For a place Howard spent so little time in, the

laundry

room took up an obscene amount of mind.

It was not a fun place to be. The route there was through a basement that reminded him of horror flicks.

Once inside the room the air was wet and thick. The smell of dryer sheets and detergent suffocated you. You couldn't turn the lights off: the flourescent kind that brought out the harshest shadows in people, which was probably all for the better.

While inside, the unlatching sound of the stainless steel door handle would at least somewhat startle you. Who was it that would be coming in? It was a heavy door that opened slow, especially for people carrying laundry hampers. If there were people inside you'd see their eyes as you entered. The same as how'd you look at whoever came through the door while you were inside.

Howard liked to get in and out. He figured everybody was like that. It was rare to meet someone who would sit down there and wait. He'd seen it once maybe.

Because of the holidays he didn't expect anyone to be in the laundry room. He had to go there to move the washer to the dryer. While walking through the freddy kruger corridor he thought about how this statistical improbability of running into someone made it even that much scarier. Running into someone while doing laundry on a plain old Wednesday didn't bother him that much. But to run into someone on Thanksgiving night... that made him a bit uneasy.

He arrived at the door. There was no obvious sign of someone inside. He reached for the long stainless steel handle and gripped.