Estimated reading time — 37 minutes

I was opening the shift that day. I walked past the golf cart with its flat tire. It was coming up on its 2-year anniversary of being broken. I scanned my pass and opened the door to the kitchen. I walked in, past the storage closets, prep stations, and freezers, to finally meet the sink. While I was walking, I was thinking about what the twist was going to be for the final of a show I was watching, or about maybe going back to school after I saved some money up.

I thought about how nice it would be to leave at the end of the day. To feel the setting sun on my skin and a cool breeze of wind hit my face after being next to steam all day was a feeling of unmatched relief. I also couldn’t wait to blast some heavy metal in the blown-out stereo; it helped to drown out the stressful day I knew was ahead. It didn’t matter. None of my thoughts mattered in that moment. As I rounded the corner of a cooler to get a view of the sink, I only remember seeing the bloody, lifeless bodies of my coworkers on the floor. I don’t even remember picking up a notebook covered in blood.

I was the first to find it that morning. I immediately called my supervisor, security, 911, and anyone else I could get hold of. Security got here first, a big man named Reggie, who gagged at the first sight of the two bodies. I don’t blame him: one was missing half the flesh on his arm, leaving only the ulna and radius sticking through, and the other was purple, with hundreds of small needle-like holes in his face and neck. I tried not to register them as the people who trained me and talked to me every day, but it was too hard. I was in tears with Reggie consoling me when the police came. They closed off the dish pit, covered the bodies, and got our stories. I didn’t even know I had blood on me. I guess I tried to resituate them, even if it was a vain effort. I was cleared, and the restaurants, kitchen, and everything else at Riverside Memories Retirement Community were closed for the day.

Days passed, and no new information came to light. The police said the deaths were murders, but no suspects have been identified yet. The police were still investigating, but the residents had to eat, so the kitchen opened a week later. There went all the evidence to solve this case. But truly, there was no evidence. None of it made any sense. The bar gate out front was open because no one was scheduled for security that day, so no one would have seen someone suspicious come and go. No weapons were found in the investigation, so how could one of their arms be shredded like that? What about the hundreds of small holes in the other’s face and neck? Could Raymond and Grant have killed each other? I knew these people; they didn’t hate each other. There were only four of us in the dish pit. Sure, some people came and went, but we grew to be a small family. Grant hadn’t even clocked in yesterday. And there was the blood-covered notebook, which had ended up in my backpack, staining my clothes.

I only now just realized it, as Maxwell had woken me up from my intense daydream about evidence while I was washing dishes to see if I was hurt.

It was my first shift back, and the idea of having to stand where the two bodies were to wash dishes upset me. There was an extra weight in front of the sink like three hands had grabbed my legs and forced me to stand there. Usually, the kitchen was a bustling place. Servers would run by for extra silverware, cranky chefs would scream at you for entering within a certain distance of their invisible bubble, and overall, it was a loud, yet productive place.

Now it was like a ghost town. Only a skeleton crew was in place. Two chefs who would normally be barking orders had gone silent, the dozens of footsteps and cartwheels rumbling the ground were absent, and even the heat vents above the grills, which normally had a constant hum, had fallen ever so silent.

The only thing worse than being stuck with your thoughts in silence was that whoever was in charge of cleaning the blood didn’t do a good job at all. There were still blotches on the ceiling and high up on the walls. I was holding back the floodgate of tears all morning. In the past week, I couldn’t get the image of their bodies out of my mind. Trying to solve their murders was the only escape I had.

“Jaclyn? Jaclyn?” His deep voice always made me jump.

“Yes, sorry. Hey, what’s up?” I stammered out in an overly friendly customer service voice.

“Your jacket, it’s bloody. Did you hurt yourself?” My supervisor noted. I looked down and sure enough, blood had stained a large portion of my blue kitten hoodie. I had no idea what caused it. The blood wasn’t fresh; it looked like it had been there for a while.

“Oh my God, you’re right. But I didn’t feel anything. Do you think I could have grabbed a knife by the blade? Or or maybe…”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, go wash up and I can finish this set. If you did hurt yourself, go home for the day, okay? Actually, I think it’s best if you just head home. I’ll hold down the fort. Besides, we have a new hire coming in. I want to show him the ropes and try to get another set of hands in here as soon as possible.” I was so glad to hear those words.

“I will, thanks, Max,” I say as I untie my work apron and throw it on a drying rack.

Maxwell had been able to feel my hesitation about coming back. I guess it was pretty easy because I had been silent all shift, staring up at the blood. After the brief interaction, all my thoughts were on the bodies again. Some of my uneasiness was relieved by Maxwell. He cared for us like family. When he came into work the day I found the bodies, he didn’t stop crying. Eventually, he ran out of tears, but his dry sobbing didn’t stop. I didn’t ask about his personal life, but I guess his work family was closer to him than his real one. On my way to the break room, I passed by the obituaries of the residents who passed on the announcement board. As usual, there were about 5-7 names up on the board. Grant and Raymond’s photos were up there next to a few of the residents. Residents’ deaths just seemed to be happening more often, I guess it bleeds over to the workers now. Raymond’s face was a smooth paper brown bag, but what I saw didn’t reflect that. It was white as snow when I saw the body like someone sucked the blood and flesh right off his bones. I started to run to the break room.

I needed to focus on something else instead of the bodies. Calling my friends “bodies” was the best way to remove their no-longer-existent personalities from them. I burst into the break room to get fresh clothes from my backpack and check up on myself. No cuts to be found. I only found the culprit of my stained hoodie when I went to get a replacement. The shirt I chose from my bag was stained, too. The last time I used this bag was when I found the bodies. I flipped my backpack upside down and spilled everything else onto the floor. My glasses case, phone charger, and spare clothes all came out as expected, but a small brown and red notebook fell to the ground with a thwack.

I don’t ever remember seeing it before. It was a high-quality, leather-bound journal with a strap to keep the covers closed. The leather had dark crimson on it. The first few pages looked like an idea dump. There was a list of songs under the heading “soundtracks for a movie,” with one of the songs being “Tangerine” by Led Zeppelin. The next page was covered in blood; the only things I could make out were the words “Game ideas.” There were a few pages with the heading “accomplishments”; most of these pages were empty, one of the few entries being, “Got a job.”

