I smell the burning before I even get to the fourth floor. As I step out of the elevator, I get a face full of thick smoke.
“Hello!” Electra emerges from the smoke. She looks pleased with herself, having apparently nearly burned the place down.
“Why isn’t the fire alarm going off!?”
“I put a bag over it. It kept beeping at me when I was trying to cook.”
“Is that what you’re doing? Cooking?”
“Yes. I have made food!”
She presents me with a plate full of charcoal with a proud smile I can’t help but return even though my eyes are stinging from smoke. I guess she doesn’t know how to use an extractor fan, and even if she did it wouldn’t make a dent in the clouds which are billowing all around us.
“What did you make?”
“Everything,” she says.
“Everything, huh,” I say, going to the kitchen to start the extractor fan. “I think we’re going to need to open a few windows in here.”
“None of them open,” she says. “It’s kind of a fire risk.”
“No kidding,” I agree.
It takes a call down to the main office to get the extractors in the ducting to activate and within a few minutes, things are smelling much better, if not looking better. The kitchen has been trashed. Pots and pans have food burned into them so deeply they will never be separated. There’s soot up the walls. The fridge is wide open and everything, absolutely everything has been pulled out of it. What hasn’t been burned has been smeared over the counters and the drawers, which are all open.
I am stunned. I’d lecture her for the mess, but it occurs to me that nobody has ever taught her to clean up. Nobody’s taught her how to do anything at all.
“You’ve done really well,” I tell her.
“Eat some of it,” she says, pushing the charcoal plate toward me.
“I’m not hungry. I had eggs, remember?”
“Eat. Some,” she insists. “I made it for you.”
Electra
He takes a little piece and puts it to his teeth with a grimace.
“You don’t like it,” I say, feeling disappointment wash over me. I’ve been trying so hard. Some of it isn’t even completely black. I’ve found that cooking is mostly about things going black and crispy really quickly.
“It’s a little… overcooked,” he says. “But you’ve done very well for a first try.”
He’s pandering to me again.
“Too much heat?”
“A little too much,” he says. “Next time I’ll help you. For now, let’s practice a different life skill. Cleaning.”
“Cleaning?”
“We’ve got to get all this put back the way it was.”
“Why?”
“Well, because it’s better that way.”
“Why?”
“Because it is more hygienic and we’ll be able to think straight again.”
“I can think straight right now,” I say, sampling a bit more of my food. The black tastes bitter, but there’s some raw stuff on the inside that is still squidgy.
“Well, I can’t. And it is a good skill to have. You might want to get away with a crime one day.”
“That’s true,” I say. “I might.”
I still have no idea what crimes and cleaning have to do with one another. I don’t even know what cleaning is, but I have had enough of asking questions for one day.
“Well, well, well…”
That fucking voice.
I swing around to see the Head standing in my kitchen. Until this very moment, I did not think of it as my kitchen, but now I see her, I feel a rush of territorial pride. These are my things. She is an invader, and I do not like the way she looks at Doctor Ares. Her eyes glitter like a predatory snake, running up and down the length of his bulky body.
“Looks like a mess has been made,” she observes.
“A little bit,” Tom agrees, wiping his hands on a tea towel, which is a towel not used for tea.
“Pleased you did not get the chance to take her home, Doctor Ares?”
“What is she doing here?” I hiss the question. I can’t believe that bitch has the balls to just walk in here. Does she think the doctor will keep her safe? Because nothing will.
The thing about cooking I like, aside from the fire, is the knives. I grab one and advance toward the Head. Tom grabs me before I can stab her, yanking me back kinda roughly.
“No,” he says firmly. “No stabbing.”
“I stab her and we’re all free,” I tell him. “You should let me.”
“It’s not this woman that’s keeping you from being free,” he tells me. “It’s your tendency to want to stab your way out of situations. I’m trying to teach you to be civilized so you can get out of here one day. But every time you try to stab someone, or hurt someone, you set yourself back. So relax, alright? You don’t have to like a person, but you do have to respect their right to keep breathing.”