My wife has insomnia and does chores when she can’t sleep. It’s been that way for so long that I’ve stopped noticing. Usually I don’t even wake up. But a few nights in a row, she started running the garbage disposal a lot — off and on through the night, sometimes for a minute or two. Of course I couldn’t sleep through that. So late one night I went downstairs to check on her.
She was in her PJs and bent over the sink, staring into the drain. She was leaning in so close that some of her hair had piled up in the bottom of the sink.
“You lose something?” I asked.
She gasped and snapped up when she heard me.
“You scared me,” she said. She did look jumpy, which made me uneasy too. I saw that she was holding something and asked her what it was.
“Nothing, a slice of turkey,” she said, guilty. She had balled it up into a gray-pink blob from squeezing it so hard.
“That doesn’t go in the garbage disposal,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.
“Right,” she said. “Sorry. I’m half asleep.” She dropped it into the trash under the sink. There was a pack of sliced turkey on the counter, already half-eaten. Why did we have it? I was the one who ate lunch meat. But I hated turkey. I didn’t remember telling her to pick up any.
“Hungry?” she asked. She had seen where I was looking.
“No,” I said. My body had gone cold. Something felt seriously wrong here. She nonchalantly turned around and put the lunch meat back in the fridge. Then, with her back still facing me, she said:
“Actually, I did lose something in the sink. A gemstone stone in my ring.” She turned around and shrugged. “I’m an idiot. Sorry.”
“Which did you lose?” I asked, trying to sound nice. I had never talked to her while she was in one of her insomnia spells. It was more like she was sleepwalking. Or as if I were talking to a stranger, a woman who only looked like my wife and had wandered into my house.
“A little one here,” she said, pointing at her ring. “You wouldn’t have noticed it. It’s really small. You can barely even see where it’s supposed to go.” I doubted that I wouldn’t have noticed it—I had bought her the ring—but the kitchen was too dark for me to see clearly.
“You want me to fish it out for you,” I said.
She smiled.
“Sure,” I said, going over to the sink. I felt a sudden panicked urge to run back upstairs. But I pushed that feeling down. I loved my wife. I trusted her, even when she was maybe half-lying.
I reached my hand inside the drain. It was damp and warmer in there than I had expected. The bumpy edge of the blade was almost hot. The metal must have heated up from the garbage disposal running for so long.
“It’s really small,” she said. She came over to watch and leaned against the wall. The switch for the garbage disposal was next to her shoulder. I almost told her to be careful, but didn’t. I didn’t want to seem controlling.
She smiled again at me.
I poked around the sides of the garbage disposal container, everything I touched soggy and soft, old scraps of food. The container felt like it was made of rubber; I had thought it would be metal or hard plastic, but the sides gave slightly when I pushed. And they were strangely warm.
My wife was watching me intensely, her shoulder now on the edge of the light switch panel. My finger brushed something hard, and she moved her arm—the arm that was on the switch—and I ripped my hand out of the drain.
“What?” she asked. “Did you cut yourself?”
“I’m fine.” I managed to say. My voice was shaking. Was she really going to flip the switch?
“You are?” she asked.
“Yes. I’m fine. I couldn’t find anything. Sorry.”
“That’s OK,” she said, yawning. She went back up to bed. She moved slowly, oblivious to her surroundings. Maybe she was sleepwalking.
I followed her upstairs, and found her already asleep. I couldn’t make myself get into bed with her. None of it had made any sense—her running the disposal, the meat, her lie about the ring. So I snuck back downstairs.
The sink looked the same as before: a few drops of water around the rim, a waxy smear of grease on the stainless steel. I put my hands on either side of the drain and stared into the black hole. There was nothing unusual about it, other than the vague threat of something sharp hiding out of sight in the dark.
But then I heard a low, soft gurgling sound in the drain. I bent over and lowered my ear to the drain to listen better. Maybe it was water moving through the pipes. But this sounded more organic, like the gurgling sound a baby might make. And I realized that my ear felt warm. Warm air was wafting out of the drain every few seconds, as if the hole were breathing.
I pulled away from the sink. Nothing came chasing after me.
Just to see what would happen, I got out a slice of turkey and pushed it down into the drain with my finger. As soon as the meat had slipped past the drain flaps, the garbage disposal roared to life. The metallic grinding noise rattled through the house. I probably screamed, but I couldn’t hear anything over the harsh, wet grating sound. Finally it stopped.
My heart pounding, I took all the turkey that was left and dropped it on the drain, then got a wooden spoon and pushed it down into the hole. The garbage disposal turned back on again and I ripped the spoon out. The end was gnawed to splinters.
I’m not sure how long I stood there, watching the drain and listening to the blade chew up the meat. A minute, maybe. Then the faucet was running too. My wife was there. She had come down without me noticing. The water gushed loudly into the drain and choked down the pipes. The garbage disposal soon stopped, and she turned off the water.
“The water helps the food go down,” she explained. I was too stunned to move, and she grabbed me by the arms, talking so quickly I couldn’t get a word in. It had started a few nights ago, when she had “fed” the drain some crumbs from the counter. Then she fed it more, and noticed that it liked meat. So she got more meat. Whatever it was, the thing down in the drain, whatever it was doing—growing, nesting—it was getting more active because of the food. And that meant it was getting hungrier, which meant more food. She apologized for putting so many groceries on the card. But it had been worth it. She had tamed the thing.
“That’s why I knew you’d be safe earlier,” she said. “I’ll show you.”
She got a bag of sugar out of the pantry, wet her hand under the faucet, and dunked it into the bag. She pulled her hand out and it was completely covered in sugar. Then she stuck her hand down the drain.
“Stop!” I screamed.
She pulled her hand back out. It was perfectly fine—and perfectly clean, not a speck of sugar left.
“See,” she said. “He won’t bite. And it feels good.” She sugared up her hand again and stuck it back in the drain.
“It kind of tickles. And it’s so warm.”
I couldn’t speak.
“You want to try?” she asked.
And she got my hand wet under the faucet too, and dunked it into the sugar. I let her. I was curious, honestly, more curious than afraid. And then my hand went into the drain.
There was a loud, sickening crunch. I remember that. But I don’t remember anything after, or even how the pain — the adrenaline and shock blocked everything out. I must have somehow tied a tourniquet on and called an ambulance.
It’s funny. I close my eyes and I can’t even picture the stump. (It’s still wrapped up.) Or the blood. There must have been lots of blood, but it’s all cleaned up now and I can’t picture any of it.
Nobody could find the hand anywhere.
Nobody can find my wife either. She took the cash, the jewelry, the second car. All of it mine. The cops put out an alert for the car. I don’t know. It’s all so screwed up.
Today I had a plumber come by to check out the garbage disposal. He had never seen anything like it — the shredder and motor were never installed. It’s basically an empty container sitting under the drain.
“And you said it was working?” he asked, doubtful.
“Yeah,” I told him. “My wife used it for years.”