Night at the Ikea

Today’s prompt: “You have been evicted from you home, but rather than live on the street you go to Ikea. At night you hide in the bathroom until the janitor leaves. Write about your life.”

The janitor at this Ikea is a woman, and you guess that she’ll want to clean the women’s room before the men’s room. So you hide in the men’s room and listen for the sound of toilets flushing as the janitor cleans the other stalls. Then you sneak out and hide behind a display of Liatorp bookcases until you hear the cleaning cart rumble out of the ladies’ room and toward the men’s. When the janitor disappears into the men’s room, you sneak into the women’s restroom and wait until you hear the sound of the front door opening and closing.

You stroll past the Själsligt ceramic cacti, the Skogskorn cushions, and the Sniglar cribs to the restaurant, where you waste no time in browning yourself some Köttbullar meatballs. You’ve been smelling them all day, but was it free sample day? Nooooo, it was not. You bake some Paj Ost cheese pies and grab a Munsbit oat smoothie to round out your meal. To hide your traces, you wash the dishes, prop open the back door with a Norråker table, and toss the open containers in the dumpster out back.

You tuck a change of clothes into a Bryggja 9-drawer chest and go to sleep on a Björksnäs king bed frame with a Myrbacka foam mattress, setting the alarm on your phone to wake you an hour and a half before the store opens.

When your alarm goes off, you stretch, change your clothes, make your way to the food market for breakfast, and choke to death on a Gifflar Kanel.