DRANO

        There’s a 12 oz pool of it in your kitchen sink right now. Neither solid nor liquid, it lingers amphibiously on the edge of the drain, ready to strike. Its mathematically precise color (Acid Blue 9 + Acid Yellow 17 + Acid Yellow 34 = Acid Green 60?) glows in the morning light.
        Its canary yellow, high-density polyethylene bottle leans against the wall like a 50’s greaser. It would smoke a cigarette if it could. The pool is frozen, congealed, a chance for the Drano to stalk its prey, whispering intimations of death to the clump of grease huddled in the B-trap curve of the sink-pipe.
        It is beautiful, suspended there above the drain, above gravity and time, yet each time you look, there’s less in the sink. Though you hate to see it go, you cannot wait. So you disregard the label insisting you give it 15-30 minutes, and turn on the faucet. You gave up on the directions long ago.
        But you still love to read the name. Not Draino, Drāno, the “i” dissolved long ago by the corrosion of language. It’s what Drano wants; there’s no end to its corrosive ambitions. It would even devour history, if given the chance; on Twitter you saw a video of it eating through a statue. You replayed it over and over.
        Down the hatch, you say, as the hot water runs. This part always reminds you of your boozing days, the sober anticipation that becomes its own reward over time, the thrill—like jumping off a cliff—of falling, the sense of limitless possibilities, even if the probabilities are fixed. This rush isn’t the same, but it’s healthier. It may not be perfect, it may not be what plumbers advise, but you’re better off rotting your pipes than your liver.
        The hot water thaws the gel pool, shocking it into the laws of physics like morning does a dreamer.
        Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand it’s gone. Nothing left but the smell of soap and swimming pools—byproducts of the reaction with the grease, a reaction you see in your dreams now, ever since the dreams of whiskey were flushed down by Drano.
        At first you drank the Drano. In your dreams, that is. You could feel the sodium hydroxide burning through your stomach lining, making water from your bile. A modern miracle. But after a few nights all you did in dreams was watch it, through a clear, human-sized pipe, set in a glass casing in The Museum of Plumbing. You saw everything: the bubbles of hydrogen gas, the heat that made them rise, the tiny explosions you listened for, ear pressed to the glass.
        That was weeks ago, when all you poured was a cap-full a day into the bathtub. Harmless. Cute, even.
        Now you’re up to 84 fl oz (2.6 qt) each day, two bottles of Drano Max Gel, one for the bathroom sink and one for the kitchen. The bathtub’s pipes are too corroded.
        Your friends warned you about this habit; one of them, Victor, is a plumber. He called Drano a medicine with serious side effects, one you should only give your sink in dire circumstances, not for a sore throat, and certainly not for pleasure. You told Victor to mind his own damn pipes. He’s just mad Drano’s taking his job.
        In any event, you’ve run out of the stuff now. The silence in your sink is deafening. You feel clogged, emotionally. It’s the same way you felt when you’d go without liquor for too long in your boozing days, like a succulent without water, everything inside you dried up and crumpled and verging on death.
        All your thoughts bottleneck at one idea: more Drano.
        You drive to the convenience store down the street, where the clerk orders bulk shipments just for you. You pick up a couple bottles of Max Gel, a pack of smokes, and a newspaper. When you return to your driveway, you see it. Suddenly, for the first time in months, you wish you’d bought whiskey.
        Water. Murky, sludge-ridden water, running under your front door and spilling onto your lawn. You open the door and it’s everywhere, an inch-tall bayou of grime lapping at your couch, chairs, tables, seeping into your rugs. It’s already inside your socks. It feels hot. It is just as you feared on your worst nights. The pipe under your sink has burst.
        Everything outside of you is in motion, but inside you, the clog has only tightened. You breathe, counting.
        Then, you dump both bottles of Drano down the bathtub drain, ear pressed to the lip.

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