Like A Poem (CRACKFIC)

Flatmates On Toast

It was a dark and stormy day, which was but a small chip of tile in a mosaic of what had been a series of dark and stormy days. Outside, in the fields and marshes, thousands of little tiny worms were lifting their heads to howl obscenities at God, except the God in question was scores of seagulls, who were, quite honestly, having the time of their fucking lives. Bastards.

Hardly Cock would remember this day for a long time. A love story about a blue bitch and a zombie giraffe had just broken records in the box office. Society was crumbling around him, people turning against him through no conceivable fault of his own. It was Tuesday. It was raining. And now, to make matters worse, the suitcase he held was becoming wet and heavy in his sweaty hand. Rounding the corner onto Piss Street Avenue, he struggled, puffing and panting, up the litter-pasted pavement. His hair was wet and oil dripped from his body as he lost his natural lubricant. He paused for just a moment to watch it go running down the drain. Now the last piece of home he had was rejecting him as well. He sighed, brokenly. The world was so cruel. He couldn't wait to write that one down later. 

Now he swung the gate open to number 69 Piss Street Avenue and gazed up at the building. It looked like a beach hut on top of a series of other, larger beach huts. Like the tower of Count Olaf's house in A Series Of Unfortunate Events, but painted in a selection of garish colours that were more reminiscent of the McDonalds playplace his mother had tried to abandon him in when he was 11. He breathed in and smiled. It was a simpler time. Entering the door, he was greeted by the immediate smell of petrol, which made him pause and then breathe through his nose as deeply as he could--so deeply, in fact, that the carpet on the floor lifted up and blocked his airway. 

As he choked, doing his best impression of a duck with a cold, a door down the hall creaked open and he came face to clawed finger. He paused, peering inside the door like a nosey little creep, but couldn't decipher what kind of creature he was even looking at. The exposed hand itself lent no clues, as it had bigger claws than a hamster, and it was also pointing up. He tried to step closer, but the finger disappeared and the door slammed shut, an accusatory hiss filling the narrow hall. With a sigh, he picked carpet fluff from his nostril as he made his way upstairs. Society was surely to blame for that one as well. It couldn't be him that had offended The Creature.

Rapping his slick knuckles on the wooden door of the room upstairs, he was greeted by the voice of someone who had smoked for almost two whole years(!!). "Yeah, wait a second." 

Hardly waited for exactly half a second, and then knocked again, but came to realise a moment too late that he was knocking on the broad chest of a man. He jumped back, almost impaling himself on the splintered banister, and brought his fingers to the back of his neck to rub some butter on his skin. "Ehehe...Whoops" He giggled like an anime catgirl. 

His new flatmate looked down at him with wide, lidless eyes and he gulped as he looked up to meet his gaze. He had shallow scars on the side of his face which stretched upwards almost to his ears, and his skin was ashen grey. The side of the strangers mouth became red as he opened it. 

"Hardly...Cook?" Hardly blinked, unable to fathom how the stranger got his name so wrong like an idiot.

"Ah, no, actually. It's Cock. Hardly Cock." The stranger grunted and motioned for him to step inside. Hardly stood his ground, motioning for the stranger to take his suitcase inside first. There was no way he was about to take responsibility for his own property. The Pure Nerve of some people. 

The stranger narrowed his damaged eyes at Mr Cock, then unzipped his suitcase and climbed inside. Defeated, Hardly carried his own suitcase-now twice as heavy, through the threshold. The stranger spoke as if he wasn't inside a suitcase, even though his voice was slightly muffled by three pairs of dirty shorts. 

"My name's Jeff. I'm in the room down the hall from you. The rest of the boys tm are in the kitchen space." Hardly heard the man swallow and quickly tipped out his suitcase to find Jeff eating one of his socks. Jeff blinked up at him, unbothered, thriving, and with half of a black wooly sock in his mouth. "By the way, man, I think you should be eating more pineapple" 

"What are you doing, eating the sock
of the renowned poet that is Hardly Cock" fumed Hardly. Jeff shrugged, swallowing up the rest of the sock like he was eating a strand of spaghetti.

"Are you coming to the kitchen or not you little weirdo." Cock considered for a second, then, defeated, nodded, following Jeff into the kitchen. To his surprise, a sofa was tucked against the back wall of the kitchen area, where a giant, bald, pink rabbit wearing a collared shirt and a tie was sprawled like a dead body. He was clearly alive, though, unless dead bodies were much in the habit of eating day-old microwave pizza while playing competitive lawn mowing games. As he walked into the kitchen, the abomination looked up at him with a smile that could shatter glass.

"Hi!" said the pink rabbit. "I'm Richard Watterson." 

"Wait!" ejaculated Hardly "I know you! You're the father of those kids I used to bully, Gumball and-"

Richard let out a loud, keening wail. "Nicole got custody of those kids in the divorce!" Quickly the floor started to grow damp with his tears as he bawled like a toddler.

"Now look what you've done." came the quiet voice of the Greggs vegan sausage roll laying on the table. Hardly looked at the delicious snack and his mouth watered. 

"Gregg, give him a break". Gregg. Gregg. Appealing on the outside, but something about the way the sausage roll was coated in black nail polish didn't sit right with Hardly. Hardly suspected that the wet nail polish would probably not taste good. 

"This is such a warm welcome!" said Hardly. He had never felt so at home anywhere before, but as he looked around at the filthy kitchen, something felt warm and fuzzy in his heart. In response, Jeff came behind him and clapped his hand on his shoulders in a welcoming, no homo, gesture. 

"From now on, consider yourself Hardly Cock, newest resident of 69 Piss Street Avenue."