‘Thy currish ways have infected our apartment with the misaima of true melan-cholera once again!’ claimed the note left on the fridge door.
Three exclamation marks, drawn each with a bolder inflection of pen stroke, were heavily punctuated and underlined with a scrawl of red ink.
‘Be you a beast? A Demon from the twisted hells? Are thoust some apocryphal machination of my own madness meant to probe and destroy me, drag me down to the sodden earth and brutalise me with your hidden barbs of deceit? You have committed this offence too long-’
A curious glance to the recycling bin saw that this was not the first draft as several yellow-ish wadds of note paper had been crumpled and then discarded in apparent frustration.
‘-and I shall not suffer the slings and arrows of your inconsiderate disonace to common logic. To experience these injustices any longer puts a solemn sickness into my very core, wounding and debilitating me, lowering me down into slovenly despair.
But no! I shall be likened to that of a phoenix and I shall shake free from the ashes of your cigarette butts and live again with peace. Free from the reek of your Lynx Africa obscured musk. Free of the ever enlarging mound of clothes that prevents our bathroom door opening to its complete fullness.’
Making a cup of coffee from my roommates hidden jar of classic dark roast, the most expensive instant coffee in moccona’s core range, I took a seat and began to read the second page of the note.
‘How can I put this politely? How could I put this politely? How could I possibly assemble a sentence that accurately describes the mass disarray in which our apartment now wallows in, even on a good day? I wash the dishes, I put away the dishes, I turn around and more dishes have appeared! Is this the work of a ghost? Are unwashed dishes a type of fungus that sprout magically from the very bench?
How, I ask you HOW!? How did you cook mac and cheese in the kettle?
Away from our wounded kitchen, I shudder to recollect the sheer horror of my first discovering the dampness of your towels, the ones still inside the linen cupboard no less. How can a towel so damp be put back on a shelf where it does not even belong!? So as a guard, to maybe only my sanity, I have hidden the good towels in fear of their future misuse.
Please, I implore you, I beg to what little humanity you still possess. Away your fiendish imps that play merry havoc, run the vacuum over the apartment for once. Mayhap you’d enjoy a walk on the side of order.
Pscript: Help yourself to the leftover spag bol, I’m out the next few nights.
Hope you’re well!
-Andy
Deciding to leave the mug next to the couch just in case I wanted to finish the second half of my coffee later, I stood and shuffled to the bathroom with plans of brushing my teeth. Not finding my toothbrush I used my roommates while sitting on the toilet, brushing slowly and wondering what currish means. Underarming the toothbrush into the sink I then left to go to work.
Jacob McCray
-2019
Sunday Short Stories 