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rainbowfic2015-07-23 11:30 pm
starphotographs) wrote in rainbowfic2015-07-23 11:30 pm
Folly 9
Name: starphotographs
Story: Universe B
Supplies and Styles: Graffiti (Summer Carnival), Canvas
Characters: Milo (POV), Kit, some strangers)
Colors: Folly 9 (It’s not contagious.)
Word Count: 1,797
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Choose not to warn.
Summary: When a thief steals Milo’s food, he goes looking for a new kitchen. This might not be as straightforward as it seems.
Note: Back to Mars for a bit. All commentary cool by me!
Milo in Kitchenland
Our building doesn’t have individual kitchens. Which is usually alright by me. Pretty much everything we can afford only needs to be heated up or reconstituted, so we get by with a hot plate and an electric kettle.
But, now and then, we acquire something frozen, or something that needs to be refrigerated after you open it, or something that just turns out better in the oven.
If that’s the case, I need to head over to the communal kitchen on our floor.
Which also isn’t so bad.
Unless someone starts stealing our food.
That, of course, is what happened. First, it was a carton of juice. Then it was a tub of margarine. Then some leftovers that I was really looking forward to eating.
Everything clearly had Green, apt 312 written on it in permanent ink, so it wasn’t like it looked unclaimed, but I guess what I really didn’t think the whole way through is that thieves don’t generally give a shit about these things.
It kept happening.
And I was now facing down my option of last resort:
I had to start using another kitchen.
*****
Using kitchens other than the one on your floor isn’t against the rules or anything, but it’s frowned upon by other tenants. Before they even talk to you, it’s assumed that you’re an interloper at best or a food thief at worst.
Even if you started using another kitchen to get away from a food thief, as in my case.
I had enough problems without being seen as a troublemaker, but I didn’t have much of a choice. It was time to find a new kitchen to call home.
The fourth-floor kitchen was my first pick. It was just one storey up from me, and since it was at the top of the building, no one but the people who lived up there really bothered to use it, so I figured there wouldn’t be as many preconceived notions about kitchen-immigrants and their motives.
I was hilariously wrong, but I didn’t know that yet.
My first problem was that the elevator shaft doesn’t go all the way up, so I had to climb a flight of stairs. Which doesn’t sound like a big deal, but I’d been having trouble with my lungs and getting really short of breath, so I had to sit down at the top of the stairs for a while.
Really, that wasn’t a big deal, either. At least, not compared to what happened when I finally found the kitchen.
I wandered in, stuck my container of leftovers in the fridge, and was about to wander back out and tell Kit they were upstairs if he got hungry, but a strange woman stopped me.
“Did you just move in?”
She was smiling, but in the way someone smiles when they’re testing you, waiting for you to say the wrong thing so you can watch their face fall and turn angry. The way someone smiles when they’re getting ready to show you that they do not approve. I smiled back, but in the normal way.
“No, I moved in around a year ago.”
The face was starting to fall, but hadn’t fallen all the way. She just wanted me to know that, depending on what I said next, it would. Hard.
“Oh. Well. I haven’t seen you before.”
“I don’t think our rooms are that close?”
And there it goes. She looked like she was about to call the super. Who, of course, wouldn’t be able to do anything, because I wasn’t even breaking any fucking rules. Also, he’s incompetent, so there’s that.
“What floor are you on?”
A few people were sitting around the table. They all started staring at me. The situation was so awkward I couldn’t even figure out how to lie. I mumbled “third,” took my container out of the fridge, and shuffled out of the room.
Fourth-floor people, I decided, were nuts.
*****
I didn’t have any perishables for a long time after that, but eventually, I thought some of the instant pasta things I always made might be better casserole style, and I was so sick of them the normal way that I felt like dealing with a kitchen again.
Since I was just cooking, and not stashing anything, I figured I’d be okay using the one on my own floor.
But, aside from theft, that kitchen has another problem:
The people on my floor are fucking disgusting.
Everyone leaves their dishes in there, and they wash them about once a month, when left to their own devices. Usually, I’d end up washing them myself, just because I didn’t want to cook or store food in a filthy environment. But this time, when I walked in, opened the stove, and saw someone else’s dirty casserole dish waiting for me, something snapped.
I wasn’t going to keep dealing with everyone else’s shit.
That was on them. I decided to abandon this kitchen for good, and let everything go to crap. But first, I was leaving a note. I mean, it’s only polite.
