The Sound of Dirty Laundry

Ka-dung! Ka-dung! Ka-dung!

"Mm-huh?"

Caitlyn groaned as the rude racket wrenched her from her sleep. Lying on her belly, the side of her face mashed up against her pillow, she blinked her bleary eyes. She saw nothing. She dragged her fingers, pulling aside her hair draped across her face then blinked again. No good; pitch dark. To her dismay she confirmed what her internal clock was telling her: it was still the middle of the frigging night.

Ka-dung! Ka-dung! Ka-dung!

"Whuh the...?" She was too tired to mutter the rest, instead croaking a second groan.

Though groggy, she recognized the sound. It was the communal laundry machine just outside the door of her basement apartment. The dated, out-of-balance clunker already sounded like a grandpa's broken down motor scooter when it was washing just a blouse and a pair of socks. However, fully loaded it registered on the Richter scale. This was why there was a large sign attached to it reminding the house tenants -all three of them- not to overload it. The same sign made it clear that it was not to be used after 10 p.m.

Caitlyn rolled over in bed and squinted at the glowing numbers of her clock: 2:00 a.m.

"Ugh," she sighed, flopping spread-eagle on her back.

Ka-dung! Ka-dung! Ka-dung!

Eyes wide now, staring up through the blackness to her ceiling, she waited for the banging to cease. A minute later, she whipped off her blanket and sat up on the edge of her bed. She glared at the sliver of light creeping through the edge of her door, steeling herself for confrontation. In her mind, with a cascade of disheveled hair covering half her face, she figured she looked like that ghost girl who just crawled out of the well. Good. All the better to freak out whoever was on the other side of the door when she exploded through it.

She huffed then stood up and shuffled through the darkness, scuffling past small piles of her own dirty laundry on the floor. Just as she unlocked the door and reached for the knob, though, she paused.

Ka-dung! Ka-dung! "Uhn!" Ka-dung!

Caitlyn frowned. That was an unexpected sound. She leaned in close, pressing her ear to the door. Through the incessant clunking noise of the laundry machine, she heard it: "Ahn! Uhn! Ooh!"

Her brows popped upward as she pouted her lower lip. For a moment, she thought she was dreaming, hearing the beat up laundry machine spouting its aches and pains in human voice.

"Ohh! Fuck! Baby!"

Caitlyn shirked back from the door, her heart skipping a beat. Not a dream. Not the laundry machine.

Holding her arm to her chest, she rubbed her wrist as she thought. Fully alert now, she recognized that the usual aggressive tempo of the machine's banging was marred somewhat by a slightly less than steady cadence. She ignored its thumping clamor. The female voice now held her focus, its lusty moans squelching the clank and prattle of the machine in her ears.

"Yes! Unn!" A lascivious growl laced the cries, now.

Caitlyn's brows pinched upward and she slid her jaw to the side and held it there as she thought. She was still annoyed but a swell of anxiety swept up through her chest and neck till it painted a blush of pink on her cheeks.

After listening to the carnal dirty laundry session taking place just on the other side of the flimsy door for a few seconds longer, Caitlyn finally told herself to just back away, go bury her head under the pillows and ride it out. As she began to turn, though, she heard the woman groan aloud, "Oh, Jae! Mmm!"

"Jae?" Caitlyn gasped, her jaw hanging. That paused her in mid-step. Jae was the new tenant on the main floor of the house, living just above her. He had moved in a couple of weeks ago.

Caitlyn stared at the door again, and cast her mind's eye through it as she locked on to the sounds of the hot tryst taking place on the other side. So that was Jae eliciting those rapacious groans of delight. She sucked in her upper lip, wetting it with her tongue. Without realizing it, her hand was suddenly wrapped around the doorknob again, slowly but surely turning it.

Even as she carefully pulled the door open -yellow light pouring through the slit into her darkened apartment and against her face- she knew it was a gamble that she would be caught peeking. The laundry machine was across a very short hallway from her door, beside the stairs, but depending on their position, it was still 50/50 that either Jae or his lady of the night -or both- would be facing towards her. The thought added an extra beat to her heart.

Fortunately, she was greeted with the sight of a pair of very firm, muscular bare buttocks, tensing and flexing as they drove back and forth with verve. The man's legs were spread apart, his feet planted on the floor for maximum potency of every thrust. He sported a crimson T-shirt, but otherwise everything was on full display with his jeans and underwear kicked aside rather than bunched at his feet, restricting his stance.

