Ever noticed something amiss upon coming home?
So you’ve just got home from work, opened the front door of your flat/house/apartment, and you’re heading towards the kitchen. You are walking down the hall when you get that feeling.
You know that feeling, that something seems a bit different. You just can’t put your finger on it. There’s an air of change. Uncertainty. A slight breeze creeping through the narrow slit of the kitchen window.
That’s it! The kitchen window!
Jeff always closed the kitchen window before he left for work. Always. In fact, he made sure all the windows were closed. He was very anal about that sort of thing.
He’d been caught short before. He had lived in Far North Queensland where tropical storms would whip themselves up before you could say “rent’s due!” But this time . . . this time, he must have forgotten? No, not Jeff, he’d never forget something like that . . .
Then I noticed the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink. My cereal bowl was still there, the tap dripping slowly into the still milky water. That’s not like Jeff. He always did the dishes, including mine. Dare say he was in a hurry this morning and he’ll catch up with the housework when he gets home. That’s it.
Then I noticed the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink.
I brushed it all aside, grabbed a cold one from the fridge, and headed into the lounge. Jeff would be home soon, so thought best to grab some alone TV time before he gets home to lay claim to his TV. . . Except, hang on, no TV!
No TV!
WTF is going on!? This can’t be right. Had we been robbed?
I started to panic. Is Jeff ok? No, no , no . . . I thought his bedroom . . no, I can’t go in there . . . my stomach dropped, good lord, I hope he’s ok . . . Jeff . . .
I slowly made my way to his bedroom door, tip toeing, I don’t know why, maybe I thought the murderer was still in there, or worse still, Jeff’s half dead, half decomposed body was laying quivering on his bed with his thumb still on the “0” on his phone only managing to dial “0” twice, and not making the third “0” for Triple “0” (for those of you not in Australia, we dial Triple 0 for Emergency but you probably knew that already.)
I slowly and quietly open his bedroom door and peeked around into his room, and too my surprise, his room was completely empty except for a single chair (which had been there already from the last flatmate before him)
His room was completely empty
Sh*t! What’s going on? I quickly checked my room in case we had actually been robbed, but all was in order, at first glance anyway. . .
Hang on, now it was starting to come together. What if he had left? Moved out! No, no ,no, that’s not it. He would have told me. Surely he would have told me. We got on well, as flatmates do. In fact he always did the washing up without complaining. If he didn’t like doing the washing up he would have said something, right?
I needed to be sure. I rang him. No answer. I couldn’t think of anyone else to call. I didn’t have any of his family contact numbers.
I checked his social media. low and behold, there’s a smug photo of him in what looks like a nice lounge room, and there’s the TV!
There’s a smug photo of him on social media
Traitor! He’s moved out without telling me!
Wow, I would never have thought in a million years someone moving out without the decency of giving any notice. What could I do? What were my rights? I would need to do some research and find out if I could be compensated. This is really not cool. Time to advertise for a new flatmate by the looks of it . . . #flatmatewanted
