Tag: bathroom
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bathtime again
Downstairs, I run a bath for my daughter. I kneel down to check the water. When I rise, the old woman is standing in the doorway. She is hunched over, watching me. “Fuck.” And then she’s gone.
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passing by
In the upstairs bathroom, I stand and wait for my youngest daughter to finish. My back is to the door. Given my history, that’s uncommon. As I help her down off the toilet, I catch a glimpse of someone passing behind me — walking through the hallway just beyond the door. I assume it’s my…
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bath time
“Will you check the tub in a minute?” My wife comes into the room, a little cross. We are getting our daughter ready for bed. “What’s wrong?” “There was almost no water in the tub and it was cold.” “Really?” She repeats this again. Unspoken is the rebuke — or, perhaps, the fear — that…
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stench
Over the holidays, there were a number of points when I noted a pungent smell in the little hallway at the back of our kitchen — a cloying stench, like rotting fish. (I do not care for this little hallway. It feels off to me, somehow. There is a mirror of it upstairs and the…
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ragged
Sitting on the toilet in the back bathroom, I hear a sound at the door — as through someone pressed against it from the outside, maybe one of the cats? But the door has nearly an inch gap at the bottom. I can see nothing outside. A few minutes later I am jolted into a…
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gentleman caller
…and while my daughter plays in the tub, there’s a sudden wave of men’s cologne — acrid and sour — that passes over me. My throat closes, I am overcome with a coughing fit. Inexplicable. My wife does not wear perfume. I do not wear cologne. It lingers for a number of minutes there in…