Similarly, there were pages with the heading “to work on.” It was hard to decipher what some of the text said through the curtain of hemoglobin, but most of the pages were filled. One bullet point was circled and highlighted; all it simply said was “zoning out.” After that, there were more pages covered in blood, and then a journal started. Every few days, there was an update about how the writer was doing, their thoughts, and feelings. One of the entries was about the dish pit. It was highlighted in bright neon yellow. Most of the entry was covered in more sanguine, but I could make out what follows:

2/12/25 – “Management Sucks”:
“-Notable thing that happened was the garbage disposal breaking down. We had a few plumbing issues before, which management didn’t deem as a top-priority fix, so I knew this wasn’t going to be fixed anytime soon. I wished they gave a shit about us.”
My immediate thought was that I shouldn’t have this. This was crime scene evidence, and I was ruining it with all my fingerprints. This was Grant’s notebook. The only reason I could tell was because of the fluid English, yet the countless spelling mistakes. I should have taken it to the police. But maybe, I thought, there was something in here that could answer what happened, and the cops wouldn’t show me because of confidentiality and whatnot. I let my nosiness take hold. I kept reading. I’ll try my best to transcribe what it says through the gore:
“These thoughts grew ever more common over the past weeks, and so would the daydreaming. I kept asking Maxwell, but he just said the same thing as before. I always had a fear of not being in control of my body or mind. Probably why I talk to Maxwell so much about my insecurities-“
Insecurities were spelled wrong in the book. A lot of words were.
The blood was too thick to read what was next. I tried to recall any time I saw Maxwell and Grant talking together, but only his lifeless body popped up in my mind. I didn’t want to show Maxwell the journal; he would have probably broken down even worse than before. So I followed his suggestion, and I left for the day. I was going to read through as much of the journal as I could.

Hours have passed, and I keep asking myself why I have this. I feel like I opened Pandora’s box. Most of the entries I can read make me feel like I should have been there for Grant more. He seemed so fine on the outside, but it’s clear he had some issues going on. This journal entry was dated two months before his death.

2/17/25 – “Bad Thoughts”:
“Some shifts while I was cleaning dishes, I would think of songs that would go perfectly in a movie that I had been creating in my mind for the last 10 months while daydreaming. I also thought about what I was going to get from the vending machine on lunch break every shift. Rarely would I think of darker thoughts. Last shift, a thought that entered my mind was how shitty this job is. Sure, it paid well, and it provided just enough to get by, but it was a dead end. There’s nowhere to learn or grow, definitely no place to get a promotion. I never went to college and had to get my GED because I messed up so badly in high school. Was I trapped here? Was this a trap of my own making? That was enough, my mind deemed. I came back to reality to see that the sink was overflowing.”

Grant was older than me, by how much I don’t know. I never bothered to ask. I regret it now; maybe he could have gotten his thoughts out to another person, even if it was something small. Grant was full-time in this place, five days a week, eight-hour shifts each of those days. Before his death, he worked six days a week, 10-hour shifts. The job paid surprisingly well, so there was no reason for him to work so much. Maxwell fought to increase our pay. And so much paid vacation time, you’d think he’d never want us around to work.

Every few days, Grant would update his journal with more stories about, as he puts it, “daydreaming.” They were depressive death spirals of thoughts he had while working. Some were shorter, only describing his thoughts in a few sentences, while others were longer with whole paragraphs. He described it here in this entry:

“Usually, I would put in some earbuds and listen to music, podcasts, or audiobooks. After a while of working, you usually get into a groove, where my body takes over the mundane task of cleaning plates so that my mind is free to wander.”

I hate it when I read that. It was just a sign of more awful things to come. All of these journal entries were highlighted. Here are as many as I could get down that were clear enough to read.

2/24/25 – “Squishy Waterballons”:
“-bodies and minds were one of the few things we had control over in our lives. Well, not really. My mind wasn’t entirely my own; at any time, some disease like schizophrenia or dementia could come and ravage it as it pleased. My body could give me cancer one day if it makes a mistake. My hair was going to fall out one day, and my body would decay, just like the residents here. I hated that. I don’t want to know I’m rotting, maybe at the ripe age of 50, I would-”

It feels wrong to type this last part now that he’s gone. Would he even want his deepest thoughts out in the world to see? Why else would he highlight them? I am choosing to skip to the end of the entry.

“My train of thought was interrupted by two things. My earbud bud running out of battery with a loud, doo doo doop, and a sharp pain in my palm. Damnit. I was letting my mind wander again. The pain was from a knife cut; I must have grabbed it by the blade. Blood was dripping out from underneath and from the hole of the cut on my latex glove into the sink. Maybe my mind was already betraying me.”

I was there that shift, God, and to think I didn’t do anything? I thought it was an accident, not self-harm. Maybe if I had reached out to him, he would still be here.

3/3/25 – “Leftovers idea?”:
“Why do the residents waste so much food? Tonight, almost every plate still had three-fourths of the food on it. I had to scrape it all into the trash can. I could have taken it downtown to the homeless shelter and given it away. I mean, the chefs just toss out all of the bread every night; it’s such a waste. Maybe I can talk with Maxwell or the floor manager, maybe we could start a program to feed people.”

Grant did talk with Maxwell about it, and I overheard.
“No, we can’t do it. Think of the logistics, all the holes we have to jump through, paperwork… just everything,” was what I first heard.
“Okay, I understand, but I can take my car. We don’t have to tell anyone about it. I can take it in some of my containers to the homeless shelter.” This conversation must have been going on for a while.
“No. We can’t let anything in here leave. What if a resident is sick? We don’t want germs spreading to another facility.”
“What about the food we don’t use? The leftovers we toss?” Grant was pleading.
It was silent for a long time.
“Fine. I can help out. We can sneak out some leftover bread every night. Don’t tell anyone.”
“Thank you, Max.”
Grant started walking away, and I had to act like I was doing something else.