Between the collar of his shirt and the tidy line of shaved, black hair, she spotted the top of the ornate sun tattoo streaked across Jae's neck. It's what first caught her eye -one of several alluring characteristics- when she first saw him move into the house. The sharp, stern facial features of the mixed-Asian man seized the rest of her attention. With slender cut eyes and high cheek bones, it was like his face was a clay sculpture just pulled from the kiln, just as sleek, just as hot.

Yet Caitlyn couldn't focus on Jae's face at the moment. No, she was clearly preoccupied by the steady bursts of his smooth butt and hips, the cause of the steady gasps and groans coming from the woman his body was obscuring from her view. A pair of lithe legs perched upon four inches of corked heels dropped down behind Jae's solid stance. That was pretty much all that Caitlyn could see of the woman. Obviously she was hunched over the laundry machine, pressed up against it, absorbing its chugging bumps against her belly just as she took the brash slaps of Jae's crotch against her rear end.

"Oh, god! Fuck!"

And she was clearly loving it.

Caitlyn chewed on her upper lip. She felt tension all over her body, right down to her toes. She had to consciously remind herself to blink as she continued to watch from behind. She narrowed her eyes when she realized that Jae held the woman's arm behind her back in a firm hammer lock. The woman wouldn't have been able to move even if she wanted to, exposed to his aggressive, disciplined thrusts for as hard and as long as he desired.

The sound of the clunking laundry machine and the steady moans of the woman swelled, the cacophony drowning out everything else and sucking her in deep into the lurid moment. It unnerved her to be thinking of Jae this way, to see him so sexually demanding. It dawned on her, from what little she gathered of her silent, elusive neighbour during their passing glances, that she hadn't really thought that he might be like this when he was...

"Oh, fuck!" Ka-dung!

Caitlyn suddenly fluttered her eyes and shook the unexpectedly heady thoughts swirling through her skull, like she had just shrugged off a dark cloak creeping over her. She took a sharp breath of warm air and stepped back. Through the narrow of the door crack, she could see the couple reaching their crescendo just as the washer was finishing its gasping spin cycle.

Ka-dung! "Oh! Oh!" Ka-dung! "Ahh!" Ka-dung!

Dragging her teeth together, Caitlyn pushed the door shut. Back in the darkness, she still closed her eyes and slowly leaned forward, tapping her forehead against the door. She swallowed once and breathed through her mouth, steadying the unexpectedly quickening beats of her heart, and listened to them peak.

Over the groan of the machine, she heard the woman call out with an ecstatic, belly shuddering moan. As the motor cut and the washer's tub rattled to a stop, gasps and lusty coos continued to voice her pleasure. Caitlyn deepened her concentration and was rewarded by the sound of Jae's heavy, satisfied breaths and stilted, deep grunts. It actually sent icy, pin-tip tingles through her skin.

With the hums of pleasure and sounds of hungry kisses seeping through the door, Caitlyn leaned back. Looking aside to a black corner of her room, she could feel the flush in her cheeks. Pausing for thought with quiet concern etched on her brow, she finally pulled herself away from the door, walked across her room, and burrowed herself beneath the blankets on her bed.

Lying in the suddenly deafening silence surrounding her, she didn't sleep the rest of the night.

*

"Hair-dryer," Caitlyn said, her perfectly deadpan face glistening with perspiration.

"Yeah, I know, right?" Krista replied. Caitlyn couldn't tell if her friend was grinning from sheepishness or pride.

As the two of them marched side-by-side on their respective treadmills, Caitlyn repeated, with stern incredulity, "Hair-dryer?"

"Necessity is the mother of invention," Krista said, sweeping her fingers through her curly, rust-red hair then tapping a few buttons on her operations panel. She was clearly nonplussed.

Caitlyn eyed her. She couldn't believe she was waxing-philosophical over sex toys. "This was a necessity? Your weasel dying?"

Krista turned her head and eyed her right back. "My rabbit. It's called a rabbit, Cait, and yeah, at that point in time it was a necessity."

Rolling her eyes, Caitlyn turned her attention back to her own panel. She increased the speed of the treadmill, opening up to a steady jog.

"Striking out with that guy in the bar created the necessity," Krista explained. She shrugged and continued, "Going home and finding my rabbit had conked out meant that my necessity was lacking solution. I wasn't going to go on frigging Amazon and wait for them to deliver a new one. Screw my Prime membership."

Caitlyn chuckled and shook her head.

Krista cocked her brow sharply at her. "What? You've never been overcome with sudden necessity?"

