the laundromat—probably why it was back here. Either it was broken, or the stuff feeding into it had soaked up too much of the humidity and needed redrying. Specialty, or something. 

His jacket however could dry at home. He darted forward, reaching out and grabbing the hanger right as it slid forward into the maw of the machine. “Hah!” he said as the metal door clanged uselessly on his arm. 

When he tried to pull it back though, the hook was caught on something. He frowned, prying at the metal door on the dryer thing, but it was clamping down more firmly now, starting to hurt. He was going to have a bruise—oh goddamnit, a waiver, they were trying to claim that if he got hurt on their jank-ass machinery he couldn’t sue them over it. 

He scowled, pulling harder. “Let it go,” he muttered under his breath, trying to yank and loop the hanger hook around to free it from whatever cable it was stuck on. 

It resisted and then yanked back. The dryer growled again, and hot air washed over his arm. It was wet and sticky and he groaned. He was going to smell of cleaning fluid after this—oh well, no way was he waiting for a full automatic cleaning cycle.

He propped both his feet up against the base of the machine and pulled, wedging his fingers under the rim of the sliding door and pulling as hard as he could. Something pierced the skin of his fingers and arm and he yelped, dropping his grip on the hangar reflexively. When he jerked away his arm didn’t release and he scuffled back and forth, wrenching at his shoulder. 

Teeth bit into his arm and the dryer gurgled ominously again. It felt like they were sawing at his flesh, trying to tug him in, and that horrible wet sticky sensation crawled up his arm, hot and grasping air. Lights blinked on at the front of the machine, blinking and stuttering like it was a living creature grappling with the sudden intrusion, and then it moved.

He barely processed the tongue that wrapped around his arm and pulled him forward, not even realising it was what had stolen the hanger from him. His scream was cut off as the jaws clamped shut around him, and horrible mechanical teeth pushed into the flesh of his body, rending and tearing at his clothes with a deep, satisfied groaning, taking his blood and bone with it. 

On the ground outside the beast would lie his jacket’s cleaning tag, stamped with “LATE PICKUP” in red, for a week and a half before a bored drycleaner would sweep it up in the after-lunch lull of the day.