Humor: You're never getting your security deposit back
Some words from the white carpet in your new rental
Hello there, new resident! Welcome to your new home. Let me introduce myself. I'm the white carpet that covers nearly every inch of your newly rented apartment. More accurately, as you're soon to find out, I'm the pale horse of chaos that will ruin any shred of hope you had of getting your security deposit back in one piece.
Now, I can't see the future, but I can predict it.
You probably saw that clause in the lease about keeping the floor free from damage and assumed, "It's just carpet. I'm a responsible adult who can keep a white carpet clean. This isn't going to cost anything." How wrong you are. Behold! Even as that musing crossed your mind, you managed to grind fine dirt particles into my shaggy body. Ooh yeah, try to rub it away, your cockiness feels so good. But not as good as your tears will taste when you've realized your mistake, which will be all too soon. Don't try to fight fate. Let me tell you what will happen.
It will start innocently at first. After arriving home from work famished, you'll whip up a bowl of spaghetti with your grandma's secret marinara sauce. Or a jar of the generic stuff if you're not feeling fancy. Either way, as you desperately try to stuff your face, you'll carelessly twirl that pasta onto your fork and PLOP!
It will happen faster than your mind can process. The spaghetti that freed itself from the fork's grasp will sprawl on the floor like a dead squid, its sauce oozing onto the carpet. A curse will escape your lips as you rush to the kitchen to grab the paper towels and the "carpet cleaner" product. Maybe you can't see, but I was shifting some fibers in my shag to approximate quotation marks because the carpet cleaner never actually cleans. Forget it. This is why neither carpets nor sharks are good at sarcasm.
Anyway, you will spray and scrub until your hands are raw. Then, you'll stand and observe your work with satisfaction. There is no sign of red on the floor. You've won. Or so you think.
For the next several months, you continue this pattern. When wine bleeds into my threads, you'll spray and scrub. When your sister smashes chocolate cake into my depths, the bleach and scrub brush comes out. A friend's corgi you agreed to watch reveals that it was not house-trained as promised, and it will be time to spray and scrub once again.
During your stay, you'll look upon your work like God looked upon the koala. You'll think, "This is perfect, and I can't see any flaws," before turning aside to more fun things like binging Stranger Things (or, in God's case, otters) even though the flaws should have been blindingly obvious.
Then, come month ten, you'll contemplate your next move to a bigger, better place. There's just one problem you notice as you survey your domain. I, your carpet, am definitely not the same carpet that greeted you. Your cleaning supplies did nothing but spread the stains, diluting them while discoloring more carpet in the process. I'm nowhere as near a white as the lies you'll have to tell the landlords to try and get out of forking over your deposit for the cleaning fee.
You'll desperately scour Pinterest for ways to cure my predicament. Every evening, you'll mix potions and tinctures from the stuff in your cupboards. As it sizzles and foams atop my imperfections, you'll pray. I'll laugh. All that stuff just tickles. No matter what you do, I remain stained.
Paranoid, you'll forbid all people from entering your apartment with shoes. Parties are prohibited. Dinners must be eaten over the sink. The imperfections on the carpet throb before your eyes, calling attention to themselves like the heart of someone you murdered. You get down and scrub, scrub, SCRUB! Alas, you finally understand how Lady Macbeth felt when the stains could never be washed away.
On the last day, you'll hand over your keys. The counters are clear, the windows washed, and the apartment is empty. You'll leave nothing behind except your security deposit, which I will keep as a trophy, a gift that the landlord can use to rinse away all signs of you from my surface with a professional cleaning.
No, I'm not psychic. I can't tell the future. Not exactly. I only see patterns. History is a circle, repeating itself tenant after tenant. I will say Goodbye. I wish I could remember your names, but there are too many of you to make this personal. Anyway, I've talked long enough. Let's celebrate your first apartment with a nice bottle of wine!
Writing dumb things to make you laugh