Suds ‘n’ Soap - 1979

From ‘75 to ‘79, the Suds 'n' Soap Laundromat down on Maple Lane in Anchorvale, was owned by Dusty Hooper and his wife Phyllis. They were an odd couple - she was as large as a house, and he was as small as a mouse, both well into their fifties, and both as serious about their laundromat as if it were a holy place. They cleaned it from top to bottom every night and made sure every machine was operating smoothly. No faults. No mess. No problems. 

Dusty even had his favourite - an old dryer that he cared for like it was his own child. Some folk even claimed to have heard him speaking to it from time to time.

Phyllis kept mostly to herself and was easy enough to exchange simple pleasantries with. She’d always be sitting there behind the flip-up table counter with her sewing needles, knitting another patterned jumper for Dusty.

Back in '75, Anchorvale wasn't the ghost town it is today, but it wasn't perfect either. Calling the neighbourhood rough would've been putting it mildly - you had to watch yourself real close walking them streets come nightfall. But there were good, working folk living there, too. Folk who needed to wash their coveralls and work shirts, and didn't have the time or money to trek all the way over to Mickey's Laundry in Plymouth. For those folk, Suds 'n' Soap was a god-send. But at night, when the sun went down and Maple Lane went quiet, the working girls would come out. Away from the eye of Millpond’s central districts, they’d have the freedom to stroll up and down the street in their fake fur coats, laughing, smoking, waiting for VIPs to show up, and Dusty and Phyllis hated them. They hated the way they looked. The way they spoke. The way they walked. They thought the girls were dirty and unclean and they’d ruin the pristine floors they’d worked so hard to clean, and contaminate the store with their germs and sexually transmitted infections.

Most of the girls on the street knew they were hated by them. Phyllis had yelled and threatened to phone the police on them on multiple occasions. She even told one of the girls that she’d throw a bucket of bleach over them if they passed the store front window again. But that wasn’t the thing that scared the girls. What scared them more, was Dusty. When Phyllis wasn’t there, he’d just stand in the middle of the store and stare at the girls through the window, smiling gently at them as they passed by.

After a while, this strange behavior frightened them. So the moment the girls got near the laundromat, where the light spilled out from the windows onto the sidewalk, they’d cross to the other side, like they were avoiding a trap. Like that glow had something sinister in it, reaching out to snatch them.

Unfortunately for the new girl, Maisie, who was just starting out on that street corner, didn’t know any of these rules. Then one cold night in January 1979, she had to shelter from the snow that came flurrying down one night. Her friend Stacey had been picked up by a pre-arrangement only a minute earlier, leaving Maisie by herself. The icy wind howled, and the gritty sleet peppered her bare skin, and as you might imagine, Maisie wasn't wearing much at the time. She lit a cigarette to give herself the illusion of warmth, but the wind snatched it from her shivering lips almost immediately.

To hell with this, she thought.

She stepped inside the laundromat and the little bell above the door jingled. On the other side of the room, sitting behind the little flip-up table, was fat, old Phyllis Hooper in her elephant-sized flowery dress. Phyllis lowered her sewing needles that were still poking through the half-knitted jumper, eyeing sweet little Maisie at the entrance, shivering from the freak blizzard outside. Her faux fur-lined coat was soaked through, and her skinny white legs were trembling beneath her tiny leather skirt. She looked up at Phyllis, and the two made eye contact for what seemed like an eternity to Maisie.

Just as she was about to say hello, Phyllis bellowed, “Paying customers only!”

Maisie jumped, unnerved by the obscene lady who sat slumped in that small plastic chair with her thighs sagging either side of it. Maisie checked the pockets of her coat with her cold, wet hands, rummaging to find a coin. Eventually, she pulled out a dime and held it out. From all the way across the room, Phyllis stared at her, unflinching.

“The machine’s a quarter!” she snarled.

Maisie attempted another rummage through her pockets. While she did this, Dusty Hooper strolled out from the back room, hands tucked loosely in his pockets. True to form, he wore a neat little knitted jumper over a tucked-in shirt and chinos - always dressed in his Sunday best. He stopped behind Phyllis, dead silent, his face blank, just watching.

Maisie couldn’t find a single other coin in her coat. Anxious, she gave a meek smile.

“Can I just sit on the floor here, and wait out the storm?” she asked politely.

“You think this is a brothel?” Phyllis replied sternly.

Maisie looked at her feet and then decided it was best she turned and headed back out into the blizzard. She could break into the now-closed Old Drinkhole on the corner and wait it out there, or head further down Maple Lane to find the convenience store. That was out of her working patch, but she reasoned she was unlikely to bring in much cash if she was frozen solid. She ambled to the door reluctantly and had rested her hand on the pull-handle to open it when Dusty stepped forward and offered her an alternative.

“There is another method of payment,” he said.

