Dish Boy

Alex stood dripping in a restaurant kitchen, alone with the hulking metal appliances that surrounded him like a cage: gleaming bars and locks. He faced a deep, silver steel sink, his hands plunged deep into the stark white soap bubbles. No dishes were in sight; they could only be felt in the heat of the soap suds and slightly oily water. A small dollop of soap suds dangled precipitously from Alex's left ear, clinging to its perch as if fearful of rejoining the Great Link of dish soap amassed below it.

Alex wiped a plate under the foaming mass. Unnoticed, a tendril of suds snaked out from the sink and curled itself around Alex's left arm, sinuously winding its way toward the trembling soap scum at his ear. As Alex pulled the plate out of the sink to rinse it and hang it carefully on the bars of the drying rack, the tendril struck. It forcefully reclaimed the errant soap drop and immediately commenced to punish the interloper who had harbored the escapee.

The suds covered Alex's entire arm and launched themselves upward with lightning speed for a surprise chokehold. Suddenly sensing the damp sudsiness on the sensitive skin of his neck, Alex dropped the plate--"Damn! That comes out of my pay!" His hands scrabbled impotently at his neck, but there were too many suds to wipe off. He flailed helplessly as the entire room, his entire consciousness, filled with soap suds. He reached for the sink to steady himself, but there were only soap suds, no air, no water, no heavy steel appliances.

But there was a phone. Phone? He could hear a phone ringing! He stumbled through the murk, would have fallen if it hadn't been too thick to fall through, and gradually became aware that his support was coming from his own tangled bedsheets. Oh crap! The phone!

"Hello? Hello???"