nocturne

He parks on his yard next to his house, gets out of his car, and sees a small black cat staring at him.

“Hello mister guy,” he says.

The cat stares at him.

“Mister guy, are we hungry? Are we a hungry guy?”

The cat doesn’t move.

He steps toward the cat slowly, cautiously, but the cat immediately sprints down the sidewalk and across the road and out of sight.

He goes into his house, says hi to his girlfriend, and digs his hand into the sack of cat food on the pantry shelf. One of his cats comes trotting into the room and waits in front of his bowl.

“No, not for you, buddy. You get to starve. This is for Nocturne.”

“Who is Nocturne?” she asks from the other room.

“I met a cat friend and he’s black and his name is Nocturne,” he says.

“Oh, nice,” she says from the other room.

He finds a plate and sets the dry cat food on the plate and goes outside and sets it on the porch for Nocturne, if he returns.

lightbulb

He turns the light on in the bathroom but nothing happens.

He walks back into the other room and says, “I think the bathroom light is out.”

“Oh, fuck,” she says.

“I can get lightbulbs tomorrow,” he says. “Or, I could take a lightbulb out of a different light and put it in the bathroom. It’s really dark.”

“I’m sure I can figure something out for tomorrow. Like, I could bring a lamp into the bathroom to shower.”

“If you’re okay with that,” he says. “Otherwise I’ll take the lightbulb out of my desk lamp and put it in the bathroom.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” she says.

“Am I stupid?” he asks. “Because I don’t keep lightbulbs in the house.”

“No, not at all. I mean, we did. We just ran out of them.”

“Yeah,” he says, “I should have bought more when I used the last one.”

“Not a big deal.”

“Do we go through lightbulbs faster than other people?”

“I don’t think so,” she says.

reality tv

He carries the vacuum attachment to the Kaivac and the other guy pushes the Kaivac along the sidewalk.

“Would be kinda funny,” he says, “to have a game show where people beat each other to death with Kaivac parts.”

“Hmm,” the other guy says. “Janitor death match.”

“Yeah.”

“What about a post-apocalyptic janitor movie where the last two guys alive have to fend for themselves with nothing but Kaivac parts,” he says.

“In a world where everyone is dead and there are maybe zombies or some other shit, two men survive with nothing but bleach bottles and a Kaivac,” he says.

“Yeah,” the other guys says, “and it’s actually just really obvious product placement for the Kaivac.”

“Haha, yeah,” he says and he leans against the glass door of the building they are about to enter. “I would be dead if not for this extendable vacuum attachment and the Kaiblooey cleaning solvent that degreases and sanitizes better than anything else on the market.”