A cool veiled expression draped across Caitlyn's face. She tried to lose herself in her workout for a moment, but then responded, "I don't think I'd ever be so desperate as to reach for the hairdryer. What made you even think of using it that way?"

Still moving at a brisk walking pace, Krista held up her hand and counted off her fingers. "It's got a long, hard shaft. It's warm. It vibrates. It blows hot and cold air, slow, fast, and turbo."

"It could electrocute you in a place you wouldn't want to be electrocuted," Caitlyn said, cringing at the thought. "I won't even ask how you would use it."

"Start with it blowing hot then cool air right here," Krista pointed to the two pert points behind her sports top, "Gets them nice and perky. Then you just move it down to your belly, and then..."

"Alright, professor. I'm skipping this class!" Caitlyn held out her hand as she jogged.

Krista tilted her head and winked. "Then just use your imagination, Cait."

Caitlyn increased the speed on her treadmill. She needed to preoccupy her 'imagination'.

"See that guy over there?" Krista asked, pointing not so discretely at a chiseled swarthy man in black yoga shorts and aqua tank top getting physical with a medicine ball and a woman who looked to be his girlfriend. "That calls for some necessity."

Caitlyn smirked. As she ran, she huffed, "I hope you fixed your rabbit."

"Nope," Krista replied, "Time to get inventive. Still plenty of other appliances to go through at home."

"Don't bother calling me if you get stuck in the blender," Caitlyn said, half joking.

Again, her frisky friend counted off her fingers. "There's the dust buster, the robot vac, the laundry... "

"Alright, stop," she snapped.

"What? The laundry machine crosses a line?" Krista asked as innocent as a cat with a bird in its mouth.

Caitlyn frowned as she ran, staring ahead. "My machine's a bit of a clunker," she grumbled.

"Even better!" Krista didn't miss a beat. "Imagine pressing up against it as it shimmied and rattled. The warmth and smell of soiled laundry getting a vigorous cleaning in an old, beat up laundry machine. Thump! Thump! Thump! It would be a literal, figurative, and aural banging."

Normally, Caitlyn would be thinking just how weird her friend was right now. Yet, no matter hard she ran, she couldn't get away from her. Instead, her distant gaze was filled with other thoughts and visions.

"Bent over it as it hits the spin cycle," Krista continued, "Imagining some guy just screwing the shit out of you from behind just as the machine starts to rattle and thump beneath you. Christ, it'd be like you were being double-teamed."

Caitlyn's heart was racing now as she huffed and puffed, feeling her feet fly beneath her. She slapped at the control panel till she hit the 'Stop' button. After the treadmill quickly slowed to a halt, she hunched over, leaning hard against the rail, head down, gasping towards her feet.

"Nice work out, Cait," Krista giggled.

Still leaning over, mouth open and cheeks in full bloom, Caitlyn turned her head and eyed Krista. "You're nuts," she said, breathing hard. "Nuts and way too horny."

Krista flipped her hair and nodded. "Yeah. I am. Aren't we all, though?"

Caitlyn stood up and undid her ponytail, letting her damp, molasses hair fall to the small of her back. As her friend watched her with a quizzical, crooked grin on her cherry-red lips, she stepped off the treadmill and muttered, "I'm taking a shower."

Krista chuckled and hopped off of her treadmill. She followed her and said, "Yeah. I could use a nice cold one, too!"

*

Caitlyn was lost in thought, gazing at the pavement as she walked home from the gym. The events from the previous night combined with Krista's frank talk about appliance sex gave her a lot of unwanted fodder to mull over. What really was confounding was that most of it tied back to rather intensifying feelings she was developing for her neighbour one floor above her. They weren't the warm, fuzzy feelings either.

She didn't know anything about Jae beyond the physical appearance, attractive that it was. It only had been a few weeks since he had moved in and they literally hadn't exchanged a single word between them... but that wasn't because they were unfriendly towards each other.

As she rounded a corner, she looked up and saw two people standing on the driveway in front of her house, chatting. It was her neighbours, Mrs.Korwin, the tenant on the upper floor of the house and Jae standing by his motorcycle. Seeing him slowed her half a step, and as the two of them looked towards her, she had half-a-mind to turn around. She waved hesitantly, turning her gesture into an excuse to pull her hair back around her ear, then decided to just forge ahead.

Jae and Mrs.Korwin moved their hands with flowing positions and motions, talking in sign language. As she approached, she politely waited for them to finish their conversation. After Jae ended his gestures, he winked and playfully nudged Mrs.Korwin on her arm. The stout woman with mousy brown hair tied in an impeccably tight bun laughed.

