eerieindiana | Eerie, Indiana fanfiction: Division of Labour (Reply)

The kitchen table was covered in meat. Sausages in link and patty form slumped in unsteady piles next to pot roasting joints, fat back bacon snuggled up to pork chops. There were even a few packs of the grey-brown mystery mince sold in the darkest corner of the World o' Stuff's frozen food aisle, a place where no unsuspecting ice cream would dare to venture.

"Wow," said Dash, drawing the word out just long enough to make it clear that this was not the 'I am impressed' kind of wow. This was most certainly the 'someone here has been an idiot and that someone is 100% Marshall' type of wow.

"Yeah," said Simon. "I can explain..."

"Explain what?" asked Dash. "Either Teller's mom came by while I was out, realised we only have milk and beer in the refrigerator and went on some kind of maternal grocery spree," - here he glanced hopefully at Simon, who shook his head. Dash didn't quite manage to hide his disappointment as he continued - "Or the Canine Committee for Doggy Rights has managed to kidnap Marshall again and is holding him for ransom,"

He looked at the laden - and slightly dripping - table again, and picked up a stack of rib-eye steaks, moving them to the counter next to the ancient four-ring stove.

"In which case you're offering those mutts way too much for a guy who gets outsmarted by a bunch of wayward pets without opposable thumbs," he finished.

"I don't know," said Simon, considering the leaking meat-pile. "I think it's fair. Obviously I wouldn't offer them the whole thing at once, we'd want to keep the really good stuff as a bargaining chip, but..." he shook himself. "Dash! This isn't about Mars being carjacked and forced to drive Fifi around all day while she sticks her head out of the passenger window again."

He brandished a somewhat crumpled sheet of A3 paper, covered in wobbly lines drawn in felt pen and decorated with stickers.

"It's about the rota. We need to change how we split up the food shopping."

"Oh," said Dash, who hadn't been expecting that.

"I know you weren't expecting that," said Simon, who had been. He spread the rota out on the floor, grabbing three dirty coffee mugs from the sideboard to weigh down three of the corners. Then he fetched the calendar down from where it hung next to the fridge and laid it next to the colourfully annotated chore wheel.

"Oh," said Dash, drawing the word out to make it clear that he got it.

"Yeah," said Simon. "If we don't want to come home to a kitchen covered in meat every four weeks, Mars absolutely cannot go to the grocery store near a full moon."

Dash noticed a thin trickle of watery blood snaking towards him from the pool forming under the table and stepped to one side to avoid it.

"Please tell me he shoplifted all this in a fit of theriomorphic rage," he said.

"Nope," said Simon. "Paid for the whole lot. Didn't even use the coupons."

Dash hissed.

"Give me the sticker pack," he said. "He can take my turns at washing up."

Simon passed over the sheets of tiny coloured dots with a smile.

Microwave-verse

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