A Difficult Tuesday Morning

The note was on my bedroom door when I got out of bed this morning, stuck up there with a bit of tape. This was especially strange since I had no roommates. I checked the front door and windows, all locked and undamaged.

Returning to the letter I pulled it off the door and looked it over, front and back. Just a single sentence was written on it, in near perfect handwriting, almost exactly as if it had been typed in Times New Roman font, but for a couple of stray drops of ink.

"Your critical hit chance has been raised to 100%."

You can imagine my astonishment. Not at the content of the note - I had no idea what that could mean - but at the violation of having found the note in the first place.

I called my grandson and told him what had happened, hoping it was a joke on his part. He almost didn't believe me, until I read him the note. At that point he laughed and said it was something about the video games people play nowadays. But this also convinced him that someone had been inside my home, and it hadn't been him. He agreed to drive down, but it would take him half an hour.

"In the meantime Pappy, be careful, you might hurt someone." He said with a laugh.

As I waited for my grandson to arrive I started to make my breakfast.

Since my wife died several years ago, my eating habits had fallen off entirely. Breakfast was usually toast with large pats of butter and too much jam.

I picked the white bread out of the toaster and placed it onto a saucer. Dipping my knife into the room temperature butter, I went to smear a pat onto the hot bread.

The knife impacted the bread with force I didn't even know I was capable of delivering. What I intended as a gentle brush of the butter knife smashed through the bread, through the plate, and into the granite countertop, leaving a divot and a small crack in the hard stone.

I looked down at the knife in my feeble looking old hand, astounded. Carefully, I placed the knife into the sink and set about brushing the remnants of my toast and plate into the garbage can.

Then I made another piece of toast and tried the whole thing over again, this time using my wooden cutting board as a base. Carefully, gingerly, I loaded the knife with more butter and, with the utmost ease, attempted to swipe the butter onto the bread.

This time the bread tore swiftly in half, with the lower half flying off into the living room and landing butter side down on the couch. The butter knife was implanted so deep in the wooden cutting board that I was unable to remove it.

"What in the hell..."

Upset and hungry I went over to examine the damage to the couch. It was my wife's prized possession and I was very careful with it still. I pulled off the buttered bread and saw the greasy stain smeared into the fabric.

"Goddamn it."

Just slightly, petulantly, I stomped my foot in annoyance. To my shock, my foot went straight through the hardwood floor and I nearly got stuck in the hole. Pulling my leg out, I peered down and saw clearly into my basement.

"What is happening!?"

I was becoming frustrated. I moved a side table over the hole in my floor and went back to make my toast. This time I toasted the bread and instead of using a knife to spread the butter, decided to dip the bread into the butter directly.

Assuming all was safe, I took the bread and dipped an edge into the butter. I guess that counted as a rudimentary blow, because next thing I know my ceramic butter dish is in pieces and there' butter sprayed all over the far kitchen wall.

"Mother fu..."

There was a knock on my door. I went to answer it and saw that it was my neighbor, a kind elderly woman named Elizabeth, wearing a look of concern.

"Harold, I heard some loud noises. I wanted to make sure you were ok."

I smiled as nicely as I could and tried to put her at ease. "Of course, everythings fine Elizabeth..." I thought of an excuse, "I dropped the cast iron... several times..."

Elizabeth smiled and nodded, ready to accept any normal answer. "Ok Harold, just checking in."

We exhanged some last pleasantries and then I watched her walk off down the hallway. When she turned the corner I shut my door, perhaps a little harder than I would normally, unhappy to be returning to the mess in my apartment.

The door exploded outward with a massive bang, taking the entire door frame with it, and flying into the wall across from my apartment. Elizabeth came running back, along with every other person in my building, and I just looked at them all uselessly and shrugged.

I said nothing and, carefully avoiding the hole in my floor, as well as the butter stain, I very, very gently sat on my wife's couch and waited for my grandson to arrive.

When, at last he got there, walking through the ruin of my front door, it was two hours later and I shushed him before he could say a word.

"We'll talk about all this in a second. Just make me some fucking buttered toast."

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[Photo]By Acabashi [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

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The posts on this blog are mostly the results of my r/writingprompts responses. To view my other stories check out @Dberstories or my subreddit r/LFTM