3/16/25 – “Kitty poster”:
“Jaclyn put up a hand-drawn Hang in their poster above the sink. She really is an artist. Maybe we can get her to do a bigger one for the place. It warms this cold, desolate room. It’s been keeping me focused. Thanks, Jaclyn.”

I put it up because it was so barren inside the dish pit. Sand-colored popcorn windowless walls surrounded whoever was stuck at the sink. You could forget how colorless and claustrophobic it was if you had earbuds in, but I think the poster brought a little life to the place. I’m glad I made it a little better for you, Grant, even if it was for a few weeks.

3/22/25 – “Meditation”:
“I sometimes put my hand under the sink to let the water run over. I try to focus on just the water running, nothing else. It’s the closest thing I’ve tried to meditation. The warm water slowly loses its feeling after a while and becomes temperature-less. It brings me a nice comfort.”

4/1/25 – “Matthew”:
“The rest of this shift was miserable. All I was thinking about was d-. I didn’t want to zone out and drift away, so I tried to focus on rinsing plates. Grab plate one, rinse, and grab the next one. I guess in reality, these thoughts brought me back to my brother. Grab plate two, rinse, and grab the next one. We both had a bad childhood, but he took care of me through most of it, which he never had to do. Grab plate three, rinse, and grab the next one. I mean, if he didn’t, not much of value would be lost. When he drank himself to death, much more was lost than what remains. Grab plate five, rinse, and grab the next one. The only reason I’m still living my life is because of him. After losing him so long ago, maybe it was time to join him. But I’m scared of what’s on the other side, even if I missed him that bad I couldn’t join him because I’m a pussy. Grab plate nine, rinse, and grab the next one. I would do anything to hide this pain, to focus on anything else instead of being alone, trapped in my mind. Grab plate 18, rinse, and grab the next one. That’s right. I was still in my mind. My attempts to stay focused failed miserably, very in character.”
I want to keep apologizing, but I don’t even know what it will do. I didn’t do anything is what I keep telling myself, but that’s the problem, I could have done… something.

As bad as it sounds, the reason why there were two deaths became clear to me. Grant was severely unwell and was just getting worse. Maybe he did something irrational. I hated myself for even thinking that. Sure, there were a lot of unexplained elements in my head, but at least if I took it to the police, I knew what had happened now. It made sense to me until I realized that the last entry was the last normal one.
There had been a rip in a few pages following it. I was expecting to find more of the same moving forward, but I started to accept that this might have been a murder until I read this.

5/7/25 – “Can’t sleep”:
“I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It felt like it had made a nest in my mind and was resting there, waiting for me to give it more thought. I thought maybe writing about it would get it out of my head. Maybe it only made it worse. I haven’t gone back to work for a while, but it didn’t matter. The thing in the sink followed me ev-.”

What? The train of thought I had was just derailed completely. What on earth could Grant have been writing about? I wanted to read more, but the paper was torn. I checked my bag and found two paper scraps, but they didn’t fit there. The first one read, “If You’re re-,” scribbled down fast and hard on top of a drawing. It wasn’t in pen or pencil or Sharpie like the rest of the book, it was in blood. The drawing underneath had to be somewhere else in the book.

The other scrap wasn’t paper, but an old crumpled-up Polaroid. The photo was of a person, seemingly chugging a can of something in an old carless garage. The light in the photo was a blinding white, a combination of the camera flash and the fluorescent bulbs. It made it so that detecting features of the face was impossible; you couldn’t tell hair color, facial features, anything. The only defining feature was the Grateful Dead shirt at the bottom of the frame. I didn’t pay much attention to the photo and attempted to search my bag again for more paper, but there was nothing.

So I attempted to find the page with the missing scribble. I flipped back to see if the piece of paper matched with any previous page, but found one I had previously overlooked. It was another entry. It was related to an injury Grant had on his last shift. I saw him alive.

4/19/25 – “What I Saw”:
“As I am flung back into reality, the smell of something meaty hits my nose. I looked down at my hand to see an amalgam of flesh and latex rubber. My right hand had been under the steaming water the entire time. I was washing the plates with only my left hand. The latex of the glove melted off, letting the water onto my bare skin. I don’t remember feeling anything at any point, certainly not now. My hand had third-degree burns, and whatever latex that remained had fused with the skin. Blood was leaking out where the skin had taken the most damage. I must have been in shock because all my attention was focused on watching the flesh peel off and fall into the sink. As flesh fell away, that… thing… came into view. I don’t know if I saw the paw or the tentacle first. They were so small I couldn’t even tell what they were at first. All I know is that there was something in the sink. It was black, the same black that Mothman is depicted in. If I had felt the pain, the noise of the scream I would have let out if I was in pain wouldn’t compare to the sound that I made when I saw that thing. The thing in the sink must have known I saw it; the tentacle and paw quickly receded down the drain hole. I staggered back and just wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. What the fuck did I just see? Was I going insane? No. It had to be real. My scream got the attention of Jaclyn and Raymond, who came running immediately.”

The only reason I forgot that sight was because of the more mangled one that was a week later. But I didn’t forget the smell. The water vapor carried it throughout the kitchen. Grant was speechless; we thought he was in shock and rightfully so, half of his arm was drooping and melting off, hitting the sink like a bowl of thick soup. Raymond called an ambulance, and I rushed over to the medical cabinet to grab anything I thought would help. Maxwell came running in after us, but he didn’t do anything to help. Instead, he just started crying, sobbing uncontrollably. I didn’t understand at the moment, and I was mad. I yelled at Maxwell to get it together. I should apologize to him for that.

Grant didn’t come back to work again after that. Until I found him in front of the sink, missing more flesh off the same arm. My mind so badly wanted answers my body began to shake. Did his mind make something up to try to hide the mental image of his own arm melting? Was he insane? I wanted that to be true; I didn’t want to see the thing he saw. But there was nothing to see. Tentacles couldn’t fit in the sink, or a paw, or any sort of animal for that matter. Otherwise, the thing would have to be a shape-shifter to fit in. I had to think rationally. One nagging thought remained as I tried to explain everything away: Why would he write the rest of what I am about to read? He had to have seen something if he had written about it this much. I shook away the dangling thought. I started flipping back towards where I was previously to get a better picture of Grant’s psychosis.