Maisie stopped, looked back at Dusty, and watched a sickly smile creep across the old man's face. Then she looked at Phyllis, hoping for a disgusted reaction, but there was nothing; she was as still as a statue, eyes still locked on Maisie, not a flicker of emotion in her face. Desperate not to venture back outside, Maisie let her hand fall gently from the door handle, and smiled back at Dusty.

That was the last time anyone ever saw Maisie alive.

About two weeks had passed when Stacey realised she hadn’t crossed paths with Maisie again. She figured Maisie might’ve met a ‘long-timer’ - someone who sticks to one particular girl exclusively - and started wondering about her whereabouts. It wasn’t unusual for girls to get long-timers, but in their first week? Well, chances were slim.

So she asked around. No one knew. Most hadn’t even heard of Maisie. Then one cold, snowy night, a week or two after Maisie’s disappearance, Stacey was working the street. She was the only one there and felt like company could be a much-needed remedy for the long shift ahead. She saw the glow of the Suds 'n' Soap Laundromat pour out of the front window, glistening on the snow outside. She knew most of the girls would always stay clear of this place, seeing how irate and aggressive the owners could be, shooing all the working girls away from the front doors and windows in case it affected their business. But Stacey felt like she had no other choice but to go inside and ask if they’d seen or heard anything about her friend's whereabouts. What’s the worst that can happen? she thought.

So she went inside.

It was warm in there at least. She figured even if she just stalled for time, warmed those bare legs up for a moment, gave her chest a respite from the biting chill of the whipping winds outside, her visit would be worth it. Sure enough, behind the counter was Dusty Hooper, standing there all proud and smiling. Stacey was happy that his wife wasn’t around though. She’d had run-ins with her before and she could get real mean.

“Er, you seen a girl come in here recently?” Stacey asked calmly. “Short, blonde, fur coat, big er, ya know… tits?” She gestured, cupping her hands around her chest.

Old Dusty Hooper just smiled. Then he raised his left arm and pointed to the other side of the room. There was no one over there. Nothing but a row of tumble dryers, with only one still spinning. Dusty didn’t utter a word to Stacey which, of course, made her a little uneasy. Embarrassed to ask again, but not looking forward to going back outside, she strolled over to the rumbling tumble dryer. When she looked back over to Dusty Hooper inquisitively, he just stood there and smiled at her. Stacey smiled back, trying her best to be polite until a beep noise sounded off behind her. The tumble dryer had finished. She turned, glanced inside, and something caught her eye. She leant in closer and suddenly her eyes widened. They were Maisie’s clothes. Stacey opened the door and pulled them out. She recognised the fur coat. The shoes and the skirt. They were Maisie’s alright. Angrily, she turned to accuse Dusty of doing something horrible to her, but when she did, Dusty was standing right behind her.

Caught off guard, Stacey stumbled over her words: “What… what’ve you done with her? With Maisie?”

Dusty just stared back, that smug grin stretched wide across his face. Then a black, slick tongue slithered out from the dryer behind her, wrapped itself around Stacey’s waist and pulled her back.

She screamed and screamed, yelling out for help, but this tongue-like, tentacle thing was too strong. It pulled her toward the circular opening. She grabbed onto whatever she could, clutching at the dryers on either side, but her grip slipped. The tongue pulled her back again, folding her gently at the middle. With a burst of energy, she lunged forward and caught the neck of Dusty’s jumper with her finger tips - before being yanked back hard, tearing it from her grip. He didn’t even flinch. He just kept smiling.

The tongue was stronger than Stacey. She felt her hips pulled in first, then her whole middle, her body bending against itself. She screamed for help again, but that creepy fella just watched. She fought with everything she had, until she folded clean in half like a piece of cardboard, her spine snapping so that her head was levelled between her ankles, and was dragged further into the machine.

Her screams gargled off. Blood gooped from her mouth and dripped onto the polished linoleum. 

Once she’d been engulfed, Dusty simply leant over and closed the door, turned the dial to an eco spin setting and, like a robot, headed back behind the counter to finish his crossword.

As the snow melted away a week later, Maple Lane was quiet again. Two of the working girls were missing now, and the others figured out quickly that it wasn’t safe any more. They moved on, finding new spots elsewhere in Millpond. Nobody passed through. 

During the dark evenings, the lights of the laundromat remained on, still the only place alive on the whole damn street. Then suddenly, one day in late March of ‘79, it was all boarded up. Just like that. Closed up overnight, blending in with the rest of the storefronts on Maple Lane.

But, this being Millpond, there was one more peculiar thing. The clothes of several missing working girls were laid outside in small, neatly folded piles, including those of Maisie and Stacey. No sign of Dusty. No sign of Phyllis. Just those little piles of clothes on the sidewalk.

If you walk down Maple Lane today, you can peer between the boards and see the dryers just sittin’ there, collecting dust. The rest of the stuff has gone, mind you, but no one yet has been brave enough to go inside and see if the stories about that one particular machine are really true. The town council had approval in 2016 to flatten that whole street and build something new there, but it ain’t happened yet. Guess the money just ran out, like it always does in that neighborhood.