"DO NOT DO LAUNDRY AFTER 10 PM" [ II ]

Part Two — They Remember Their Owners

I didn’t go near the basement for two days. I kept myself busy with work, cooking, anything that would keep me distracted. But every night, right at 10:03 PM, the apartment seemed to hum with something alive. At first, it was subtle — a faint vibration through the walls, like water running through old, tired pipes. Then, gradually, it grew louder. There was rhythm to it. A pulse. A steady, mechanical heartbeat that didn’t belong in any normal building.

Whrrr. Whrrr. Whrrr.

I tried to tell myself it was just the old plumbing settling, a coincidence, my imagination feeding on itself. But on the third night, curiosity — or maybe foolishness — overcame caution. I pressed my ear to the wall. The sound wasn’t flowing inside the pipes at all. It came from below, from the basement. The laundry room. The place I had promised myself I would never approach again.

I hadn’t even realized I was holding my breath until I let it out slowly, shakily. The air itself seemed heavier near the door, charged with something almost tangible.

The next morning, I ran into Mrs. Lorenz in the hallway. She was exactly as she always appeared: small, stern, silver hair tied in a bun that looked as if it could cut skin, and eyes that didn’t just see, but scrutinized.

“Morning,” I said, forcing a casual smile.

She didn’t return it. Her gaze skipped past me entirely, resting instead on the faint detergent stain on my sleeve.

“You went down there,” she said, voice quiet, but sharp.

I froze. “I—what? How—”

“People think that sign is a joke,” she said, cutting me off. “It’s not.”

I tried to laugh, a thin, hollow sound. “What, the washers are haunted?”

Her face remained impassive. But the tone in her voice — flat, knowing, without even a hint of question — made my stomach turn.

“You must follow the rule,” she said. “Some things wake up when they hear the spin.”

Not if they wake up. When. The words rolled over me like ice water. My pulse spiked, my hands tingled, and I knew, deep down, she wasn’t exaggerating.

That night, I tried to barricade myself with noise. I stuffed towels under my door, blasted music through my headphones, anything to drown out the hum. But it was relentless. Faint whispers slithered up through the vents. Sometimes they spoke words I couldn’t catch, distorted, almost melodic in their malice. Other times, the whispers called my name. Clear, soft, chilling.

By the fifth night, the whispers no longer stayed confined to the walls. They entered my apartment, wandering through the air like smoke.

I woke in the middle of the night to a sound that froze me solid: the sliding of fabric across the floor. My laundry basket. It moved on its own, gliding toward the bed with an eerie purpose. My heart pounded in my ears. I didn’t breathe, didn’t blink. I watched as it stopped, inches from my feet. Inside, folded with unnerving precision, were the clothes I had taken to an off-site laundromat earlier that day. They were damp. Warm. Too warm.

My phone buzzed suddenly, lighting up the dark. A notification I hadn’t expected:

Video saved: LaundryRoom_10_03PM.mp4

I hadn’t recorded anything. My hands shook violently as I opened the video.

The footage was grainy, dark. The basement stretched out before me. Washer #2 — the one I had used — sat in the center of the frame. Its lid opened slowly, almost deliberately. And something emerged. Something pale. Something shaped like a person but wrong, unnatural. Limbs bent at odd angles, movements jerky and hesitant, like a puppet learning to walk. Then it tilted its head toward the camera. The video ended abruptly.

I flung my phone across the room, stomach twisting, hands trembling. When I looked back at the basket, one of the shirts inside caught my eye. A single black thread had been sewn into the sleeve. A seam I knew hadn’t been there before.

My voice came out before I could stop it. “What are you?”

From the vent above, a whisper floated down, carried on a cold draft. It was almost gleeful, almost intimate — and unmistakably mine:

“We remember.”

The words lingered, echoing in the small room. And in that moment, I understood something terrifying. It wasn’t just laundry anymore. Something had learned my routines, my habits, my presence. It didn’t forget. And now, it was waiting.

I stayed up the rest of the night, sitting rigid in the corner, staring at the basket, listening. Every creak of the floor, every hum in the pipes, every whisper through the vents told me the same thing: I had broken a rule I didn’t fully understand. And whatever I had awoken down there… it hadn’t forgotten me.


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To Be Continued…
(Part Three: “The Replacement.”)