Mrs.Korwin turned to Caitlyn. "He asked if I liked what I see," she explained, nodding towards his motorcycle, "and if I wanted to go for a ride."

"Ah," Caitlyn said with a smile. She looked quickly at Jae then back towards Mrs.Korwin. "Sounds like fun."

Mrs.Korwin feigned distaste. She cupped her ears and said, "It's too loud. And the vibration would probably rattle my dentures out of my mouth."

She repeated what she said in sign language to Jae, even though he was pretty good at reading lips from what Caitlyn gathered. It was probably out of habit for the older woman who had a daughter who was deaf.

"You, though," Mrs.Korwin said nodding towards Caitlyn, "Why don't you go for a ride with him?"

Caitlyn chewed on her bottom lip and couldn't prevent an anxious expression appearing on her face as she regarded Jae. There was a complacent, steady look in his acutely slim, dark eyes. He offered her a subtle cock of his brow, tilting his chin towards his bike.

"Oh, ah... no," Caitlyn replied, feeling the pulse in her wrist, "Maybe some other time."

Jae held her in his gaze long enough to trigger another quiet surge within her. He nodded, slipped on his helmet, and climbed onto his bike. Pumping the pedal, the engine growled to life and the two women stepped back as he pulled off the drive way, peeling away down the road with a buzzing roar.

Caitlyn breathed deeply, trying to relax as she continued to look toward the empty road. Then she remembered Mrs.Korwin was still standing beside her. She scrambled for something to say during the second she turned her head towards her.

Instead, Mrs.Korwin spoke, "So, I've called Dwayne about the laundry machine."

Dwayne was the landlord and owner of the house.

"Laundry machine?" Caitlyn repeated. Nothing seemed to be registering at the moment.

"Yes. I want him to do something about that infernal racket," Mrs.Korwin huffed, "Going bang, bang, bang like that. Well, it must drive you crazy the most with it just being outside of your door."

Caitlyn nodded curtly. She swallowed then said, "Yeah... yes, it's kind of hard to think straight with that noise. Especially in the middle of the night."

"Oh, yes. That's what I was asking Jae right now. If he could refrain from doing his wash in the wee hours," Mrs.Korwin replied. "But, you know, he's a busy young man."

"Yeah... busy," Caitlyn mumbled from the side of her mouth.

"Well, at least we know he does his dirty laundry!" the woman chuckled and waved her hand. "I'm heading out for the day. You have yourself a good afternoon."

Caitlyn watched her elderly neighbour walk away for a moment. She sighed again then headed into the house.

Once inside her basement apartment, she dropped her bags and surveyed the room. Speaking of "dirty laundry" she hadn't done hers in some time and small piles of her clothes were scattered around on the floor like fabric ant hills. Even the clothes she was wearing at the moment felt a little mangy despite the shower at the gym. It didn't leave her much to wear, but she did find a light summer dress to slip into. A little odd for a lounge-about outfit, but at least it was clean.

She gathered up a mound of clothing in her arms and paused. She wondered for a moment if she should just go to the Laundromat instead, but the thought of trekking out to do her wash less appealing than having to deal with the brutal clanking of the house's machine.

She went into the hall and dropped her clothes in a hamper beside the machine. As she sorted through her garments, tossing them into the tub, she found herself frowning and feeling bothered still thinking about Jae, until she finally froze.

The image of him silently thrusting away last night over the clamor of the machine rushed through her skull. She snapped her head back as she shook the swelling thought out of her mind.

"Okay, whatever," she finally groused, and picked up the whole pile of clothes and crammed them into the tub of the machine. It would probably end up boring a tunnel through the floor, but she just didn't care.

She dumped a cup of detergent in, switched on the water and dropped the lid. Then she went into her apartment to grab a book to read in the backyard. As she flipped through her collection, it didn't take long before she heard the menacing, low grumble coming from the machine as the agitator lurched into motion. Caitlyn grimaced and sighed as it quickened to a steady, chattering rattle.

As if she were afraid of seeing a ghost, she turned her head slowly towards the open door and gazed through it. She had a clear view of the laundry machine, already visibly trembling like it was preparing for lift off.

Caitlyn couldn't peel her eyes away from it, even as she felt a small lump creep up her throat. She moistened her lips but kept them parted as she breathed softly through them. For a quick instant, she blinked, an incredulous, slight grin slipping onto her lips.