Your continued disgusting behavior has driven me to the second-floor kitchen, as I’d rather not handle food in such close proximity to everyone else’s filth. Maybe if you started cleaning up after yourselves, I would return, but as for now? Nope.
P.S. I’m the one who’s been washing the dishes. You’re welcome.
-The Dish Gnome (Milo from apt. 312)
*****
When I made up my mind to give the second-floor kitchen a spin, I decided to do something simple like making a pot of coffee, instead of trudging off at the last minute because I had to cook or refrigerate something immediately.
No, I’d read the room first, then decide if this was going to be My Kitchen after all.
So, into the elevator I went, with my can of grounds, my thermos, and some seriously lowered expectations.
The experience at least started out promisingly enough. But then I had the nerve to go and cough, ruining everything for everyone.
I was putting water in the coffee maker. There was one other guy in the kitchen, puttering around and making a pan of powdered eggs. It’s worth noting that it was late evening, so it only looked like we were making breakfast.
My lungs had been bothering me all day, and while I was trying to be a little polite about it, my body was a sight less well-mannered than I am, and pretty much did whatever the hell it wanted. Still, I thought I was being polite enough, considering. I coughed into my elbow, like I was supposed to. I even washed my hands before and after I messed with the coffee maker.
Actually, it was that second hand-washing session that fucked everything up and undid all my efforts.
Bending over the sink made something inside me list and dislodge, and my lungs wanted it out, now. And since my hands were occupied, I didn’t have anything to cover my mouth with. So I just stood there, hacking, until I finally spat an impressive metallic grey loogie in the sink. Of course, I was mortified, and immediately started to clean up my mess. Except, I was interrupted by Powdered Egg Guy, who’d been giving me dirty looks ever since I let out those first few muffled coughs.
“…Look, I’ve never seen you before, and I don’t know what floor you live on, or what the hell is going around there, but don’t go spreading it to the rest of the complex, alright?”
I grabbed a roll of paper towels and some bleach out of one of the cabinets.
“There’s nothing ‘going around’ my floor. And I’m not even sick.”
“Like hell you aren’t! You were trying to hoark up a lung just last second!”
I wiped out the sink, put the bleach back on the shelf, and passive-aggressively slammed the door shut.
“Yeah, because I fucking work for a living! I’m inhaling cobalt particles all day, and it’s a little irritating to the lungs.”
Apparently, I’d gotten a little louder than I could really handle, because I went into another coughing fit. I ripped another towel off the roll and covered my mouth with it. Powdered Egg Guy, who was not afflicted in this particular way, went on yelling.
“You think I don’t work for a living!?”
I waited for a lull, took the towel off my mouth, and took in as much air as I could.
“No… I’m just saying… Don’t go blaming me, because I’m not… I’m not a goddamn leper! I just have a really crummy job, okay?”
That was all I could get out before I started hacking again. Eventually, it stopped on its own. I threw the paper towel in the trash, washed my hands, and leaned on the counter, trying to breathe. Powdered Egg Guy was less than sympathetic.
“…I’m calling the super.”
“Yeah, you…” I started coughing again, and needed a few seconds to get it back under control. “…You call him! He never does shit about anything!”
With that, I dumped my coffee in the thermos, shot Powdered Egg Guy a particularly nasty glare, and stormed out the door and down the hall to the elevator.
The second-floor kitchen, apparently, was not the kitchen for me.
*****
That left just one more kitchen, all the way down on the first floor.
I was going to go alone again, but Kit wanted to come along, and I just thought, what the hell? If anyone gave us crap, we’d have a united front, at least.
This time, the kitchen was empty, which was a little weird, but at least no one would bother us. I started a pot of coffee, while Kit wandered the room aimlessly, poking his head in all the cabinets. Then he got to the fridge.
“…Um, Milo?”
“Yeah?”
“Look at this.”
I joined him in front of the fridge.
And there were all my containers. Some empty, some half-full, some clean, some dirty, all marked with Green, apt 312. I even found the juice carton.
“So this is where the fucker lives.”
“Milo, language!”
Kit was just goofing off, not really scolding me. So I smiled and elbowed him in the arm. Then got serious again. Time to write another note.
Dear food thief,
Taking my containers.
P.S. I now know what floor you live on, and if you ever take my food again, I’m going to come down here and knock on every door until I find you, at which point I will demand reimbursement.
P.P.S. You are an ASSHOLE.
-Milo from upstairs
I left the note on the counter, and we made our way back home.