More journal entries popped up, just adding more questions to the pile. More missing papers and more clots of ruby censoring of critical information didn’t help. It was all right in front of me, and yet I couldn’t see it. Something discernible did come through every now and again, like, “What if daydreaming were never something the human mind could do?” or “It fucking showed me itself, like an angler fish.” I didn’t know what to make of it. Of course, I told myself the obvious answer that he was unwell. My fib to myself just made me more curious to understand what he was talking about.

The closer to the end of the journal, the more soaked in liquid lineage the pages became, and the crazier the handwriting. Letters no longer were confined to the lines; each one was contorted into different shapes and sizes. Words were either too small to read by the naked eye or too big to fit on the page. One page was blank, except for one line, which had hundreds of different sentences written on the same line over and over again.

One page wasn’t written in any language I could detect, but it seemed to me Grant had followed the grammar rules of wherever it came from. Every letter in this language seemed to be written with painstaking care and effort. Not even the slightest deviation in shape for some of the reappearing characters. A new feature for the journal. The whole page started to resemble meaningless schizophrenia rambling, yet it oozed confidence about it. It meant nothing to me and my quest for explanation, but it still impressed me.
One page had the word “plan” written down over and over again, with what seemed to be bullet points underneath. The first one read out, “Bad thoughts.” One bullet point read out, “Try smoking,” another, “Try drinking.” The blood was too thick to read what was in the middle. The last bullet points read, “Listen to sad music,” and “burn Matthew.”

Besides Plan, another word was written over and over again; it was simply, “Cut.”

The next pages were titled, “Wake up?” In big, bold letters. More bullet points, one said “noise,” another said “touch.” One line was half haphazardly scribbled out, and it said, “When it’s full.”
My brain couldn’t make sense of it. Every theory I had crafted seemed to be true and false all at once. Everything supports that he was insane, but my gut feeling couldn’t shake that something was there in the sink, tormenting Grant.

I made a violent page turn, and a waterfall of colorful paper and tape fell out into my lap. Sticky notes and lined paper were stuck together with tape and glue. It was a diagram of what Grant had seen in the sink.
The tentacle was crudely drawn in with a black Sharpie. The tentacle wasn’t exactly like an octopus; it looked malnourished, about the size of an index and middle finger held together. The tentacle didn’t have any deviation in size or shape until the end, where it had become a stub. It didn’t have the suckers on it; instead, it was countless proboscis where each of the little suction cups should be. Grant estimated that maybe 100–200 small needles were in each group.

He must have gotten a worse look at the paw he described. It was scribbled down with no size estimates. I would guess it couldn’t be bigger than a cat’s paw; otherwise, there was no way the whole animal could fit into the garbage disposal. Grant drew what looked like talons and webbed toes. For once, I entertained the idea that it was real. The thought of whatever this animal was living right in front of me forced me to dry heave.

I slid the journal away from me and ran to the bathroom, with the journal falling onto the floor. I fell to the ground in front of the toilet and tried to vomit to distract myself for hours. It was all too much to handle.
When I finally got back up and walked back to the book, it was open to a page that was written in the dark, foul-smelling ink that covered the rest of the book. It stated,
“—ading this, the sink isn’t safe to use.”

I stood staring into the sink. It was the next day. I hadn’t slept at all, I was too busy trying to wash the blood off the pages of the book so that I could read more. I just ended up washing some of the ink and lead off. I lost track of time and only realized it when the sun came up through my blinds. I wanted to call out of work, but I needed to find some link between Grant’s book to reality. I needed to prove that maybe he was delusional, that maybe he did harm Raymond. Someone grabbed my shoulder and spun me around.
“Jaclyn?” It was an unfamiliar voice.

“Christ! What? What are you doing?” I was in my own little world when the new hire woke me up.
“Gosh, man, I was just introducing myself, y’know? Sorry, Lady,” said the new hire. I didn’t realize how harsh my words were at the moment; I told myself I was cranky from the lack of sleep, really, it was the lack of answers.

“Oh my, I’m sorry. My name is Jaclyn. You’re the new hire? Nice to meet you! Sorry, I was just on autopilot, I guess.” I ended with a nervous chuckle that made me sound stir-crazy.

“Oh, it’s okay, y’know? I was just asking cuz I think my schedule is all messed up. But bossman is telling me I’m staying here late with him because of an event or whatever pickleball tournament they are running here.” The new hire said before walking towards the board in the hallway.

He was right. He was scheduled until midnight along with Maxwell. The latest I’ve ever been here was 9:00. Grant and Raymond’s faces glared up at me from the bottom of the announcement board. The photo of Grant looked like he was staring into my eyes. I looked for a way to change the subject.

“So, what’s your name? Maybe Maxwell just wants to teach you as much as you can learn in a day. It’s your second day, right? I bet you will like this job! I’ve been here for just over three years!” My mouth rambled out.

“How long were they here?” He was looking at Maxwell and Grant. The question made the hallway fall quiet.

“Raymond was here for 10 years, Grant five.” My high-pitched fake work voice fell away.

“Cool. Bet they got shit done, y’know?” He said as he walked back to the dish pit. I did know. Raymond taught me how to get 4 hours of dishes done in 30 minutes. Grant taught me how to dive and deliver food on the shitty golf cart. Grant also told me about the thing in the sink. I was fighting with the question, was there even anything in the sink all morning. I practically had my head down the drain with my phone flashlight for the first hour of my shift. The idea that Grant was a delusional and harmful person was what I was hoping for. I wanted to punch myself so hard bones would shatter just for thinking that.

The next few hours kept my mind busy training the teenage stoner. It was a blessing in disguise.

