robot wife! Now with 'guff knob'!

into the domestic

I stood over the sink, cigarette resting deceptively easy in my left hand after I had just taken a long drag. I let the soothing smoke fill my lungs. The air was heavy with smoke throughout the kitchen and into the adjacent living room.

The dirty dishes were piled high; there was a problem with the plumbing to the dishwasher, and I hadn’t had time to wash the dishes from the previous night and morning since arriving home from work.

I knew that Jacob and Michael needed dinner before I took them to soccer practice, but we were out of the microwavable dinners that I usually save for busy nights like tonight, and Dan wouldn’t be back from work until much later, so it would be impossible for him to pick some up…

Leslie was screaming in pain; she had been chasing Joann with a hammer that Dan had left in the living room after fixing the coffee table leg, and she had hit her chin against the wooden television cabinet. She had tripped on a corner of the brown-orange carpet that had come apart from the floorboards. The television itself was blaring – absolutely blaring. It was a commercial for Beast Wars Transformers action figures. Tears of frustration welled up; my parents never bought me action figures, beg and plead though I did.