The kettle and hot plate will have to do for now.
starphotographsStory: Universe B
Supplies and Styles: Graffiti (Summer Carnival), Canvas
Characters: Milo (POV), Kit, some strangers)
Colors: Folly 9 (It’s not contagious.)
Word Count: 1,797
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Choose not to warn.
Summary: When a thief steals Milo’s food, he goes looking for a new kitchen. This might not be as straightforward as it seems.
Note: Back to Mars for a bit. All commentary cool by me!
Our building doesn’t have individual kitchens. Which is usually alright by me. Pretty much everything we can afford only needs to be heated up or reconstituted, so we get by with a hot plate and an electric kettle.
But, now and then, we acquire something frozen, or something that needs to be refrigerated after you open it, or something that just turns out better in the oven.
If that’s the case, I need to head over to the communal kitchen on our floor.
Which also isn’t so bad.
Unless someone starts stealing our food.
That, of course, is what happened. First, it was a carton of juice. Then it was a tub of margarine. Then some leftovers that I was really looking forward to eating.
Everything clearly had Green, apt 312 written on it in permanent ink, so it wasn’t like it looked unclaimed, but I guess what I really didn’t think the whole way through is that thieves don’t generally give a shit about these things.
It kept happening.
And I was now facing down my option of last resort:
I had to start using another kitchen.
Using kitchens other than the one on your floor isn’t against the rules or anything, but it’s frowned upon by other tenants. Before they even talk to you, it’s assumed that you’re an interloper at best or a food thief at worst.
Even if you started using another kitchen to get away from a food thief, as in my case.
I had enough problems without being seen as a troublemaker, but I didn’t have much of a choice. It was time to find a new kitchen to call home.
The fourth-floor kitchen was my first pick. It was just one storey up from me, and since it was at the top of the building, no one but the people who lived up there really bothered to use it, so I figured there wouldn’t be as many preconceived notions about kitchen-immigrants and their motives.
I was hilariously wrong, but I didn’t know that yet.
My first problem was that the elevator shaft doesn’t go all the way up, so I had to climb a flight of stairs. Which doesn’t sound like a big deal, but I’d been having trouble with my lungs and getting really short of breath, so I had to sit down at the top of the stairs for a while.
Really, that wasn’t a big deal, either. At least, not compared to what happened when I finally found the kitchen.
I wandered in, stuck my container of leftovers in the fridge, and was about to wander back out and tell Kit they were upstairs if he got hungry, but a strange woman stopped me.
“Did you just move in?”
She was smiling, but in the way someone smiles when they’re testing you, waiting for you to say the wrong thing so you can watch their face fall and turn angry. The way someone smiles when they’re getting ready to show you that they do not approve. I smiled back, but in the normal way.
“No, I moved in around a year ago.”
The face was starting to fall, but hadn’t fallen all the way. She just wanted me to know that, depending on what I said next, it would. Hard.
“Oh. Well. I haven’t seen you before.”
“I don’t think our rooms are that close?”
And there it goes. She looked like she was about to call the super. Who, of course, wouldn’t be able to do anything, because I wasn’t even breaking any fucking rules. Also, he’s incompetent, so there’s that.
“What floor are you on?”
A few people were sitting around the table. They all started staring at me. The situation was so awkward I couldn’t even figure out how to lie. I mumbled “third,” took my container out of the fridge, and shuffled out of the room.
Fourth-floor people, I decided, were nuts.
I didn’t have any perishables for a long time after that, but eventually, I thought some of the instant pasta things I always made might be better casserole style, and I was so sick of them the normal way that I felt like dealing with a kitchen again.
Since I was just cooking, and not stashing anything, I figured I’d be okay using the one on my own floor.
But, aside from theft, that kitchen has another problem:
The people on my floor are fucking disgusting.
Everyone leaves their dishes in there, and they wash them about once a month, when left to their own devices. Usually, I’d end up washing them myself, just because I didn’t want to cook or store food in a filthy environment. But this time, when I walked in, opened the stove, and saw someone else’s dirty casserole dish waiting for me, something snapped.
I wasn’t going to keep dealing with everyone else’s shit.
That was on them. I decided to abandon this kitchen for good, and let everything go to crap. But first, I was leaving a note. I mean, it’s only polite.
Your continued disgusting behavior has driven me to the second-floor kitchen, as I’d rather not handle food in such close proximity to everyone else’s filth. Maybe if you started cleaning up after yourselves, I would return, but as for now? Nope.