“Oh, dude, this stain just won’t come out! Do you think you can take over Jackie? I need to hit a dart.” It was whatever his name was. I was busy observing the blood stains on the poster again. It was the start of a large slash of blood that still hadn’t been cleaned up. I followed the slash up the wall, and it ended at a security camera. It was one of those things your brain never registers until everything else in your surroundings is silent. It was pointed right at the sink and to the drying racks behind it, where I was sitting. Maybe I could get my answer to whether the thing in the sink really exists. The security office was at the front of the retirement community. I passed by it every day I worked. I didn’t want to wait until the end of my shift, but I didn’t want Maxwell to be left alone with the toddler currently struggling to remove a ketchup stain from a ceramic plate.

“I’m gonna go check with Maxwell about your schedule, okay? Making sure all is good!” I said in my work voice. I needed to talk to a normal person for a few minutes. At least, maybe to discuss the camera and what I found in that journal.

“Uh, dude? I just asked for help. And you walk away? Whatever, man.” I paid him no attention as I walked towards Maxwell’s office. I grabbed the keys for the golf cart hanging on the outside of the office door before knocking. A quiet weeping came from inside the door. I paused. Maybe now wasn’t the time to talk about a camera and a bloody journal; instead, maybe a little check-up. I knock and here him quickly cleans up inside his small room. The door opens, and out pops Maxwell.

“Hey Jaclyn, need something?” He asks.

“I’m just making sure you’re okay. So, you okay?” He takes my words in for a second and thinks. I also take this time to appreciate the moment of being able to talk to him. Maxwell is always wearing a flannel over his work shirt; it seems like it would go good with a beard, but his face is clean-shaven nonetheless. The orange flannel he has on now matches his green eyes well. Green eyes that were bloodshot from crying.

“Can, can I give you a hug?” I ask. He sucks on his lips and gives me a nod. It’s a quick one, no more than five seconds long. It was awkward, but for a moment, I forgot all about everything. All about Grant. I hope Maxwell did too. I back off and sit down on the stool in the room while he sits back down on his chair.
“Want to talk? About stuff going on?” I said. I couldn’t poison this man’s mind with the contents of the journal or the fact that I believed that something lived in the sink.

“Yeah. Fuck where to begin, am I right?” He chuckles out, but I chuckle with him. We talked for about half an hour. We talk about life, but mostly about Raymond and Grant.

I share my favorite memory of Raymond, that being his band. They were a mariachi band that sometimes played for some of the residents. I usually snuck out to listen whenever they came. I always sat in the back, and he always, without fail, managed to see me and give me a thank you after the show. He was an amazing guitar player, makes me wish I stuck with it. Maxwell said his favorite memory of Raymond was all of the mustache grooming tips he got whenever there was downtime. Raymond did have a very well-trimmed horseshoe mustache.

Maxwell’s favorite memory of Grant is when he first taught Grant how to run deliveries. Apparently, Grant hit three mailboxes, 2 parked cars, and barely missed an old woman walking her dog. Maxwell was convinced that the flat tire was Grant’s fault.

When I had to share my favorite memory of him, the journal crowded my head. I could see the memory I knew I wanted to talk about, but almost everything in it was altered. The joint Grant handed me at the end of my first shift was rolled in bloody paper, and his arm was still gone; he was using his ulna and radius to hold the joint.

“I just have too many to choose from,” I said. I couldn’t describe what I saw.

“I should probably go back and help the new hire.” I figured I spent enough time checking up with Maxwell and probably should go do something productive, not that this wasn’t.

“Thanks, Jaclyn, I appreciate you.” He said right before he left his office. I was thankful for him, too. I’m glad he was still around. I forgot all about asking him for the new hire’s schedule. Oh well.

Right as the clock it 7, it was time to go check the security footage. I said goodbye to Maxwell and the new hire and headed for the door.

I had yet to lay eyes on it, the final barrier holding back the part of my body begging to believe in it. Hopefully, you know, I was going to prove that it was either mad ramblings or nothing else. Wouldn’t the police have checked it? If they had done this mystery would have been solved right away. I was beginning to believe that this might have been a futile trip. I pulled over next to the small building, got out of the car, and hastily walked to the door of the office, and without meaning to, pounded on the door harder than I imagined. I might as well go through with it. The door swung open, and Reggie looked down at me with surprise.

“Oh, ohohoh hi Jaclyn, you gave me a scare.” He gave a hearty chuckle.

“Sorry, Reggie, I was coming to check something.”

A puzzled look grew upon his face.

“Is… everything alright?” He asked.

“Yeah, I just… I noticed the security camera above the sink.” I barely finished the sentence before Reggie’s face changed color in an instant. He shifted his body just barely to block the camera feed behind him at the desk. Thousands of alarm bells rang in my head.

“Well… yeah? What about it? You know we can’t give out any of the footage, Jaclyn.” He said hastily.
“I never asked for footage, Reggie.” Those words came out of their own accord in a sudden bounce of confidence. Reggie was caught up in his words, trying to formulate a sentence.

“Look. I want to see what happened that night. You’ve seen it. The thing in the sink.”

I took the biggest gamble of my life with that sentence. Either he would know what I’m talking about, or look at me absolutely bewildered. Reggie regained his composure and, with a blank, cold face, asked, “Did Maxwell send you?”

Those four words derailed the momentary confidence I had found. Did Maxwell know about this? He didn’t tell me? All the confidence I had gained in that moment washed away. While my thoughts were running through my mind, my head started a slow, somber nod.

“Hmmmm. I guess it was about time. It’s been hard for us. I’ve never heard him refer to it as the thing in the sink, though. Come in.” Some of Reggie’s kindness returned to his face as he shot me a quick smile. He opened his stance and gave me a quick wave through the door. The security room was small, with barely enough room for a desk, an office chair, a water cooler, and the buttons to let the bar gate up. Reggie grabbed the back of the chair and swung it around, raising his palm and offering the seat. I sat, and he whips the seat around so that my face meets the screen. He pulls out a USB drive, plugs it in, and opens the folder titled “Offers.” Hundreds of video files pop up on the screen. No words are exchanged between us, only one of those hundreds of videos matters to me in the moment. Reggie doesn’t pay attention to the screen, his eyes slyly placed to the side of his skull, observing me. Each of the video logs is numbered, I see one, two, 23, 56, 89, 117, 130, and finally 147/148. The last video log. Reggie’s rotund body blocking me from leaving, tries to give me the comfort that I still have a choice of leaving this situation by asking,
“Are you sure you want to see this?”

