It’s sometime around eleven p.m. and I’m cooking breakfast for dinner.

I take mushrooms, tomatoes, and eggs from my food shelf and fry them with half a chilli and two cloves of garlic.

Because I’m worth it.

And tomorrow I’ll go to the market and buy more vegetables and re-fill my food shelf, thus sustaining myself as a person so I can eventually recreate similar or not-similar smaller versions of myself.

I sit down and look at the space between the oven and the cupboard, and realise I haven’t seen Alfred in a while.

I lower my head over the space and whisper, ‘Alfred?’

I lean forward and think: where did you go?

I imagine Alfred actively doing something to better his situation.

Packing a mouse-sized suitcase and moving into the cheese section at Woolworths.

It seems like something Alfred would do.

And it’s almost 11.30 p.m. and I’m sitting on the kitchen floor eating dinner, staring at the space between the oven and the cupboard. For some reason, it makes me remember when I finished high school and got a full time job at a telecommunications store, selling phones and internet plans.

After I finish eating, I get out my iPhone and type a short story about when I was eighteen and working at the telecommunications store:

in 2006 i worked at a telecommunications company on queen st mall in brisbane. i needed a job so i gave them my resume and they gave me a job. id never worked 9-5 before and it seemed exciting. because i wasn’t used to waking up early, sometimes id get erections while sitting at the computer. id be talking a customer through mobile phone plans and then my penis would push against my leg and that would feel nice and then against my pants which would also feel nice. i did a lot of sitting in the mornings pretending to work while staring at the computer. one time i came to work without sleeping, still very high, and my manager let me ‘power nap’ in the back room. another time i shaved all my pubes off for no reason at all. i guess i wanted to know how it felt. tbh it felt pretty lush. when i got to work i told my manager and she freaked out and started saying ‘umm’ and ‘okay’ and she gave me her credit card and wrote down a list of things to buy so i didn’t get any ingrown hairs. 3 months before i left we got this new manager who gained a lot of weight over those 3 months. he liked to talk in sports metaphors. he asked if i was ‘serious’ about telecommunications and he said the word ‘champ’ a lot. he said he wanted a chicken cake for his birthday so we got him a chicken cake, which is basically a whole chicken with some candles stuck in the back.

I read over the story.

One day I want to get more than one hundred likes for a short story on Facebook.

I wonder how that will make me feel.

I put one piece of bread in the toaster and press the lever down.

I think about Lisa.

I stare at the bread.

It seems like when bread toasts it realises its true potential.

The bread is toasting so perfectly.

Soon I will add other ingredients to the toast and ingest them so that someday I may realise my true potential.

I walk to the lounge room.

The moon is out.

I check Facebook and two people have liked my story.

It feels satisfying.

I sit in the lounge room to smoke a cigarette.

I think about Mother Hen and how I haven’t seen her in a while.

I wonder where she is.

Then I smell something.

Smoke.

I run into the kitchen.

There’s smoke coming from the toaster and I stare at it and don’t do anything.

Mark comes out of his room and says, ‘The fuck is that smell?’

And then the smell is choking me.

In my nose holes.

And in my eye holes.

And I lean forward, trying to press ‘cancel’, going pah, pah, pah with my mouth.

Trying to get the smell out.

I press cancel.

I open the windows and the door, trying to let the smell go somewhere else.

Mark walks to the toaster and says, ‘What the fuck were you toasting?’

He takes the bread out and it is barely burnt.

He looks at me in a confused way, and then makes a small eye movement back to the toaster.

He stares at it.

He yells, ‘What the fuck?’

And pushes the toaster on the floor.

He says, ‘Oh my God.’

And I say, ‘What?’

He says, ‘Fuck, the fucking, the, mouse.’

I say it again, ‘What?’

And he says, ‘Fucking — you toasted the mouse.’

We stand and watch the last bits of smoke leave the toaster.

And I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything.

Mark walks away, saying something like, ‘Not my problem.’

And I am alone in the kitchen.

I walk to the toaster.

I look down at Alfred, not moving, and at his patchy fur, all black.

I pick the toaster up and go outside.

There's no one on the street.

I open the bin and drop the toaster inside.

It goes thud.

Reminding me how everything always goes thud.

And later, in bed, I apologise to the mouse and whisper, ‘Sorry, Alfred,’ thinking how all Alfred wanted was a place to call his own, a place to exist for a while free from harm, where maybe he could sleep and one day bring another mouse back in order to recreate similar or not-similar smaller versions of himself, and I realise that we can die at any moment, that we are only here for a little while.

As in a movie, it begins to rain.

I lie with my head on the pillow and stare at the rain.

It’s 12.37 a.m.

Lisa Facebook messages, ‘I’ll pick you up at 6. Idk. It feels like Christmas but better than Christmas. I’m going to wrap all of my limbs around you soon. xxxxx’

I stare at the message then respond, typing ‘z’ instead of ‘x’.

Then I type ‘x’ and send that too.

My dad always said I lacked attention to detail.

I guess it’s something I still need to work on.