The living nightmare that was Mel's transfer was over, she was finally home and the best part of all was that she'd finally get some shut eye after waking up early to get to work. If she had started her first day on the job on Monday, she would've lost her mind.

It was bad enough that she had gotten used to falling asleep by midnight and waking up around 6 in the morning. At least she could finally rest, but when Saturday came she woke up depressed. Mel still laid on the bed without the will to get up, coccooned within the bedsheets like a human burrito for the following hour. Yesterday's trauma must've affected her more than she thought.

Her mother was in the kitchen boiling the beans and cooking the drumstick while Antoine was in the living room, playing with his laptop typing random words on the screen as he made up words to make them rhyme.

Antoine was physically a grown man in his late 20s, but he was diagnosed with severe non-verbal autism since his early childhood. Despite his condition, he signalled for permission to do simple tasks like turn on the switch from the extension cord to use his laptop and printer.

He blankly stared at the screen, then at the keys to type or search images online. When he was called to eat, he'd get up from the desk chair to sit down on the recliner to eat.

If he was hungry, he would burp. If he was annoyed, he would wave goodbye or point. If he was nervous or genuinely happy, he'd laugh. If he wanted to say something, he would make a humming sound or hiss. It was a rare occurence for Antoine to utter a syllable.

“Twan, time to eat.” His mother called just as she turned off the stove.

Antoine stood up from the desk chair, sat down on the recliner, then picked a towel and tucked it on his abdomen before his mom passed the dish to him. Drumsticks and french fries.

By the time he finished with the first drumstick and a te most of the french fries, Mel walked out of the bedroom with her pijamas to look for her toothbrush. After applying the toothpaste and brushing ger teeth, she went to another room to pick a bag of cereal and laid the corn flakes on the counter. She opened the fridge to pull out a plate and a gallon of milk.

Where's the kitchen drawer?

The one on the bottom is used to store cleaning products, pesticide and tools while the top drawer where it should be placed in the kitchen is nonexistant.

And who's fault is it? Blame uncle Tate for ruining a good top drawer by sawing a hole where it doesn't belong before they had a chance to hang it on the kitchen. The top kitchen drawer was thrown outside for the trash collectors to take. The kitchen wall looked barren with a white paint job over it ever since.

There was no point in leaving silverware out in the open where the cockroaches would crawl all over it. So the only alternative was to put the plates and cups in the fridge along with the rest of the produce.

Melanie poured milk on her cereal, put the gallon back in the fridge and picked a spoon. Once she sat down on the couch to tane a couple of spoonfuls, Antoine got out of the recliner which meant that either Mel or her mother had to walk into the kitchen to help him wash his hands.

Thankfully the mom picked up the towel from the recliner and went to the kitchen to help wash off the grease from Antoine's hands.

Their mother's way of doing it was to apply soap and water to wash his hands herself while Mel's method was to put some liquid soap on Antoine's hands and pantomimed for him to watch her and imitated the motion with the soap spreading around his hands, then the water. After they used towel to dry his hands, he would discard it to the edge of the recliner before giving him a treat.

The same routine was after he finished his lunch, he would eat an ice cream sandwitch or another type of ice cream before drinking a glass of water. He would follow the same routine and there was no changing it.

After Mel had her brunch she would get some water, still having her hair unkept no less. The only way to get someone like Mel to stop wearing her pijamas all day would be to get her to go outside. At least this time she actually had a genuinely good reason to walk down to the pharmacy.

1) She needed to buy new pens to take to her job since using black ink was not acceptable to write on the payroll.

2) She wanted to buy art supplies for therapeutic reasons.

3) She needed soap. There was no point in using a soap bar that it was the same size as her index finger and it would keep shrinking into nothingness if she kept postponing the inevitable.

4) A good excuse to get rid of the depressing mood she was under.

She brushed her hair and tied it to a bun before wearing a cap. She donned a purple plaid buttoned shirt, sky blue pants and brown boots as she walked to the door before her mom stopped her. "Where are you going?"

Her mother asked as she walked up to her, showing her concern.

“Shopping.” Mel replied nonchalant.

“You look tired. I'm worried that you'll go out on foot all the way to—”

“I'm just going to the pharmacy nearby.”

Her mother felt relieved, she was worried that Mel would walk all the way to the supermarket or to River Stones again. Frankly, Mel didn't have the energy to walk another marathon. At least the Medina Pharmacy was only a 2 minute stroll from home compared to all the walking and sprinting she did yesterday.

“Ok, let me unlock the gate first.” Her mother picked up the keys and walked out to the balcony, as she opened the metal door the two bitches barked upon seeing them, mostly Barbarita who was just ecstatic to see them.

Barbarita is a cream furred, poodle-pitbull mix, the ends of her fur jutted out like a porcupine as she barked while the pure chihuahua called Chispita just watched Olivia unlock the door before Mel walked out with a facemask on and headed on her way to the pharmacy.