I don’t say anything, I turn my head, letting my eyes meet his. Although he is stone-faced, his eyes shake with a quiet pleading. I quietly nod, letting my eyes drift back to the screen. He rubs the bottom of his nose, opens the file, and turns away, opening his phone. The video doesn’t have any sound, and nothing is visible. The light above the sink flickers on, giving the cold metal below a white, sterile glow. The sink is the only thing visible for a while before a small orange glow starts in the corner, near the drying racks. The glow illuminates Grant’s face as he lights up a cigarette. Grant holds up something else to the lighter, letting it burn in his undamaged hand. He doesn’t move while the fire gets to his fingertips. He does the same thing for a few more items, but when it comes to the last small square-shaped paper, he walks into the light. It’s a Polaroid photo. He stares at it for a minute before holding the lighter up to it. He hesitates to burn the image. Instead, Grant crumpled the photo in his hand and dropped it to the ground, crushing it below his worn-out Vans. He puts an earbud in, clicks something on his phone, and walks toward the sink.

This is the first time that I have seen him for who he was, not the body left behind. He’s wearing ripped jeans and a logoless hoodie. The light shimmers across his black buzz cut and bounces off his silver piercings into the camera. His face unshaven and shaggy, sickly black bags pulling his eyes down so that you can see the red underneath. He takes one last toke of the cigarette and flicks it into the sink. Grant just stares, staring for an eternity deep into the darkness of the sink. He is as solid as stone; all that happens to him physically is that a large, singular tear falls from his face. I follow the glisening tear as it falls into the sink, where I finally see it.

The first feeling that washes over me is denial. I try to explain it away, that maybe the sink was just backed up, and that there was a plumbing problem, and some food at the end of the shift was pushed back up to the pipes. Maybe Raymond, at the end of the shift, left something by accident when he was closing up that night. Maybe we served a calamari dinner to the residents? I knew these were all false in my heart. The plumber came and fixed the garbage disposal that day. I closed up that as Raymond mopped, and the kitchen gave the residents chicken skewers for dinner that night. I knew my mind was trying to explain the unexplainable. But as another, then another, then a fourth shape slowly emerged from the sink, my eyes finally let my brain believe. The thing in the sink was real and was currently wrapping its tentacles around Grant.

I started to audibly cry out, “Move!” “Move!” but it was all in vain. He didn’t seem like he wanted to move; maybe he couldn’t. The tentacles looked exactly like what Grant had written down, except they didn’t seem to have an end. Grant was tall, over 6 feet. He had to bend down to wash burns and stains off the dishes. He was standing upright, and the tentacles were already wrapping around the backside of his head. The proboscises all seemed to have a mind of their own, each trying to stick deep into Grant’s flesh as they grew closer to the skin.

Grant still hadn’t moved, yet tears streamed down his solid face. I could barely see the right side of his face, where his pupil was looking wildly around at the tentacles, trying to escape his skull.
Two of the tentacles started to caress the back of his head. They flattened out and sank their needles into his skull. I instinctively shot my hand up over my open mouth, and I used the same hand to block one of my eyes. I forced myself to keep watching. The two tentacles that had submerged their proboscises started to pull apart. Almost like butter, the back of Grant’s scalp and skull opened up, but it wasn’t violent. No blood poured out, no twitching, just a clean slide open, like two curtains on the stage, like it was that easy for a skull to slide open.

It still didn’t deter my body from shivering uncontrollably. The first two tentacles held the back plate of the skull open while the other two started flipping through Grant’s brain folds like a book. The proboscises didn’t sink into the brain, just gently caressed the bumps and wrinkles, like they were following words. Grant’s pupil had stopped moving. I would have believed he had accepted his new possession if the tears weren’t like waterfalls.

The tentacles kept reading his brain for minutes before they seemed to gather enough of what they were looking for. The two holding tentacles slowly unanchored from the back of his scalp. The skull and scalp slid right back into place, cleanly fitting in like nothing had happened.

Three of the tentacles retreated into the drain. The last one of the holding tentacles grabbed Grant’s wrist and started pulling his hand toward the sink. Grant’s statue was steadfast. I quietly pleaded for him to do anything, to attempt to run.

As his bandaged hand was dragged into the sink, up to his elbow, his other tattooed arm started floating up to right below the sink. I wasn’t expecting him to move. He was reaching for something. His fingers fumbled around looking for something underneath the sink. I couldn’t see, but I had a feeling it was the on switch for the garbage disposal. Grant’s pupil was as high as it could go; it was both escaping the pool of tears and the image of his own hand being ripped away. I couldn’t either. I had already seen the aftermath; there was no reason to watch it happen.

I turned around and slammed my forehead to my knees, slamming my eyes shut, only letting the biggest tears out. I swear, I thought I heard a sound in the video for a second. The sound of a click, and then a crunch. It sounded a lot like if someone dropped a carton of eggs, a loud crack with the sound of the yolk being squeezed and squirted out. I slammed my hands over my ears. It didn’t stop the noise of celery when you bite down on it; I knew it was Grant’s hand. I heard the blade got stuck at points, making the same particular sound of metal clunking against bone echo in my skull. I fell out of the chair, screaming, trying to get the sound out of my imagination.

“Jaclyn? Jaclyn!” Reggie had rushed to my side, throwing his phone on the table. His hands felt cold on my back, reeling me back to where I was, and the danger I was in.

“Are you okay?” Reggie reached for his phone, typed quickly, and put his phone up to his ear. “Maxwell, we’ve got a problem.” It was all too clear to me that this was an operation. If I can’t get out now, all I can hope for is an easier death than Grant’s.

I pulled my elbow in and pushed it out as hard as I could towards Reggie. I landed it on his shoulder. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to knock him off his feet. I scrambled to my feet and threw my body towards the door. I slammed into it and ran. I’m sure Reggie had told Maxwell that I had figured out that something was in the sink.

