So many knobs and buttons and beeping sounds, it’s possible the machine rockets the laundry into outer space to get it clean. Once you shut the round door and hear the sound of water, you can’t open it. It’s locked like the windows of a spaceship or a submarine. Nothing to do but leave the basement and return an hour later. The wet clothes in the tub have never looked so weary, so relieved to see you. This may be why they stay clean longer, why more of them spill from the basket when you walk down the stairs to load the machine. The socks, so good at getting lost, get lost more often. You can’t stop thinking of the word abduction. You begin to stand back, toss in the clothes from some distance. What used to be the most tedious of tasks makes you tense with anticipation. There are blocks of time you can’t remember. The glass door of the machine stares like the mutant eye of a giant cyclopidian fish. Reflected in its glare, in the pause between rinse and spin, the basement pulses with a strange, inhuman light.