Dried-up ketchup and grains of rice rotted on the tower of dishes in the sink. Dish soap, barely used; dishwasher, stacked with cleaned, yet haphazardly arranged bowls and silverware. He avoided eye contact with the fuzz at the corner as he set down yet another plate and turned on the faucet. “You have to soak it in water first,” she’d always reminded him. That’s what he was doing—soaking them. Someday, he would run out of vessels to microwave. But not today.
A plastic stool sat next to his desk and gaming chair, a ten-dollar purchase from Amazon just a few weeks ago. She would sit on the floor, working on her laptop on who knows what, complaining that she also wanted to work at the desk. “Can I sit on your lap?” she’d ask. “One second,” he’d reply, clicking away at the monitor, a second that would never arrive. The stool had come too late. But it dutifully took its place next to the desk, and on it sat a pile of half-dirty, half-forgotten clothes.
They shared the same electric toothbrush with different heads. Some days, he was too lazy to switch, so he’d simply use the one already attached—never caught. He no longer had to change it, and a dry green crust grew at the base and the neck. The bathroom was colorful. A neon pink colored the drains and edges of the bathtub, and a beige circled the toilet pond. Opaque polka dots densely decorated the mirror.
Life became more beautiful since she left. Shoes no longer crowded the front door, a singular pair of torn sneakers and mud-ridden flip-flops spaciously sprawled across the mat. The living room never screamed of vacuuming, and a natural rug of thin dust now comforted his bare feet. The coat hanger she had assembled stood empty; the couch had transformed into a wardrobe. But barely anything had changed. He knew. She was nothing but a menace.
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Prompt from Daily Themes Week 8: Character
Write about a relationship (romantic or otherwise) in short vignettes tiled for the rooms of a house: Kitchen, Bedroom, Living Room, etc. Give us a moment of these people or this relationship as it existed in each room.