Madness

Madness

They echoed through the spartan kitchen in intermittent bursts of watery energy whose sounds bounced off the peeling gloss painted walls. The focus was the cracked white earthenware sink with tarnished metallic faucet towering over the receptacle, unsteady at the base. It possessed a magnetism that kept wild eyes riveted on those arrhythmic drips of insanity in maddening persistent thud that played the waiting game. Above a window looked out onto a wealth of vines, weeds and shady trees that darkened the sky causing the mood to be sombre. The stranger was not here yet, but he would come and always at the same time. The clock by the faded door never lied. Now here poised again at the mouth of the faucet was the glistening infernal drip eagerly awaiting release and proceed with its erratic sequence.

The face at the window came suddenly, fully pressed against the pane, its dull staring eyes probing the depths of the kitchen. The stranger was here, just as the clock said, his grainy hulk blending well with the gray around him and in his arms he cradled a dusky bundle from which came the bleat of a crying baby. With features emotionless he rapped the glass sharply in perfect time with the dripping tap and a scream radiated from inside out. The kitchen’s lurid green walls were closing in with peeling patterns jutting and probing. The baby had now entered, its dark searching eyes had located the central earthenware sink and with extended arm released the faucet to full capacity. An aqueous torrent spilled relentlessly into the basin causing the baby faced stranger to cry inconsolably and hammer the window with hysterical force. Water cascaded on to the grimy linoleum below causing wavelets that swirled with aggressive movement. The baby peered into its hypnotic depths, the room now amok with fervent sounds and from somewhere came the roar of the sea.

The crest of a monstrous wave dominated the overgrown horizon beyond the window, where it remained in a state of suspension. The hysterical stranger continued to hammer the glazing with fists that wrought an initial crack and then a full blown break. The window shattered and fragmented as the poised wave began its descent. The crying stranger reached beyond the shards and grabbed the faucet handle. The baby watched with dark peering eyes before scurrying beyond the closing walls. A squeal of closure emanated from the extinguished faucet and from somewhere in the walls a baby cried. The torrent had stopped, dried up leaving the shabby linoleum as before. The descending wave engulfed the stranger now gone from view, fully immersed amid the tangled undergrowth.

It always happened in this sequence. The clock always got it right, right to the very second. Nothing had changed. There was the earthenware sink with tarnished faucet and window that looked out onto jaded greenery and the peeling green that patterned in the lurid glossed walls. A water droplet was poised at the faucet mouth ready for sweet release to begin its insane sequence of sounds.

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