I ran past the golf cart; the thing only had a top speed of 15 mph, if you got lucky. My eyes were filled with tears falling behind me as I ran. I didn’t know where I was running to. I told myself that it was my car. But I knew deep down that I needed to see the thing for myself. He had logs of what I presumed were hundreds of deaths due to the thing in the sink. I didn’t want to believe any of this was real at first, but now, that’s all I want.

The last thing I heard from the security office was Reggie screaming into his phone, “Jaclyn knows! She’s coming straight to you,” trying to make me think that they hadn’t already set up a plan.

I arrive back at the kitchen, out of breath. I fumbled through my pockets, constantly looking back to make sure Reggie wasn’t behind me. I prayed I hadn’t dropped my name tag while running. After a mini heart attack when the first pocket came up empty, I ripped it out of my second pocket and scanned the barcode. The door unlocked, and I tore through the labyrinth of back halls until I reached the kitchen door. I grabbed the handle and hesitated. What was I doing? Most of my run had been focused on the monstrosity in the sink. I gave in to one last argument with myself. Maybe the video was CGI? To cover up for murders?

In this moment of uncertainty, I chose to try to lay eyes upon what I had been living in the sink. Maxwell didn’t matter anymore. All I wanted was to see the dark flesh that took my coworkers’ no, my friends, from me. I opened the door and sprinted into the darkness. I tried to make a right turn but came in flying, sliding on a streak of dirty water and slamming into a drying rack full of pots, pans, and cutlery. All sense of stealth was gone as a cacophony of metal crashed onto concrete. I grabbed a knife and wobbled to my feet. If Reggie had caught up or if Maxwell was waiting, at least I had some defense now.

I followed the streak of dirty water to its source. As I grew closer, the single light above the sink called to me like the pearly gates of hell, a warm, ephemeral light. The light revealed something to me in that moment. What I had been following wasn’t water. It was a deep brown blood. It didn’t stop me. It only drew me closer.
I now stood where Grant had stood, staring deep into the sink. I stared into the blackness of the drain hole, a gluttonous black that swallowed all the light that entered. I stared for what felt like an hour, knowing whatever was in the sink was looking right back at me, studying me. That was all I could focus on. Nothing else mattered.

“Jaclyn!” I heard it, but I paid no attention. “Jaclyn!” Again, I heard it, this time as if underwater. “Jaclyn!” The muffled footsteps grew louder, and the small human part of me tried to look at whoever was calling, but I tried to move my hands to use the knife, but they wouldn’t budge. It felt like they were encased in a ton of concrete. I pulled with my shoulders and got the sensation they were moving, but my hands didn’t move an inch. I pulled my feet up with my thighs, but the same thing happened. I tried to look around, but it felt like a concrete neck pillow was trapping me. Nothing moved except my eyeballs.

My vision felt more sunken in, and I couldn’t see as much as before. I felt myself shrinking into my brain, like a setting sun on the horizon.

I knew nothing was holding me physically. My hands were free, no shackles or anything. I kept receding into my mind until I bumped into something. It was squishy yet firm, almost like my back was against a trampoline. I tried to make a sound of shock, but nothing came out. I’m not even sure my mouth opened. The only thing I could see was the drain hole, until Maxwell came in front of me, blocking my entire view. He was crying, shaking me, trying to release me from my prison. He looked up and down, trying to find any crack to break the wall encasing me.

He stopped moving his head frantically, staring at the knife in my hand. His mouth quaked, eyes streaming tears. He reached for the knife, ripped it out of my hand, and without hesitation, ran the blade down my arm.

Nothing. No pain. No warmth from the running blood. Nothing. I was trapped.

Maxwell broke down into tears. He slowly backed away from the sink, letting me finally see the four darkest spires of another realm coming out of the retirement home sink.

I pulled with all my strength to get away from the sink. For a second, I stumbled back, but it was into the trampoline texture again. I didn’t know what it was the first time, but now it was clear. Whatever was in the sink was holding me hostage in my mind.

I felt millions of small proboscises sink into my skull painlessly, opening it like it had with Grant. Once the back of my skull was open, the thing in the sink used another tentacle to flip through the wrinkles of my brain. It was looking for something. All I could think of in that moment was more repressed memories it could devour. It took its time, making sure to read everything I’d known for the past 24 years of conscious life. It stopped where I thought would be the penultimate chapter of a book.

It removed its needles from my skull, all but one.

It was the first ounce of pain I felt while in its invisible grasp.

It retreated its tentacles, and my skull slid back into place. The trampoline texture receded from my back as an invisible current pushed me back to full view.

Luke warm blood dripped from my hand. Warmth, I felt again.

I looked down, my neck obeying, to see the gash Maxwell had left. Laying eyes upon it finally let my brain recognize my own pain. I unconsciously shot my hand toward the wound, grabbing it and trying to stop the bleeding.

I looked around to see where Maxwell had gone. Not very far. He was staring at me with emotions that scared me more than the encounter with the thing in the sink. He looked relieved, taking deep breaths with a small smile.

He dropped the knife and walked toward me with open arms, wrapping me in a cold embrace that smelled like iron and cigarette smoke. He whispered into my ear through heavy breathing, “Finally. Thank you,” His voice was shaky and dry.

I pushed him off, which didn’t deter his surprise.

“Please, Jaclyn, don’t fight it.” He was pleading, but I didn’t care.

I cut him off. “What the fuck is happening? What have you been doing?”

I couldn’t cry anymore. I didn’t even want to know the answers. I just wanted out of this pit.

“It’s okay to not understand. I still don’t get it all. Everything I know about it is a guess. It brings you to itself. Through any process, it sees fit.” He points towards the sink.

“Did that thing tell you that? And you believe it?” I was dumbfounded.

“You did, didn’t you? You followed its call to this moment. Everything you’ve done was orchestrated by it. It sees something in you.” I let out a scoff, and my jaw dropped, but I never disagreed.

“There are goddamn tentacles in the sink!” I hated how he talked about it like it was a football coach, like it had a plan for me. “You don’t respect that thing. You’re scared. It’s nothing more than an animal! A predator!”

