See In Him

5

  That night was a quiet one. Aja wouldn't be back until early morning, Micheal had loads of work to be done in his office, and Jesse went to bed early after finishing laundry. Kennith could hear the dryer roaring two levels below him as it finished the last load. The clothes would be taken out and folded in the morning, Jesse had told him when Kennith leaned over the banister to tell profanities at the noise downstairs. Even from the basement, the dryer was deafening. Jesse slept beside the laundry room downstairs, so Kennith's plan would be tough, but any noise he made may be drowned out by the machine.

  It was eleven when he decided to head down. The stairs took him a whole five minutes to creep down, since he didn't want to chance the steps creaking and revealing his whereabouts, but once he was at the bottom, darkness was easy to navigate. The basement stairs creaked worse, but the noise, when combined with the dryer, would go unnoticed. Once at the very bottom level of the home, cold hardwood met warm toes. It made him shiver. A tiny sliver of blue television light was visible at the end of the basement hallway, but Jesse's snores competed with the dryer in the room to his right, so he decided that he was safe.

  The laundry room always smelled clean to Kennith. It was always warm and droning with the water pipes or the dryer or the washing machine constantly running. Sometimes, it was too loud, but it acted as white noise the rest of the time. Above the washer and dryer was a shelf holding copious amounts of soaps and stain removers, so Kennith blindly reached up to grab the brightest-coloured one he could find. Some of the normally-bright colours were grey in his eyes, while others mixed colours between themselves. The bright red container of a stain fighter was turned a bland brown shade.  Between the partial achromatopsia, photophobia, and slight nystagmus, Kennith couldn't see a damn thing in the bright light and deafening noise of the laundry room. He didn't want to accidentally bleach their clothes, though, so he decided that he better make sure it was soap he grabbed. A sniff of one made his nose burn. Ammonia. Gross. To rid himself of the stench, he shook his head, returned the bottle to its place on the shelf, and grabbed the grey one next to it. It smelt better, like fake, chemically-produced flowers. Most of the bottles didn't have his familiar Braille stickers on the caps, so reading labels wasn't an option.

  The mystery bottle didn't smell like it would ruin their clothes, so other than making a few too many bubbles, what bad could it do? It would look as if Jesse put way too much detergent in a load, left the suds to overflow overnight, and he would be gone in the morning. His parents weren't ones to put up with useless bullshit; his plan was foolproof.

  He pressed the largest button in the centre of the control panel. Thankfully, it paused the machine and allowed him entry to the barrel. The clothes were already wet and just beginning the spin cycle, so Kennith unscrewed the cap, tipped the heavy container over so it was resting on the edge of the machine, and listened to the glug of goo ooze onto the clothes.

  And then the detergent fucking slipped.

  He couldn't help but swear loudly, praying that the dryer was still loud enough to cover him. The splash that it created was so loud, Kennith froze, finding comfort in the sudden (relevant) silence. Then he realized that if he wanted to keep his clothes at all, he would have to save at least some of the detergent.

  With a grunt and a painful stab at his gut, he leaned down into the machine and reached blindly, frantically, for the container. His index finger finally found the handle, so he was victorious until he managed to lean back and hold the dripping plastic.

  It was fucking empty. The heavy goo had been replaced by an inch or two of water.

  "Shit."

"Shit, shit."

  "Shit!"

  Kennith didn't bother drying the container. He slammed the machine closed, pressed the first lit button he saw, and could finally hear the pipes running again. The light was turned off, the door was shut, and the sweaty boy climbed the stairs to the main floor faster and quieter than ever before.