It started innocently, just a small, wooden clothespin, clipped to the showerhead. I barely noticed it the first time, probably because I was still half-asleep, stumbling into the bathroom for my morning routine. Must be hers, I thought, shrugging it off. My roommate’s girlfriend had been staying over more and more lately, practically living here. It made sense she’d leave things around.
But it didn’t stop. Every time I went to shower, after she’d used it, there it was. That small, unassuming clothespin, perched like a silent sentinel on the chrome. Always the same spot. Always after her. Never after my roommate showered. Never after I did. It was her thing.
At first, it was just a minor curiosity. Maybe she hangs something to dry? I tried to rationalize. But no, nothing was ever hanging from it. It was just… there. Empty. After a week, it started to grate on me. It felt like an intrusion, a deliberate mark of her presence, staining our shared space. Did she forget it? I’d pick it up, toss it onto the shelf, only to find it back on the showerhead the next morning. It was like a game I hadn’t agreed to play. A passive-aggressive reminder that this was her territory now, too.
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My annoyance slowly morphed into something else, a quiet unease. It wasn’t just a random object anymore. It was a pattern. A ritual. And the more I noticed it, the more I felt like I was missing something. A message. A secret. What could it possibly mean? My mind raced through possibilities. Was it a peculiar habit? A quirk? Or was it something more? Something coded?
I found myself watching her, subtly, whenever she was around. She was always so cheerful, so bubbly, completely at ease in our apartment. She’d hum while she cooked, laugh at my roommate’s jokes, and act like she’d lived here forever. Yet, this one small, persistent detail whispered of something hidden beneath the surface. Why the clothespin? Why always there?
One evening, after she’d just finished her shower, I waited a moment, then went into the bathroom. There it was. Gleaming under the artificial light. I reached out, my fingers brushing the smooth, cool wood. It felt… significant. Like a clue in a mystery only I seemed to be investigating. A shiver ran down my spine. It felt familiar.
That feeling, that sudden, cold recognition, was worse than the annoyance, worse than the vague suspicion. It was a deep, unsettling thrum beneath my ribs, a sensation of something long forgotten, stirring from the depths. I shook my head, trying to dislodge it. You’re being paranoid. It’s a clothespin. Just a clothespin.
I tried to bring it up, casually, to my roommate. “Hey,” I said one night, “does she have a reason for leaving that clothespin on the showerhead? I keep finding it there.” He looked up from his game, barely registering my words. “Oh, that? Yeah, she just… likes to. Says it’s a habit. Weird, right?” He chuckled, dismissing it completely, and went back to his screen.
A habit? That answer felt hollow. Too easy. My unease intensified. His quick dismissal, the way he brushed it off, made me feel like I was crazy for even asking. But it’s not just a habit, is it? Not when it’s so consistent, so deliberate.
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The memory that had been lurking, just out of reach, started to claw its way to the surface. Fragmented. Distorted. A whisper of a shared past. A younger me. A small, dark room. A window. And a signal.
No. It couldn’t be.
But the more I tried to deny it, the stronger the connection became. The image of a clothespin. Not on a showerhead. But clipped to the curtain, in a different house, in a different lifetime. A warning. A desperate plea.
I remembered it then, with a horrifying clarity that stole my breath. When I was little, growing up in a house that wasn’t always safe, my best friend and I had a secret code. We lived next door to each other, our windows facing, obscured by thick curtains. If one of us was in trouble, if a parent was yelling, if we needed to communicate something urgent without speaking, we had a sign. A simple, ordinary clothespin. If it was clipped to the outside corner of the curtain, it meant danger. Stay away. Don’t come over. If it was clipped to the inside corner, it meant we were safe, but silent. And if it was clipped to the middle, on the sill, visible only from our shared view, that meant: I NEED HELP. NOW.
It was a childish game, a desperate attempt at control in a world that offered none. We’d used it often, those silent, small warnings. My friend… he was always there for me, watching, understanding. I haven’t thought about that in decades. I’d buried that part of my childhood so deep, I almost believed it never happened.
WHY WOULD SHE KNOW THAT?
The question screamed in my head, a siren of pure, unadulterated terror. No one knew that code. No one. Not my family. Not other friends. Just us.
I stumbled out of the bathroom, my heart hammering against my ribs. My roommate was still on the couch, laughing at something on his phone. He looked so normal. So innocent.
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I looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time in a long time. The way his hair fell across his forehead. The dimple that appeared when he smiled. The familiar slope of his shoulders.
A gasp caught in my throat. It hit me like a physical blow. The memories flooded back, not just of the clothespin, but of him. His face, younger, peering through his window, watching for my signal. His hand, reaching out to help me over the fence when things got bad at my house.
HE WAS MY CHILDHOOD FRIEND. The one who knew the code. The one I’d lost touch with after my family moved away, the one whose name I’d completely forgotten, replaced by the generic “roommate” when we’d met again years later, strangers reconnecting through a college housing ad. How could I not have recognized him? The years, the different schools, the sheer trauma of that childhood, had reshaped our faces, blurred our pasts.
And then, the ultimate, gut-wrenching realization, chilling me to the bone.
The clothespin on the showerhead. It wasn’t a random object. It wasn’t a quirky habit. It wasn’t even a message for me.
It was clipped. To the middle.
It was his girlfriend’s signal.
She wasn’t leaving it for me to discover our shared past. She was leaving it because she was using our old code. She was leaving it for him.
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And the message was: I NEED HELP. NOW.
