The day's sunlight quickly vanishes behind a wall of storm clouds, sending a gloomy chilliness over the city. Fat rain drops begin to pour down on an old neighborhood.
People hurried along the wet sidewalks, hiding themselves underneath umbrellas as thunder rumbled in the sky. Wheels of cars sloshed through, developing rain puddles in the road.
A chubby woman opens a dryer, pulling out warm clean clothes, and piles them onto a counter top.
She gazes through the windows at the damp weather outside, feeling glad she was safe and dry inside the Laundromat. Her thick hands begin to fold the clothes, stacking them neatly into piles.
On the ceiling, the bright florescent lights suddenly start to flicker. She looks up from her folding and the flickering instantly stops. She shrugs, thinking not much of it. She figures it must be an electricity problem due to the storm.
She continues with her folding, but soon a feeling of uneasiness washes over her. Hairs on the back of her neck rise up.
Once again, she glances up, turning herself completely around to observe the room. She was the only one there. The Laundromat was quiet except for two humming dryers busily spinning clothes. Her eyebrows furrow with confusion. She could of sworn she felt someone else's presence.
Exhaling, she shakes her head, laughing at herself for feeling so spooked over nothing. Turning back to the counter, she begins to fold her clothes with a greater speed.
The florescent lights start to flicker again. The woman tries to ignore it. Her shaky hands fold as quickly as they can. The sounds of thunder crackle and rumble on outside.
The florescent lights flicker faster and faster, soon creating an erratic strobe effect. The woman can no longer take anymore. With fear consuming her, she decides to leave.
Moving away from the counter to grab her laundry basket, she gasps loudly in horror over the unbelievable sight displaying itself in front of her. A stack of her folded clothes hovering, just floating there, bobbing up and down in midair.
The woman's eyes widen and her mouth drops, releasing a blood-curdling scream. "AAAAHHHHHEEEE!"
Her hands quickly reach into her shirt collar, whipping out a necklace with a crucifix dangling at the end. She then begins to franticly mumble a prayer in Spanish.
Her wide eyes watch as her folded clothes drift through the air and land gently onto the counter next to her.
"AAAAAHHHHEEE!" The woman screams again. And with that, she bolts for the door, knocking a box of laundry detergent over, spilling powdered soap across the floor.
Screaming words in Spanish, she runs psychotically down the street in the rain.
The stack of folded clothes sat peacefully on the countertop. The florescent lights glowed normally. The two dryers continue to hum and spin clothes. The room was quiet and normal once again.
High up in the corner of the ceiling was a small orb of pink mist, which rested along the ceiling beams.
"I was only trying to help that lady," the mist told itself. "Now cops are going to show up. They always do. Why do the living get so scared?"
The mist evaporates into the ceiling, coming out through the other side to an attic space of some sort.
Wires were strung along the wooden beams and rats scurried back and forth among gaping holes in the walls.
The mist lowers itself down on the wooden planks, where it morphs into a translucent figure of a young lady. An aura of pink still hazed around her.
She brings her knees up to her chest and hugs them in place where she sits in thought.
Unlike other spirits, she knew exactly what she was. A ghost...a very, very lonely ghost.
She lays her head down against the top of her knees. A lonely ghost that somehow got to keep her consciousness, her ability to think and feel. She has yet to find another ghost like herself.
The ghosts she has encountered have all seemed aloof, dumb or wild. Some ghosts even seem be in some sort of trance-like state, only re-enacting certain actions over and over again, like their deaths or something they loved to do when they were alive.
Ghosts are hard to communicate with. Even as a ghost, it's hard to connect with them. The living, she hoped, would be easier to connect to, but every attempt has failed miserably. The living are too terrified to acknowledge a ghost, even a friendly ghost like herself.
Tears begin to form in her eyes. If only she could talk to someone. Anyone.
"It t'was in here! Here! I saw my clothes dance in da air!"
The pink ghost lifts up her head over the voices coming through the walls. "Oh great. What trouble did I cause now?" the ghost says to herself. She morphs into a mass of mist and looks through the floor to the Laundromat below.
"I was folding ma clothes here and that's when I see it!"
"What exactly did you see, ma am?"
"Nothing! That is what scary. My clothes...they move on their own!"
"Can you describe what your clothes did, ma am?"
"They folded on own and then move through air, then land on da counter next to me!" she explains emotionally.
"Relax ma am. We're here to help. We'll get down to the bottom of this."
