Untitled or Soliloquy of a Faucet

She was so tired and sick of hearing the faucet.

It made a hollow plunking as each droplet of water fell from the horrendous patina neck onto the cracked, rust-stained porcelain. The faucet had always leaked, since the very day she had moved into that dank apartment.

Everything about it was wrong. There was no overhead lighting, and the lamps she brought in to cast some shine threw bizarre shadows across the rooms. The plaster peeled from the wall, revealing a grey-brown underneath that forever seemed damp. The window did not shut, and any wind would suck the disgusting Venetian blinds through the gap and create a raucous rattling that resonated through the empty rooms. There was a brown, tan, and burnt orange couch that sat in the middle of the living space, a relic from the seventies that had never seen better days; the cushions dipped, the springs squeaked, the fabric itched.

All of that she could live with. That damn faucet, though, was beginning to drive her insane.

She had tried to repair it. She had brought in the pedophilic apartment manager, the plumber whose eyes were in a constant state of dilation and who smelled strongly of reefer, a boy who lived in the room on the other side of the faucet and who left her wrists bruised from shoving her against the wall while plucking kisses from her lips as a means of payment for his repair services.

The faucet continued to plunk.

The latest repair attempt had almost seemed to work. She had wrapped the head of the faucet in shiny silver duct tape, covering the only source of escape for the water. And for a while, the constant plunking ceased. After a mere hour, though, enough droplets of water had collected inside of the seal to break through the adhesive, spilling onto the porcelain once more, plunking plunking plunking. It was perseverant, that faucet.

She hated that apartment.

She hated the itchy couch and the damp walls and the loud windows.

She hated the dripping faucet.

More than anything, though, she hated the jealousy she felt that the god damned faucet could be so perseverant when she could not.

She was a failure, certainly. Growing up, she had had aspirations, hopes, dreams, goals, desires. She was going to be a doctor, a scientist, a musician, an actress, a novelist. What she had been? A grocery clerk, a college drop-out, a telemarketer, an exotic dancer, a taxi driver, a drug dealer, unemployed. Her life was going nowhere. She had no job, no money, no one to go to; she lived in a hole of an apartment, her couch itched, her faucet leaked with a fervor and determination she had never and could never equal.

She would sit there, watching it, for hours sometimes. The couch which was centered in her living space was also centered facing the spout which dripped irritatingly into the dilapidated basin of a sink. It had been that way when she moved in to the apartment; the couch was there from the previous owner, positioned exactly so, and she had not moved it. She had heard rumors that the man who had inhabited the ghastly space before her had died on that couch. They say that they had found him sitting, perfectly upright, in the center of it, staring at the damn dripping faucet. Some of the apartment dwellers said that he had poisoned himself; others said it was a gunshot, and others still claimed that he had seen something in that faucet, in the plunking droplets, that had frightened him to death.

The story was so convoluted that she didn't know what or who to believe about it, but she was beginning to think it was perfectly reasonable for him to have been driven to insanity by the ridiculous dripping. If not simply by the grating sound of it, than by the feeling that it was better than anyone else in that entire apartment complex.

Today, she had been sitting on the couch, perfectly in the center, watching it, for three hours. Watching it drip, drip, drip, plunk, drip, plunk, drip.

There was a soft knocking on her door, and then a bit harder. "Hey, sugar, you in there?" The voice was husky, gritty, the implication of a million desires that he was determined to see through at whatever cost. "Listen, dollface, I can hear that damn faucet dripping from my apartment. It’s gotta be driving ya nuts. Let me in, I’ll fix it right up for ya."

The coarse fibers of the couch scratched at her skin even through her jeans as she sat unmoving. Itch. Drip. Plunk. Pound. Itch. Drip. Plunk. Pound.

"Come on, cupcake, I can fix it," his voice escalated in huskiness, growing deeper, harsher, more and more furious with each syllable. "If you don’t let me in now, honey, it’ll be worse for you when I do get in. Let me in now and I’ll take it easy on you. If I have to force my way in there, you’re not just going to need a repair guy for your dripping tap, you understand me?"

A whisper, another pound on the door, drip, drip, plunk, itch. Drip drip drip. This was the closest to silence that it would get in that apartment. For now, it meant that she was once again alone with the persistent droplets. She wouldn’t be for long, though, not with the man living next door in such a state of irritation. For another few minutes, she sat, watching the enduring dripping, the effort of the tap, and she was filled to the brim, as usual, with resentment. How was it that a water-stained, uncared for, ghastly faucet could be so persistent? How could it stick to its task despite all of the opposition it received, all of the hatred that was directed at it? How could it be better than her, than anyone, than everyone and everything?

Because it was. That damn faucet was better.

Quietly, she got up and turned both of the mislabeled handles onto their full stream, replacing the drip with a rushing sound as water spilled from the open mouth into the porcelain basin. With a quick flick, she pulled up the discolored brass lever that blocked the drain in the sink, making it stand hideous and erect while the water collected.

At once she returned to her spot on the couch, to the man’s spot on the couch before her, to the only spot on the couch that meant anything, that had any substance. It was caved in, the fluff in it long gone from decades of flattening and degrading, its color darkened by foreign substances and worn down to a softer itch than the rest of the sofa.

The water brimmed in the sink, creating a slight viscous dome before spilling out onto the counter, dripping down the edge to the broken up cement floor. The water was quiet now, plunging deep into the nadir of the sink while the surface of the water sat only a few inches from the lip of the faucet. The dripping to the floor soon became a steady waterfall, pooling and growing. It was as if the droplets from all of the years past had joined power and had made this their final, crowning achievement. This was their apartment, and they were finally taking it.

She sat, watching in trepidation and wonder, as the water collected on the cool cement and flooded the room, surrounding the couch legs and slopping out underneath the door into the hall.

It was largely splashy as she walked through the thin, teeming layer of water to the door, throwing drops of liquid with each step. Standing in front of the door, she zipped her jacket and took a deep breath before placing her hand on the door knob, turning it, and stepping into the hall. She didn't close the door behind her, but rather shoved her hands resolutely into her coat pockets and walked away, leaving behind damp footprints, that, after several yards, disappeared, leaving no trace of her new absence.