The skeptic in me never left.

Maxwell’s flimsy smile fell away, and he spoke his true mind, and it came out with a boom:
“I don’t want this anymore! I never wanted to be a puppet to some Cthulian house cat! I don’t know why it wanted me. It listened to me, just like you, and it followed me everywhere. I tried to run, move states, out of the country, just away from that thing. But it found me.” He took a moment to catch his breath, continuing with a far meeker voice.

“ It crammed itself into my car, under the hood. It took her. She didn’t even look at me when it went off the road. All focus, torn away so easily. Then, it was just me and it.” He looked for understanding in my eyes, but the only thing running through my body was confusion.

“Whoever ‘her’ was, it was just an accident, and I’m sorry! But you can’t blame it on this animal! You hurt Grant and Raymond! You don’t get to blame that animal.” I was trying to convince Maxwell that this thing, whatever it is, is just a rabid animal. At least, that’s what I told myself.

“Don’t you dare fucking say that about that monster. I never intended to hurt any of you! How was I supposed to know Grant was a water buffalo of trauma? No one ever brings that here to work!” He ranted in a wild frenzy of defense.

“You’re wrong.” But he was so incredibly right. I never saw any distress Grant put out; no one did.
“I was desperate to please it, so maybe that was a way it would leave me alone. So I brought it here. I thought a retirement home would be perfect for it. Years of regrets among the hundreds of residents would be a gold mine for whatever it wanted. I thought that it would only hurt those close to the end of their life. I thought it would be happy. And I was right. I thought it would come for them and leave me alone, though, not bring them to me to clean up.” Maxwell swallowed the knot in his throat.

“What are you even talking about? Regret? It eats flesh and blood just like any other predator! Nothing can eat thoughts!” I screamed at him.

“It doesn’t matter what you think, what you believe, it just chooses those who help it in any way,” Maxwell said as the room fell silent.

Maxwell’s eyes looked past me, past everything, longing for something not visible in the distance. I felt adrenaline pooling in my calves and shins.

“Why me?” he asked as he broke the silence. The adrenaline was about to overflow in my legs.
Maxwell fell to the ground, crawling toward the sink. Whispering, “She’ll understand. She has to,” and “Take it away” over and over.

I did understand.

A dish pit would be the perfect place to house it: easy access to cleaning materials, plenty of drains, no carpet or cloth, just cold tiles. Right out back was a trash compactor. No one would notice the smell of rot if the stench of trash was already in the air. And the truck would come and pick up the trash. No one would bat an eye.

That explained everything in my mind.

Maxwell, someone whom I trusted ever so deeply, was a killer who had a perfect plan for hiding his victims. Reggie, a man meant to protect, was an accomplice. This was all just a plan of two sick men who wanted me to join them. That was the only rational explanation for everything.

I started moving again, away from the sink. Oh, that’s right. There was one thing I left out, the thing in the sink. Maybe I was hallucinating, like mass hysteria, or maybe I was drugged by Maxwell. I couldn’t craft a theory where those fit. I didn’t have to. I turned back one final time to see if I could catch a glimpse of the thing in the sink, to feed my undying hunger. The thing had now revealed itself. It stood on two front legs on the edge of the sink.

The second my brain registered what it was, it let out a shriek. I don’t know how to describe it. It sounded like 1000 voices all imitating a scream by whispering, yet I still felt deep in my chest. Claws ripped deep into the metal, anchoring it. It was no bigger than an opossum. Its skin was smooth and deep black. Wet food chunks covered its skin, making the room reek of putrid wet food. Its tentacles were holding Maxwell, coddling him as he cried to himself, I saw all of the small needles brushing his hair.

I whipped my head around and sprinted. It was the most I had seen of it, yet in the second I looked, I only got a glance. I didn’t want to look at it any longer than I had to.

I couldn’t help but feel a deep foreboding dread in my stomach. I was right, it was an animal, but not from this world. It looked like it was vermin, like wherever it came from, whatever dimension spat this creature out, it was nothing but the very bottom of its food chain. Yet here, it dined on humans as much as it wanted.

I wasn’t going to let it hurt me or read me or whatever the hell it wanted.

I ran past the blood on the floor, past the stench of the garbage disposal, and straight to my car. The sun and breeze failed to give me the sense of relief I desperately craved. I pulled out of the parking lot screeching. I didn’t slow down when I saw the barrier at the security office blocking my path. I didn’t slow for Reggie, waving his arms and trying to stop me. He jumped to the side as I slammed through the bar gate, pits of plastic or glass flying into my face. I didn’t slow for any lights or stop signs.

I only stopped when I pulled into my apartment complex and ran inside to hide within the false comforts of my home, where I tearlessly sobbed.

It’s been two days. I want the police to call me in for questioning, for interviews. I want to tell them about the tapes. I want to tell them about the trash compactor so they can find the bloodless body of the new guy. I want to tell them everything. Everything except the thing in the sink. I haven’t told them anything because it follows me everywhere. I know it’s there.

I turn my head for a second and see a dark shape move out of view, or the light from the lamp casts an undeniable shadow of a tentacle. I see scratch marks on my front door. Birds with hundreds of holes show up on my balcony like an offering.

The same one it wants.

The only silver lining to this situation is that I don’t have to think about the betrayal from Maxwell since my mind was so preoccupied. The hurt I felt deep within my soul is undefinable. Only the sight and torment of an extraterrestrial creature could drown it out.

The truth is, I can’t tell the police. They’d think I’m insane. Maybe they’d think I killed that new guy. I know the police wouldn’t believe me. But maybe you all would.

I’m sharing this story now, online, to get the word out about this thing. I’ve reopened the blood-stained journal to write it all down. Be careful of this thing, whatever it may be or wherever it dwells. Maybe since you know about it now, it will come for you and leave me alone. I am so deeply sorry if that’s the case. And just in the event it leaves me alone and wanders back to his home, I want to extend the warning Grant gave me back when I found the journal: If you’re reading this, please don’t apply for a dishwasher position at Riverside Memories Retirement Community.

Credit: Bradegan_um0

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