Orange Sorbet: The Collection

1. It Lives In The Sink

TW: death, blood, questioning reality

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It lives in the sink.

It must've moved in the years I was gone. If my memories are to be trusted, it had occupied the bathtub throughout my childhood. As unreliable as it is, twisted by the long, curling fingers of trauma and grief, my recollection is all I have to go by; my siblings never saw it, and my mother is obviously otherwise preoccupied. That means the responsibility of testimony goes to me, and it's my word against the endless, dark and spiralling void. And I just want to run.

Don't let me run.

I saw it twice in my youth. The first time I was no older than eight years old, gleefully ignorant and oblivious in every way. I was a happy kid, the kind who lived outdoors and spent their time chasing frogs I'd found in the garden. More often than not, I would come inside covered in mud and soaked from the rain after a long afternoon of one carefree activity or another, much to the dismay of my mother. Her house was her prized possession, the trophy and symbol of her years of hard work and struggle. She kept our modest condo as clean as she could with three children, and tracking in the remnants of my day wasn't an option. That day she'd been prepared, and had a bath drawn and ready by the time she set me down from her arms on the bathroom floor, rubbed a hand playfully through my hair, and left me to do my thing. And so I did.

I was clean and in my dry pajamas when I pulled the plug, and to this day, I wish I hadn't. Someone would have eventually, sure, but I'm convinced that in that moment, it marked me. And from then on, I would never be rid of it.

At first, it was hidden, the murky filth of the water providing cover, fleeting as it was. Maybe even then, I could've gotten away unscathed. But I was a curious kid, amazed by the smallest, most insignificant things, like the way a pencil writes on paper, and the way one's breath manifests as a thin and cloudy veil in the dead of winter. Even the way the water swirled around the drain as it disappeared from the tub, and out of sight. As I stood fixated, watching the small, lustrous metal plate, I caught my first glimpse of what would become my own personal demon.

It was small, so much so that I'm sure I wouldn't have noticed it had I not been so focused, and red, a bright and decisive red, reminiscent of firetrucks and fresh apples. It was slender too, rounded yet slightly pointed at the end. It looked so familiar to my naive and incoherent mind, as though I'd seen it millions of times before, but something was off about it. I simply watched, my elbows perched on the edge of the tub, as it stuck its wormlike head through the drain, and wiggled slightly, looking around.

I ran downstairs, and found my mother, excitedly and hurriedly begging her to come and see my new friend. Her expression was a combination of reluctance and apathy, and it took a lot of whining and pleading to gain her cooperation. Sure enough, when I finally managed to drag her by the hand into the bathroom, it was gone, and the bathtub was exactly as it had always been. My mother laughed it off, giving some excuse for my apparent hallucination, and we went on with our lives.

Every day, for the next year and a half, I would watch the bath water disappear down the drain, but to no avail. It didn't show itself, and, as far as I'd been convinced, it had never existed.

When I saw it for the second time, I was prepared. The hint of red crept across the dark below the metal plate of the drain, and before it broke the surface, I was sprinting down the stairs, and grabbing my mother's arm. By this time, I was bigger and stronger, and it was much harder for her to ignore me as I led her towards the bathroom. That was the day she saw it for the first time, and as far as I know, she never saw it again. But I've already told you, I don't trust what I know.

I don't remember what happened after I tugged her through the doorway, but none of us ever used that bathtub again. She dipped into her savings, pushing the limits of our budget, but she got a shower installed separately, and the bath sat, unused and off-limits. Life went on. Alex moved away first, getting a job at a high end tech company straight out of university, and Charlie swiftly followed, successfully starting her own auto shop downtown. Soon enough, I went away to school, studying biology, and living in residence. This left my mother alone in the house, enjoying the quiet retirement she desperately deserved.

We all visited frequently at first, but life complicated itself as it does, and soon our weekly lunches for four became my alone time with my mother. Until eventually, we just... stopped. Nothing happened between us, and I still made a point to text her regularly, but I didn't visit and she didn't ask me to. It was months before I saw the house again.

The police came to my door an hour or two after midnight. I was living in a tiny apartment at the time, alone except for my cat, who hadn't woken up at the sound of knocking. Groggy and sleep deprived, my mind took multiple attempts to register their words and select the appropriate emotion. First was confusion, followed by surprise, shock, and, ultimately, grief. We received my mother's ashes a week later, and held a small funeral amongst myself and my siblings. The months following are a blur of shadows and agony, and I don't know what the detective's final ruling on the case was. I zoned out of life for a while, and the next thing I knew, I was on the doorstep to the house, garbage bag in hand.

Charlie and Alex both had partners and kids, a concept I wasn't particularly interested in, or worried about. I bothered them and their families enough to count myself as an institution in their worlds, but my freedom also meant that the responsibility of the house fell onto me.

As she had when we were little, my mother had kept the house in near perfect order, making my job a lot easier than I'd anticipated. Everything had a place, and there was a clear system. It was only a matter of days until I got to the bathroom, and realized, whether consciously or not, that I'd left it for last. And as I opened the door, I saw why.

There was blood. So much blood. Dried, peeling, awful blood. It covered every surface, every crevice, and the smell filled the air with an indescribable rot. I grimaced, trying not to vomit, and grabbed a sponge from my bag.

I watched the sink fill with water, and I scrubbed, slowly and painfully trying to expose the white ceramic to the world once again, if only that. After all, the bathtub was off-limits, and I wasn't ready to leave without cleaning something. For my mother.

It must've taken close to an hour, but eventually I pulled the plug, and, wiping the sweat from my forehead, stepped back to watch the now tainted water gradually drain away. There was something satisfying about the way it emptied to reveal a clean, shimmering white where there had been a mute, solid red for months before. I grabbed my supplies, getting ready for the drive home, to get some rest before returning in the morning.

As the last of the water disappeared into the plumbing, I saw something red moving below the metal plate. I ran.

I haven't been back since. I haven't really left my apartment either, a new one I moved to, to get farther away from it all. In fact, I've only made two trips in the time since I last saw it: once to the police, and, well, here.

I can't tell you why I went to the station, but only that it is the reason I came to see you. There was yelling, and I remember demanding to see my mother's file, that the inactivity on her case was disgusting. I'm pretty sure I was screaming everything and anything, just to see the pictures. I needed to be sure.

There's one picture of my mother's body in the file. She's lying on the bathroom floor, and despite it being in the condition of which I found it, she is completely clean and dry. There were no wounds, no explanation for the copious amounts of blood. The cause of death is listed as strangulation, and with one glance at the picture it's immediately clear why.

Around her neck are two handprints, dried like the blood coating the rest of the room, only the marks aren't that. The markings are distinctly brighter, too bright, like that of a firetruck, or a fresh apple.

I'm not sure if it did this. I'm not even sure it exists, that any of this does. But on the chance that this is all true, I don't think it's done.

It lives in the sink.

Please help me.