"Oh...oh okay den." The women stands out of the way of the four men in weird jumpsuits beginning to examine the Laundromat.
The pink mist watches from above. Who were these strange men? These guys didn't look like cops.
"So a haunted Laundromat, huh?." the dark-skinned man snickers.
"Maybe some kind of poltergeist?" the man wearing glasses asks out loud.
"Could be, but I think this could also be some kind of an intelligent haunting," the chubby man adds.
"Well, I don't know about it being intelligent, Ray. I mean, this thing likes to spend its time in Laundromats," the sarcastic sounding man jokes.
"What I mean by intelligent is the spirit is obviously trying to communicate," Ray explains.
"By doing that woman's laundry." the man in the glasses adds as he pulls out an odd blinking object.
The pink mist watches the men with curiosity.
"Sounds like a ghost I wanna have haunting me," the dark-skinned man jokes.
The odd object in the glasses wearing man's hand begins to blink like crazy.
"Something's definitely here," he warns everybody.
The pink mist flies along the ceiling to watch closer.
"Are they looking for me?" she ponders. A sudden feeling of excitement and hope fills her.
The man holds out the blinking object, scanning the room with it. The lights blink faster and faster as he aims the object upward in her direction.
"It's somewhere up there."
The men all look upward.
"Hello? Ghost? I have socks here that need folding," the sarcastic man calls out.
"This is my chance," the ghost tells herself. "Actual living people want to contact me!"
Bravely she lowers herself down to allow them to view her. The men's eyes widen in wonder and shock as they spot the pink orb coming slowly toward them. She allows herself to loosen, letting her orb fan out into a bright pink mist.
The men suddenly get spooked.
"Get it!" one of them yells.
They all reach for their gun-looking hoses strapped to their backs and begin to fire fast streams of hot light at her.
She screams as she shrinks back up into an orb, flying around the room to get away. The men also move, chasing her with their stream blasts, shooting in all directions, damaging the room.
"What's happening? Why are they attacking me?!" She flies over and around the men's blasts. They holler and shout as they scramble to catch her. The woman watches from the doorway in stunned shock.
"I'm outta here!" the ghost squeals, trying to fly up to her ceiling hideaway when suddenly she can no longer move.
"I got it!"
"Good job, Ray! Hold it steady!"
One of the men slides a metal box connected to a long cord across the floor, aiming it underneath her.
She feels the powerful stream of energy hold around her, dragging her downward like quicksand.
"Wha...what's happening?!" Her little pink orb self desperately tries to get away but cannot.
She can see the metal box open with a clank and the next thing she knows, she's inside the box.
Trapped and scared, she pushes against the top of the box, but nothing budges. From inside she can hear the men cheer and congratulate themselves. The woman also cries with appreciation.
The box tilts as someone lifts it up off the ground by its cord. The pink orb tumbles inside the walls of the box.
"Well, another day's work completed."
"Yeah, let's get this thing put away and get some food."
"Italian?"
"Nah."
"Mexican?
"Too spicy"
"Chinese?"
"Sounds good to me."
The orb franticly bounces around inside. What do they mean 'put me away?!'
The box sways around, swinging back and forth in the sarcastic man's hand. He holds the box up by the wire like a dangling fish on a hook.
"Whoa! We got a lively one here," he chuckles.
Ray opens the car doors, helping Peter load in the jumpy ghost box. Ray stares at the box from behind Peter's shoulder. For some strange reason, he feels kind of sorry for it.
"Alright, let's get going. I'm starving!" Peter slaps Ray's shoulder.
The orb feels the rumble of the car's engine as they speed down the streets.
She scoots herself into a corner of the box. She's never been trapped before. How was this box keeping her contained? Ghosts can naturally move through anything. This box was strange, unnatural. And why were these men being mean, shooting at her and keeping her hostage? What are they going to do? Feeling extremely frightened and hopeless, she begins to cry.
The men all talk casually amongst themselves as Ray drives through the New York traffic.
"Shhhhh! You hear that?"
Ray hushes the men. They all stop talking and try to listen for something.
"What?"
"You don't hear that?"
"Hear what, Ray?"
"I don't know. It, uh, sounds like crying."
The men give another listen but hear nothing.
"I think you need some sleep, Ray."
"It's my stomach crying for food," Peter jokes, making the other men chuckle.
"You don't hear it?"
"No, Ray."
"Nope."
"No, I do not."
The men go back to their conversation as Ray focuses back on his driving, though he could still hear a very faint sound of a sobbing female.