“The stream yesterday was ass,” Said Slime forlornly, “Chat’s so mean, Basil. I don’t think I can take it anymore.”
Basil looked into his pearlescent hued orbs cautiously, and told him in a stunningly gentle voice, “Stop being such a little bitch about it.” Slime crossed his arms and pouted.
“Whatever dude,” said Slime angrily to his pretty GF. “Anyways. When the hell is Landlord supposed to get here so he can replace the oven? I wanna hit this resin but it’ll stink.”
Basil sighed and checked the group chat that she was in with Slime and Landlord. “Between four and seven he said, and it’s 3:59 now so maybe wait.”
But Slime gave a gesture that suggested “meh fuggit” and went to go pull the flame into the empty pipe until wretched, almost weed-flavored smoke poured into his mouth and lungs.
Just as he was holding the smoke in and trying his very hardest not to cough, a loud knock came at the door.
Still 3:59, fucker was early.
Less than a second after the first knock sounded on the door, the handle began to turn and the door swung open.
Most of the time, when human beings knock on doors, their goal is to alert the attention of the occupants behind those doors to come and welcome them over the threshold. This was *most* of the time.
The knock at their door did not serve this purpose – it was almost a facetious courtesy, to say “I understand the conventions of knocking on doors”, but then to continue opening and welcoming yourself into the space, as though to say “Nah, but I own you, though.”
As Slime choked the smoke into his lungs and excused himself to the bathroom to blow it into the window, he remembered a Fairly Oddparents bit about the door knocking thing, and took note of it. Also, the resin only kinda got him high. Mostly just gave him a headache.
“Hi Slime, hi Basil.” said Landlord. “I have the new oven in the back of my truck. I know Slime hates being a REAL MAN and helping with appliance stuff, so I figured I’d just bring my teenage kid by so he could see what REAL MASCULINE MACHINE FIXING ENERGY looks like.” He gestured to his son.
The boy looked like he had just gotten picked up from soccer practice. Still in matching red jersey and sport shorts, a bowl of blonde hair halfway covering the eyes that revealed the boy’s deep desire to be literally anywhere other than here at this exact moment. His face was pocked with the brilliant constellations of acne that happens on greasy teenage boys.
Basil was scared for a moment that the boy might decide to pop one of his zits, launching the nasty puss to be hidden forever in some corner of their apartment.
“What’s that smell?” asked Landlord, almost recognizing weed but noticing that the smell was much dirtier than normal weed smoke.
“The oven has been making that smell since it broke,” said a partially stoned Slime, still able to think quickly on his feet.
“Weird.” said Landlord, not really believing it, but also not having any sort of argument to dispel Slime’s bogus claim.
“So this new oven,” the Landlord went on to describe, “this thing’s freaking INSANE. You guys remember when ovens first got connected up to the internet?”
Slime and Basil continued not making eye contact with the Landlord or responding to what they hoped was a hypothetical question.
“Revolutionary, I know,” said the Landlord without a hint of irony. “But this baby puts that to SLEEP. So this one’s AI powered. Not only that, but it uses the AI to guess what you’re cooking and then decide what temperature and for how long to cook it for! You can’t even set it yourself! HA!” the Landlord was excited by this proposition.
He continued. “This will also lead to the little rent hike you guys are getting pretty soon here. Also the fact that I have to replace your broken oven at all.”
The oven had stopped working in the middle of the INNERSLIME MULTIMEDIA BROADCAST PAKISTAN PART 2 EPISODE, preventing the delicious completion of the Kirachi Biryani, leaving them only with their partially failed attempt at Gulab Jamun. They, with the assistance from chat tried every possibility to potentially restart the broken oven, but to no avail. Basil and Slime then proceeded to totally overreact to this series of events, in part because of the fact that they would later have to contact and interact with fuckin’ Landlord.
As Landlord and his sire left the apartment to get the new AI powered oven, Slime and Basil looked at one another, at least relieved that they would be able to cook food for the stream next weekend. Basil began walking in the room anxiously and Slime started playing computer, and they heard the Landlord trying his best to navigate the boy to wherever it was that he needed to be.
Suddenly, Slime and Basil’s heads were turned towards the doorway by a wretched, squish-crunching noise, followed by a loud metal CLANG, then, shortly after the first a slightly deeper and louder CLANG with two much smaller bouncing, clanging metal hits.
CLANG-bonk-bonk.
Basil and Slime changed their gazes from the doorway to one another, but then back to the doorway when they began to hear the bloodcurdling scream of the Landlord, gasping and unintelligible, like an air raid siren, or like Toni Collette from Hereditary (you know the scene). Slime and Basil shot from their kitchen and out onto their driveway, where they gave witness to the horrors that had unfolded in their absence.
The Landlord had pulled backwards into their two-car half of the driveway, leaving the drivers cab of his four door truck careening more than halfway into the middle of the street. On the bed of the truck stood Landlord, red and screaming with tears and snot pouring in and around his mouth, down his chin. He shifted his weight anxiously between his left and right foot, looking down below the truck bed.
First Slime and Basil saw their new oven. It seemed to have fallen from the truck bed face first, but hadn’t landed level. Something had prevented it from laying face-flat on the ground, so it had tipped onto its side where it now laid. The thing that blocked the oven’s descent was the teenage boy, his red uniform now blending perfectly with the crushed mass of skin and organs that now littered both the ground outside and the lower back part’s of Basil and Slime’s vehicles. It seemed that, while the initial squish happened, the oven was still over top the former boy, preventing any height on the propulsion of his liquefied insides, but not preventing the circumference of the splash zone. Basil noticed behind her, even the fence to her apartment which was substantially far from the impact point, was still painted.
“Probably popped those zits,” Basil thought to herself.
The Landlord’s unintelligible garble began to swirl and malform, his gaze shifting between the two other people, the mass of flesh, and the associated piece of metal. He began even saying, what sounded like words.
“Th-….. the…. oven….” he stammered, hurriedly and out of breath. Slime and Basil made eye contact with him this time.
“I just lost TWO FUCKING GRAND” he howled.
Slime looked at Basil, then at the pile of meat, then back at the Landlord.
“So I guess we’ll get a different oven tomorrow then?”
The Landlord said nothing.
“At least by the end of this week, we have, like, a cooking show.” Slime said. “Appreciate it, Thanks.”
AND THEN SLIME AND BASIL WENT INSIDE TO SMOKE RESIN AND PLAY THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: OCARINA OF TIME!