P.S. I’m the one who’s been washing the dishes. You’re welcome.
-The Dish Gnome (Milo from apt. 312)
When I made up my mind to give the second-floor kitchen a spin, I decided to do something simple like making a pot of coffee, instead of trudging off at the last minute because I had to cook or refrigerate something immediately.
No, I’d read the room first, then decide if this was going to be My Kitchen after all.
So, into the elevator I went, with my can of grounds, my thermos, and some seriously lowered expectations.
The experience at least started out promisingly enough. But then I had the nerve to go and cough, ruining everything for everyone.
I was putting water in the coffee maker. There was one other guy in the kitchen, puttering around and making a pan of powdered eggs. It’s worth noting that it was late evening, so it only looked like we were making breakfast.
My lungs had been bothering me all day, and while I was trying to be a little polite about it, my body was a sight less well-mannered than I am, and pretty much did whatever the hell it wanted. Still, I thought I was being polite enough, considering. I coughed into my elbow, like I was supposed to. I even washed my hands before and after I messed with the coffee maker.
Actually, it was that second hand-washing session that fucked everything up and undid all my efforts.
Bending over the sink made something inside me list and dislodge, and my lungs wanted it out, now. And since my hands were occupied, I didn’t have anything to cover my mouth with. So I just stood there, hacking, until I finally spat an impressive metallic grey loogie in the sink. Of course, I was mortified, and immediately started to clean up my mess. Except, I was interrupted by Powdered Egg Guy, who’d been giving me dirty looks ever since I let out those first few muffled coughs.
“…Look, I’ve never seen you before, and I don’t know what floor you live on, or what the hell is going around there, but don’t go spreading it to the rest of the complex, alright?”
I grabbed a roll of paper towels and some bleach out of one of the cabinets.
“There’s nothing ‘going around’ my floor. And I’m not even sick.”
“Like hell you aren’t! You were trying to hoark up a lung just last second!”
I wiped out the sink, put the bleach back on the shelf, and passive-aggressively slammed the door shut.
“Yeah, because I fucking work for a living! I’m inhaling cobalt particles all day, and it’s a little irritating to the lungs.”
Apparently, I’d gotten a little louder than I could really handle, because I went into another coughing fit. I ripped another towel off the roll and covered my mouth with it. Powdered Egg Guy, who was not afflicted in this particular way, went on yelling.
“You think I don’t work for a living!?”
I waited for a lull, took the towel off my mouth, and took in as much air as I could.
“No… I’m just saying… Don’t go blaming me, because I’m not… I’m not a goddamn leper! I just have a really crummy job, okay?”
That was all I could get out before I started hacking again. Eventually, it stopped on its own. I threw the paper towel in the trash, washed my hands, and leaned on the counter, trying to breathe. Powdered Egg Guy was less than sympathetic.
“…I’m calling the super.”
“Yeah, you…” I started coughing again, and needed a few seconds to get it back under control. “…You call him! He never does shit about anything!”
With that, I dumped my coffee in the thermos, shot Powdered Egg Guy a particularly nasty glare, and stormed out the door and down the hall to the elevator.
The second-floor kitchen, apparently, was not the kitchen for me.
That left just one more kitchen, all the way down on the first floor.
I was going to go alone again, but Kit wanted to come along, and I just thought, what the hell? If anyone gave us crap, we’d have a united front, at least.
This time, the kitchen was empty, which was a little weird, but at least no one would bother us. I started a pot of coffee, while Kit wandered the room aimlessly, poking his head in all the cabinets. Then he got to the fridge.
“…Um, Milo?”
“Yeah?”
“Look at this.”
I joined him in front of the fridge.
And there were all my containers. Some empty, some half-full, some clean, some dirty, all marked with Green, apt 312. I even found the juice carton.
“So this is where the fucker lives.”
“Milo, language!”
Kit was just goofing off, not really scolding me. So I smiled and elbowed him in the arm. Then got serious again. Time to write another note.
Dear food thief,
Taking my containers.
P.S. I now know what floor you live on, and if you ever take my food again, I’m going to come down here and knock on every door until I find you, at which point I will demand reimbursement.
P.P.S. You are an ASSHOLE.
-Milo from upstairs
I left the note on the counter, and we made our way back home.
The kettle and hot plate will have to do for now.
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Can't blame Milo.
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The way this all flows together and then smacks the reader upside the back of the head?
Magic, I tells you.
Magic.
Also, I LOLed. And my EVERYTHING you write the best snippy assholes.