Laundry Day (Three Short Tales of Love & Madness)

By Pierce Nahigyan

In this collection of short stories, men are confronted with the limits of their mortality and the limitations of their love.

In Laundry Day, the world is held hostage by an alien force that puts the fate of mankind in the hands of an ambivalent young man. In Theodore & the Red Light, one man's quest for sugar becomes an odyssey of self-loathing when he gets into an argument with a stop light. In Nicholas and Ana, the last atomic bomb is about to be dropped, but not before Nicholas attempts to reconcile with his estranged wife.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pierce Nahigyan
• Release date: Mar 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311577962

Pierce Nahigyan

Pierce Nahigyan is a freelance writer, editor and cartoonist. He grew up in New England and then the South, was educated in Chicago, and sort of fell into Los Angeles. Along the way he worked as a busboy, a bartender, a Sunday school teacher, toymaker, canvasser, ship’s cook, voice actor, tour guide, freelance journalist and failed novelist. A graduate of Northwestern University, Pierce holds a B.A. in Sociology and History. He lives in southern California with his groovy wife and their dog, Nymeria.

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Laundry Day

© Copyright 2016, Pierce Nahigyan, All Rights Reserved

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This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

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Laundry Day

Tom Baird shrugged against the glass of the laundromat on Maple and Fifth Avenue. Hamper in hands, he swung into the familiar smell of hot fabric softener and slight mildew, and knew immediately that the sorority from Fourth was absent––no perfume in the air.

He carried his box of soiled linen between the hedges of dryers and washing machines. Quick splats of sticky protest (the floor was desperate to steal his shoes today). He slid his hamper onto the last washing machine of the row, number 15. He began to separate his whites, and noted this: The dryers were not humming, the gentle splash of tumble wash was conspicuously absent. He was alone.

Outside, the traffic light turned green. Tom sniffed and shrugged and returned to his laundry.

Yesterday had been bad enough, but he’d been wishing for a better year for a long time. It was four weeks, nearly to the day, since Mathilda had moved out. Pieces of her still lay scattered over the apartment (he sorted one of her socks from his hamper and placed it into an ancillary pile). She said he was bitter about leaving Michigan. Actually, he’d tried to counter, he liked Chicago very much. It was warmer, at least.

But you never talk about it, said Mathilda.

What do you want me to say? he asked (a pair of muddy jeans flapped onto No. 15).

Anything! said Mathilda. Anything! Get angry!

But I’m not angry, said Tom. I don’t mind it here. I don’t mind it there.

You’re such a fucking liar.

It hurt him to hear, more so because of its clipped profanity.