My childhood home has been haunted since before I can remember. Not the kind of haunted that causes strange noises in the attic, and only sometimes the kind of haunted where the lights flicker conspicuously during arguments.
No, the entities that live here are agents of imbalance, self-sustaining in their madness; like a pot you can’t take off the stove that’s always threatening to boil over. An imp that has grabbed hold of something precious and has taken off running in a direction you didn’t quite catch. Seeds of chaos in the pipes entombed by a family’s survival through nearly three decades of both miracles and miasma. Clinging disorder that shrouds itself in layers of psychic fog, an embodied torpor that uses the brain’s natural circuitry against itself.
The very best example of this is the demon that lives in the kitchen sink.
From my childhood and adolescence, I recall memories of dishes piled high, sometimes days-old, threatening to collapse under the weight of white ceramic bowls, peanut butter knives, and lids that don’t quite fit anything. Bloated grains of rice and remnants of salsa jars and paper labels from cans would combine into a heterogenous slime near the drain, threatening psychic damage to anybody who dared disturb it. Newly washed dishes often mingled with dry ones on the rack. Chaos would grow from that plumbing, again and again, no matter how many times my mother fought it back down to the shiny stainless steel surface.
The demon did a great job sustaining itself on a household already destined to suffer from chronic stress—stress made extra spicy with a good helping of neurodivergence and disability. It fed off of the shame and indignance felt by the kids after continual naggings from Mama Bear, and the frustration of Mama Bear that her cubs only ever seemed to nurse more chaos than they could dispel, not yet mature enough to recognize her efforts. I know all too well as an adult that helpless situations beget depression, and depression saps energy; energy that could be put towards real, sustainable progress against the forces of evil.
When we did buy a dishwasher, the demon made sure it was one that siphoned water from the sink’s faucet for the entire three hour cycle, leaving no room for washing or rinsing in the meantime. Attempts to help always somehow further entrenched the problem. What are you supposed to do with horrors that feed in the space between your physical surroundings and your subconscious?
I’m grown now. Fledged. I left the nest no less than five years ago; I’ve made multiple households and communed (consciously and unconsciously) with many demons of my own in the meantime. I’m housesitting for my parents right now, and while the sink is quieter than it used to be, and many stresses have been lifted from this dysfunctionally functional family, I can tell this spirit is still working on me and my loved ones. What is it, truly, that the dregs of this sink demon wants from us, even after all these years?
As already wisely noted by the outstanding poltergeist whisperers of our time, the answer to any demon problem is acknowledgement; simple acknowledgement. Yes, there is a demon in my sink. Yes, it is doing everything in its power to keep us all merely surviving under a mountain of undone-ness. Yes, it demands tribute, daily, in the form of small tokens of recognition. To manage, I’ll honour it every so often with a simple verbal nod, paired with a small but meaningful decision, such as putting my plate in the dishwasher rather than the sink’s basin, or emptying the drain catch when I don’t have to. Yes, if I ignore the demon’s creeping tendrils, it will become irate, offended that I have no respect for its wretched potential.
No, I cannot destroy the demon; yes, I know it will always be there. This being said, yes, a moment of true, conscious recognition of its demon nature—the bravery to look a real evil in the eye, followed by consistent (even if imperfect) observation and reverence—can soften the miry grip of any malignant spirit.
BRONZE FROG 