The Odd Couple
29 Mar 2021Today’s prompt: “A hopelessly messy person and an obsessively neat person become roommates.”
Your roommate yells at you when you get mud on his nice rug because you didn’t wipe your feet well enough on the doormat. He’s incensed when it’s your turn to do chores and you sweep dirt under the rug (as if he didn’t do a second sweeping job every time it was your turn to sweep, anyway). You’ve taken to intentionally turning the rug a few degrees off kilter just so you can watch him seethe.
It’s all part and parcel with his mania for spotless dishes, the apoplectic rage he goes into when you get crumbs in the silverware drawer, and his insistence on vacuuming when you can’t even see dirt on the carpet (he swears it’s there, and that you tracked it in).
You’ll never understand why it bothers him so much when the dishwasher leaves residue in the bottoms of the glasses (he has taken to washing everything by hand). You don’t get why it matters whether you use wooden or metal utensils on his nonstick pans. But you think you know why he’s that way about the rug. It’s a nice rug.
Which is why you’re so perplexed when you come in one day and the rug, and everything else in the apartment, is covered with tarps. “Maybe he’s painting,” you think, before immediately dismissing the idea. He would never have painted anything in the house without first bringing home a few dozen paint swatches to get the exact right shade for the walls.
You see the axe in your peripheral vision. Oh. That’s why.