The Abandoned Chore

It wasn’t my fault really, or at least that is what I keep trying to tell myself. How was I supposed to know that this would happen? It was just an ordinary house plant I had gotten from the garden section of Home Depot to spruce up my college apartment. If nothing else it should have died a long time ago from neglect, but somehow, instead…

It all started when my roommate, Brian, moved out. Well, dropped out was the better word. If Brian had stayed, then someone would have been in the apartment, would have watered the plant, and maybe could have prevented all of this. Yes, it was technically my apartment too, but I was in the throes of new love, spending every waking (and sleeping) minute with her at her place. It didn’t matter that I had a place of my own that I (okay my parents) were paying for. So yeah, it had been a few months since I had actually been back to my apartment. I know, that sounds horrible doesn’t it, but there was nothing there other than some clothes I never wore and the afore mentioned houseplant.

After a few months of literally never stepping foot in my place I began to feel guilty. Like I said, my parents were paying my rent, maybe I should actually, like, spend the night there every once in a while. So one day after classes I decided to swing by. As I approached my apartment all seemed normal. I put the key in the lock, swung the door open, and was relieved to find everything looked fine, except for a stale musty smell that I assumed was the result of having the place closed up for so long, but as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I started realize something was wrong. The place was trashed, there was something deep brown in color smeared on the carpet and splattered on the walls. Slowly I entered, and there, in the living room was what looked like a pile of white sticks. On closer inspection I saw they were bones, hundreds of tiny white bones.

That is when I saw it, my house plant, dashing for the front door, carrying the pink pot over it’s, uh, well I guess its head? The next morning the first story in the paper appeared, many followed over the next few weeks, a serial killer; it didn’t take long for me to piece it together, mostly because those terracotta red splatters of blood and piles of clean white bones were present at every crime scene. I felt guilty, if only I had watered it, would this have happened? But I couldn’t very well go to the police could I? They would put me in a strait jacket for sure, or they would think I was the killer, or something. So I did the only sensible thing I could, I cleaned up the apartment, sublet it, and kept my fucking mouth shut.