The pharmacy had a parking lot next to it that was coated in pebbles and asphalt. The parking lot itself was once a convenience store in the early 2000s to mid 2010s before it got remodeled, which only lasted for two or three more years before it got demolished for good. Its history as an establishment, spacious and forgotten, only two a couple of vehicles were parked surrounded by a metal-wired fence as Mel walked towards the building next to the parking lot and opened the glass door with a push. The Medina Pharmacy's interior was small but decent, there was an empty cubicle in the middle of the pharmacy upon entering.

The waiting room itself only had twelve chairs, four in each row facing the pillar with a medium-sized flatscreen TV hanging on the pillar supported with cherry oak boards playing the 4th channel for the umpteenth time while Mel perused to look at the pens.

The one that she'd been looking for was fairly cheap and she grabbed it. A pack of 4 blue pend, 2 bags of composition notebooks and a tracing pad before she crossed to the opposite side of the pharmacy to pick a pack of soap bars before returning to the cubicle.

The products cost around $14 dollars in total. 2 composition notebooks per bag $3.25; the pack of pens, $2.64; the tracing pad, $1.25; and the pack of soap bars, $3.98.

Paying 20 bucks and receiving 5 dollars and some spare change for the purchase and pulling the glass door on the way out.

Looking both ways before crossing, then stroll all the way home in about 2 minutes or less.

When she was reaching the neighbor's house, the family of six were packing to go on a trip before they saw Mel walking by. Two of the children greeted her before Mel waved at them them as she walked to the steps of the balcony before the last of them mounted on the car.

Mel tore from their gaze and checked if the lock was open before entering the balcony, both canines watching and trying to reach as far as the leash would allow them. The chihuahua stood on her hind legs, almost making a little dance when Mel tried to open the metal door.

Locked.

Meaning that she would have to wait for her mom to unlock the metal door completely.

Surprisingly, she didn't have to wait too long, when her mother only have to unlock the upper latch this time.

Mel came back chipper as ever now that she had something to write about her shift and what occured during those hours. She placed the shopping bag in her room and got changed while her mother had brought a ladder and the blue curtains from the back room.

“Mel, help me tidy up. The doctor is gonna come here to check on your brother.” She said as Mel helped clear the couch while her mother swept the floor.

Mel began using the hooks to slip the curtains in before hanging them above the doorframe. The first one covered the old red door that had seen better days. Then did the same for the door frame that lead to the bedroom.

After her mother finished sweeping, she climbed the ladder to hang the kitchen curtains while Mel slipped the last curtains on the remaining hooks before ordering her daughter to help her move the furniture.

Olivia moved behind the sofa to push while Mel was on the opposite side trying to pull the furniture to her left. She felt the front leg of the couch jam Melanie's right toe.

Gnashing her teeth, she moved the couch to her left. After the couch was out of the way could see that blood clotting on her nail and blood jutting from the side of her toe. She bent down to yank her toenail glean off as blood seeped on the edge.

The pain on her toe was tolerable in comparison to her mother's nagging and belittling her for not moving fast enough.

“Get the stapler.” Her mother ordered while Mel went to her room to pick the stapler from the top PVC board and walked out, bristling the curtain as she passed before rolling the edge of the curtain to staple it.

Then passed the stapler to her mom to staple the curtain to shorten its length but did it much poorly, so she had to try again and had to call Mel to do it. Olivia folded it, Mel applied pressure to the stapler.

Each hard click added pressure to her carpal tunnel so she had to use both hands; one to push down the stapler down and the other to prevent the nerve from exacerbating.

After the living room looked decent, Mel closed the ladder while her mother was at the threshold of the bathroom. Mel closed the bathroom door in order to pass, she heard her mother shout. “Ow! My foot!”

Mel hadn't made a single complaint despite that her toe was bleeding out and her carpals were throbbing. She slowly retreated to the bedroom to check on her injury while the patient himself was laying leisurely on his bed staring out into space.

It didn't take long for her mother to call the doctor until the professional in question arrived. It was a woman with auburn hair whose name was just as irrelevant as the whole conversation they had. Somewhere along the chat, their mother called Antoine for the medic to see his physical condition and got out of the bed and walked out to the living room in his underwear. Well fed and taken care of.

Mel was on her phone, texting Alan at Discord.

—

L

AZYMOUSE06 14/10/23 14:43
My mom jammed the couch to my TOE!

The toenail that I yanked off is full of blood.

On the brightside I bought metallic colored pencils, neon colored pencils, 4 small composition books and 2 packs of soap (8 saop bars in total).

LAZYMOUSE06 14/10/23 14:50
Plus 4 blue ink pens at the local pharmacy before this happened.

Alan 14/10/23 15:33
Yummy

—

M

el couldn't tell in which context he meant by that. Yummy as in a foot fetish kind of way or he was just a sadist, relishing in schaudenfraud. That, or her sense of humor was so broken that she sent a photo of her broken toenail to make it look like a Halloween candy rip-off.

—

L

AZYMOUSE06 14/10/23 16:05
Toenail-shaped Candycorn

This why you don't have friends in real life, Mel.