The Haunted Towel.
We have a haunted towel at our apartment.
Most people have, say, a poltergeist in their pantry or an ectoplasm in the ensuite.
We have possessed linens.
It all began when we came home from the bachelorette weekend to find a completely soaked hand towel on our bathroom counter. Now, this towel was not merely damp… no, in fact it was SODDEN, which is a great word that doesn’t get nearly enough play in the blogging world.
When I found it, I asked Catherine if she or Janelle had used a towel to mop something up before they left for Kelowna. And she said they hadn’t.
At this point, I brought out the sopping towel, and we all looked at it with some concern. How did it get wet? Why was it SO wet? It must have gotten wet recently to still be that wet.
Which means someone had to have been there to do it… recently.
Just to be sure, we all smelled it and agreed that no one had been traipsing about our home, relieving themselves on our cloth goods. The towel just smelled like fabric softener. Except wet. Did I mention how wet it was?
So.
Time passed.
Two hours later, despite careful and frequent wringing, the towel was still dripping wet. It seemed to be an endless source of water, like a wellspring or a tap or a Brita pitcher or some other form of water-giving… givingness.
This was mildly freaky. A mysteriously wet towel that would not dry. We decided that it was possessed.
I took it outside to let it dry there, hoping the spirits would disperse to go dampen our next door neighbours’ slipcovers, or perhaps leave a puddle outside of the corner store.
And Catherine and Janelle were visiting on the deck, so I assumed if the towel did anything weird, they’d see it happen and report back to me.
A few moments later, I heard the sliding door slam shut. I half wondered if the towel had come back in to hang out and perhaps widdle on my duvet, but no, it was Catherine who had shut the door. I figured she and Janelle were talking about something super-private and top secret, and continued going about my business.
But then I heard Catherine call me from a crack in the door. There was a cat on the deck, and they couldn’t make it go away. Catherine doesn’t trust cats that just appear out of nowhere (this fits with her fear of birds and mice and other small creatures), so I was dispatched to rid the deck of the feline interloper.
It was a black cat. Potentially summoned by the haunted towel. I coaxed it onto our porch, where it looked at me in a piercing way and purred seductively, much like most cups of coffee.
‘’Where are you from, honey?” I went to check the black cat’s tag, but it reared away from me like a tiny little colt. I tried again, and managed to catch that the last two numbers on the little metal circle are 66.
SATAN CAT. Almost.
I looked over at Janelle and Catherine and saw the concern on their faces.
I looked at the towel, dripping over the railing.
And then I looked down at the cat, who was doing figure eights around my ankles and probably casting infertility spells (TOO LATE! HA!)
I ducked inside to think for a moment, and decided that the best course of action was to fight fire with fire. Or water with water. I grabbed a glass from the cupboard, poured it full of lukewarm H2O, and headed for the deck. The cat was hovering near the towel in what — in retrospect — was probably an evil moment of communion.
I flicked water at it with a trembling hand, and it hissed and ran away.
It never came back.
The towel dried.
But something tells me THIS AIN’T OVER YET.
