Chapter Text
It's Saturday morning and you're excited to finally have a day off of work, not that you hate your job of course, it's just that being with your coworkers for 45 hours a week can be a bit tiring and you enjoy having a blissful two days without any office shenanigans or building evacuations because someone burnt popcorn... again. It's around 10 am and you've been lazing your way through the morning, ignoring your house keeping tasks for just a bit longer, as you eat cereal on the couch watching old cartoons from your childhood. While they're not as "haha" funny as they were back then, they still bring you a little joy. It's truly a shame how many adults forgo watching old cartoons when they grow up. Do they just not get that little bit of nostalgic happiness?
You slurp down your cereal milk as Wile E. Coyote realizes he is no longer standing on the cliff and falls. What a dumbass.
You set your bowl down on the coffee table before taking a look at your small apartment, aware you need to actually do things, but not quite ready. However, the basket of dirty towels outside the bathroom seems to mock you a bit more each second.
While it's sometimes nice to not have a roommate, not having one also means you have to do all the cleaning, and having ignored it all week there's a lot to do. You sigh and begrudgingly get up, taking your bowl to the kitchen that barely qualifies as a kitchen behind you, and get to work on the dishes you probably should've washed last night but let "soak" instead. The whole time you're listening to ridiculous sound effects on the tv behind you.
It only takes a few minutes to finish washing everything, and the episode is on-- albeit in the middle of a commercial-- so you sit back down on the couch. 'Everything's waited this long, and you did just complete a task,' you reason with yourself, 'lugging everything to laundry room can wait for this episode to end.'
Unfortunately, the episode ends ten minutes later, and you actually have to do things. You change out of you pajamas into clothes you can actually go to the laundry room in and grab your giant laundry hamper. You'll come back for the basket of towels later. After all, this hamper will probably take up three machines, using four would just be a completely asshole move.
A woman from one of the floors above side-eyes your massive hamper as you lug it onto the elevator, but quickly focuses away from it and makes her face blank again by the time the elevator's in motion. Thankfully no one joins you in the elevator as she leaves in the lobby, and you continue to the laundry room with no one else's judgment.
You sort your laundry as you put it into the machines, but as you're putting pouring detergent into the cap for the second machine, you realize that you're not going to have enough. Fuck. You know there's not another bottle back upstairs and consider just using water only. You did do that for a whole summer in high school after all... of course all your clothes had sweat stains that seemed to permanently smell... nope, never mind.
You shove the laundry from the machines you haven't put detergent in back into your hamper, mentally screaming the entire time. Fuck. There are worse situations to be in truthfully, it's just very annoying.
No one in your apartment building really messes with other people's things in the laundry room, so you start the load you had soap for and resolve to clean around your apartment and just going shopping a day early to complete the rest of the laundry.
You spend the twenty minutes before switching the load to the dryer cleaning and mopping your bathroom, then march down to the elevator. In the laundry room, you throw your clothes into the dryer a little forcefully, then march back up the stairs.
To believe the morning started joyfully with cartoons and Cap'n Crunch and could be turned so sour by one error in last week's shopping.
The shitty dryers in your apartment building take an hour (if you're lucky to have your clothes actually dry in one cycle) during which you vacuum your living room/dining room and bed room, mop your kitchen, and for once even dust your furniture. As you check to see if your house plants need watered your alarm for the dryer goes off.
You unceremoniously dump the rest of dirty clothes on the floor of your bedroom and take the empty hamper to laundry room.
Naturally, your clothes are still damp, but you take them out of the dryer anyway, mentally claiming that you'll let them hang dry back upstairs. A few shirts get lucky enough to be hung, but everything else is stuffed into drawers.
Ready to be done with the task of laundry and hopefully turn the day around, you grab a jacket and head down to the parking lot.
It's a short drive to the store, but the two songs that play on the radio plus the change of scenery help you get out of your slump and by the time you're in the store parking lot, you're not dreading the experience ahead. Most of the spots closer to the store are all filled, but you don't mind the walk and park a bit further out.
As you walk across the parking lot you notice something strange. Did that... did that drain just move? Nah, that'd be crazy. You move closer to the edge as a car passes... and... wait... the drain did... too?
What the fuck.
Clearly you must have a high fever or something because that's just delusional. Not willing to infect everyone in the store with whatever you must obviously have like a decent human being, you turn around to go to your car.
You hear metal clammer behind you.
It's just shopping carts... it has to be. Storm drains don't make noise. And they don't move.
But still.
You turn around and see the metal cage thrown off and the storm drain is moving. Definitely moving. It speeds up.
You turn around and start running to your car. And then.
You fall.