Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Toby and the Plant

Toby leaned against the kitchen counter and stabbed a fork at a cold bowl of pasta without really thinking. He wasn't using the table because he was perplexed by what was currently occupying it, a potted plant in a blue-green ceramic pot. Slightly dishevelled, some soil spilled onto the surface of the table, with broad, impossibly dark green leaves. He had stolen it the previous evening on his walk home from some drinks with Jeremy at the bar. Why he'd taken it he was unsure of. He hadn't been drunk enough to do something stupid, but still, this was stupid. Not like the time he got shitfaced at his friend John's house-warming and woke up naked and confused in the guest room. He was coherent last night, but couldn't explain to himself why he had stopped walking, looked up onto his neighbor's porch, and decided to take this plant from it. He didn't even really care much for plants. He had once bought at a yard sale a spider plant  he would make into his new pet project, but the cat had eaten in down to the dirt as soon as Toby had turned his back. So that was a wash, and he hadn't wanted to bring another living thing in just to be butchered by the cat and later thrown up on the rug.

He could smell the stink of the trash from across the kitchen as he gave up on the pasta and put the bowl in the sink. He pulled a dirty glass from the already unruly pile and ran some water. He might as well give some form of sustenance to this strange hostage he had somehow acquired.

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