A Hairy Predicament

In “Anecdotal Tales”, stories will be told. Some will be fun, some will not. Some will be great, some will be less so. Some stories are true, some are merely possible. This is one of them.

A Hairy Predicament

“Now they show you how detergents take out bloodstains, a pretty violent image there. I think if you’ve got a T-shirt with a bloodstain all over it, maybe laundry isn’t your biggest problem.” -Jerry Seinfeld

All started off rather quietly in the Fultz’s home.  The two children had managed to drag themselves out of their comfy bedrooms and lumbered out the door to catch the bus; their bellies full with cereal and orange juice.  Mrs. Fultz had done an admirable job of getting everyone except herself fed.  As she scurried about the kitchen, she poured herself a cup of coffee before she drove downtown.  Even Mr. Fultz, the man in charge of the home front, had read his paper in serenity.  He resisted his normal urge to comment on the state of the world or blame the city’s problems on the government official that he had voted for.  Had the Fultz family known what would occur in their home that day, they would have savored the calm environment that was their abode.

As with all instances that turn horribly awry, it started off simply enough.  Mr. Fultz decided that he really should do a load of laundry before he saw to the other tasks that the day held for him.  He pulled the collection of dripping jeans and towels from the front-load washer and placed them haphazardly into the drier.  He pulled the screen out, noticed it was typically fully of purple-grey lint, and removed the obstruction.  Despite Mrs. Fultz’s desire for Mr. Fultz to, “Just toss out that junk”; Mr. Fultz liked to let the pile of lint collect.  Somewhere in his brain he believed that there might be some grand purpose for all that wonderful lint.  In a way, he was right.

When Mr. Fultz slammed the drier door shut and walked away, he didn’t notice that the massive lump of lint was precariously close to the edge.  In walked Fido, the Fultz’s St. Bernard.  Fido was feeling excitable and shook his body back and forth vigorously, sending heaps of dog hair flying into the air.  Fido then skipped off to play elsewhere, and so there were no witnesses for anything that happened next.

The dog hair flying, the lint collection being jostled, and the resident static electricity that was created and passed on by Fido’s tail-wagging all culminated in something new.  Through some fluke of science, the two masses collided with each other and were combined with a flash of blue-white light.  Thanks to the laundry machine and Fido, a new creature had obtained intelligence.

The hair-lint creature had been brought to life just like Frankenstein, but with less purpose.  As it half floated, half bounded away from the laundry room, the hair-lint creature paused to wish for legs.  Creatures made up of discarded animal hair and fabric remnants were not afforded the luxury of limbs.  The hair-lint creature would simply have to bounce and float around the best that it could.

Then the creature realized that it didn’t have a stomach to digest food in.  It was doomed to forever be hungry.  The hair-lint creature opened up an orifice to create a small mouth, and growled angrily.  The idea of perpetually unmet cravings turned the hair-lint creature into a displeased monster.  It decided that it if couldn’t have what it wanted, then misery would be its mission.  And the easiest way to cause misery was to be an obnoxious force of nature.   The hair-lint monster decided that for it to be truly threatening, it would have to consume more mass.

Led on by some sort of cotton-fabricated instinct; the creature bounded into the bedroom.  There the monster felt the presence of many other cloth-creations.  A veritable buffet was laid out of for the creature and it partook greedily.  First it consumed the comforter, then the sheets.  The pillows were next, even though it had to spit out the buttons from the pillow cases.  It started in on the mattress, but the taste of metal and wood drove the monster away in disgust.  It could sense that there was more fabric to be consumed.  However without arms, let alone opposable thumbs, the hair-lint creature was unable to pull the drawers open.  It was now seven times larger, thanks to the fabrics that had increased its mass.  However bigger does not always mean more capable of delicate tasks requiring coordination.  The monster decided to hunt down Mr. Fultz.  He would be forced to fetch the creature more fabrics.

Mr. Fultz sat at the dining table working on the jumble when he heard Fido growling.  He looked up to see a giant bundle of cloth coming towards him.  It resembled an oyster from a puppet-movie turned on its side, only without the beady eyes or pleasant personality.  As the creature approached, Mr. Fultz could see that it wasn’t entirely grey.  It was made up of a variety of colors, and he thought he even saw a few purple daisies from his pillow cases mixed in there.  Whatever color it was, it was coming straight for Mr. Fultz.

Fid continued to bark, but the dog’s bravery was only an act.  Somehow the canine sensed that part of him was residing within the creature, and Fido was afraid that it would try and devour him for the rest of the fur.  While Fido barked from underneath the kitchen, Mr. Fultz looked for something to defend himself with.

He ran to the closet and found a broom.  When he thrust it at the creature, it only reincorporated itself around the wooden object. When Mr. Fultz swatted the bristles and jostled the broom head around, the creature’s form scattered, but then it solidified again when the broom was removed.  Mr. Fultz tried a steak knife, but that was like trying to stab a layer of fog.  All the while, the creature was getting closer and closer.  Mr. Fultz knew he would have to stop the monster, and soon.

More out of desperation than logic, Mr. Fultz grabbed for the extending hose at the top of the sink.  He threw the water on full blast and shot little streams of water straight at the advancing enemy.  To his great relief, it produced immediate results.

The sparks of life in the monster began to break down.  The hair-lint creature that had been held together by electricity and static charge soon found itself negated.  It moaned at its defeat.  In less than a minute, the once proud monster was turned into a damp pile of cotton and polyester.  With the crackle of life removed, the intelligence sputtered out.

Mr. Fultz let go of the extender hose and watched as it halfway recoiled back into the sink.  He knew he should reach up and turn off the faucet, but first he needed to catch his breath.  Fido walked up to the pile of fabric cautiously and sniffed at it, never getting too close.  Mr. Fultz shook his head in amazement.  He realized the old saying was true; deadly accidents really did happen in the home.

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