Writing Prompt #141: Who the fuck keeps stealing my doormat?
That first morning, it had simply been missing. Hiero stood staring at the front stoop in his robe and slippers, face pinched as he ran a hand through his disheveled hair. It had taken all of Soibhan's willpower to keep from blowing it then and there. The only thing that kept her from giving everything away was the backhanded challenge Will had given her.
'You couldn't play poker against a barn. There's no way you'll keep a straight face.'
Full of pride and determination to prove him wrong, she sat at the kitchen table and ate her toast with a face utterly void of expression aside from a single cocked eyebrow aimed right at Will. It seemed to say, ‘see, I can keep a straight face just fine, asshole.’
But then things started to get elaborate. After replacing the missing item with an exact replica, Hiero opened the door one morning almost a week later to find it missing again, with something new in its place. A picture of a chimpanzee pointing and grinning sat on the stoop, beside a ripe banana. Soibhan knew, because she’d seen Will print it out that morning as he’d pulled a banana from his coat pocket.
A disgruntled noise echoed into the kitchen moments before Hiero stormed back inside, his slippers clacking smartly against the floor as he crumpled the picture up and tossed it into the trash without showing them what it was. The banana received that same pinched look before it was set on the counter.
“Everything okay?” Will asked, and he really was the best at this game. His feigned innocence was so perfect, Soibhan would never have suspected him. For her part, she had to hide her face behind her coffee mug before she choked on her own tongue.
“Everything’s….fine…”
It continued like that for a week. Hiero replaced the stolen item every time, refusing to admit defeat. He tossed everything left on the stoop in its place, his growing irritation evident in the way his disgusted noises changed in pitch and length each time. The banana had only been the start. A rather pathetic, sickly looking charlie brown christmas tree followed, all the more hilarious because it was the middle of June. Then came the god awful ceramic hamster, the stack of 1970s playboy magazines, an elaborately decorated royal purple throw pillow with gold fringe, an entire flock of lawn flamingos, and a pile of legos with a little flag in the middle. Each morning, Hiero looked close to having an aneurysm as he threw the things in the trash. Will, for his part, never cracked a smile and always seemed perfectly surprised and consoling. Soibhan found herself growing more and more desperate in her attempts to keep from laughing until she keeled over.
Then nothing happened, for weeks. Each morning, Hiero opened the kitchen door with trepidation, fully expecting to find a stoop covered by some stupid piece of crap instead of his rather dry but clearly very important ‘Welcome to our Home’ doormat. Will let him believe the culprits had stopped their thieving until Hiero could open the door again without fear or worry, his face instead holding a tiny, extremely satisfied smile at having outlasted his new, unseen nemesis.
Soibhan and Will lounged in bed one morning as Hiero rose at his customary crack of dawn. She curled away from the cold draft and started to bury herself back down into the blankets when a string of foul, vehement cursing shattered the quiet. The kitchen door slammed shut with a crack. Freezing, she peered up at Will, at the way he tried to hide the huge grin curling his lips. He pressed a fist to his mouth and his whole body shook with suppressed laughter.
“You did it again?”
At her question, he rolled away and stuffed his head under the pillows as a clattering came from the kitchen.
“Who the fuck keeps stealing my doormat?! For fuck’s sake, why the fucking doormat?!”
Will laughed so hard that the entire bed shook and he pointed at the closet, his head still lost beneath the pillows, his feet kicking a little. It took her a moment to see how the door seemed to bulge a bit, as if straining against the frame. Hearing more crashing and stomping in the kitchen, she crawled over Will and fell gracelessly to the floor before reaching the closet and yanking the door open. A yelp escaped her before she found herself buried under nearly two dozen heavy rubber doormats, all with the same message. ‘Welcome to our Home.’
“Why not the goddamn car or something. Fucking little shites—Soibhan!”
There he stood, face mottled red as his mouth dropped open in complete shock. Will looked like he was having a damn seizure under the blankets, but Hiero was ignoring him completely, betrayal written large on his face.
“How could you?”
“It wasn’t me!!” But it was too late, he was already storming out of the room and Will was falling onto the floor in his mirth.
“You know, Will. I think you broke him.”
Only a strangled wheeze answered.