‘Start trial now!’
The words flashed up on Colm’s screen, disappeared under his finger, mashing impatiently at the blue box. The app had popped up earlier, some sort of smart advertising. More proof that the powers that be monitored everything.
‘About fucking time,’ he muttered to himself, taking a long, sour look around as he took another drag of his joint. The apartment was trashed. Somehow Colm had lost track of the time that Rosemary was away. Now, a day from her return, he had woken in panic, realizing several days had passed in which he had sat stoned with friends in his girlfriend’s lounge slowly turning her neat apartment into a war zone.
‘C’mon,’ he urged as the loading bar crept like a pink caterpillar across the phone screen. Finally, a welcome message flashed up along with cheerful, fat letters:
‘Make your selection!’
Beneath, the app offered three options. Domovoi. Brownie. Bor-
‘Borborygmi…’ he muttered, squinting at the bright words. In brackets beside it, the disclaimer ‘free trial now!’
The picture showed a small, brawny earth-brown creature with little pig eyes.
‘Borborygmi,’ he repeated, ‘huh. Alright.’
He pressed the button.
‘This is a beta test for the help-u cleaning app,’ the screen informed him. ‘As such the company is not liable for any damages..’
‘Yeah yeah,’ Colm said, irritation building. ‘Just give me the fucking thing.’
Below the disclaimer, a rosy button prompted: ‘Download elemental?’
‘Yes,’ he snarled, stabbing at it with one greasy finger. ‘Download the bloody elemental.’
Another loading bar appeared, zipped across the screen and the house’s 3D printer sprang into action.
‘Your personal cleaning solution will be ready in ten minutes!’
***
‘Well you're an ugly little fucker, aren't you?’ Colm stated, staring at the squat thing that had appeared in the printing bay exactly ten minutes later. The Borborygmi stood, unnervingly quiet, it's white eyes staring straight ahead into the apartment. At Colm’s words it cast him a vague, quizzical look, then returned to silent attention.
‘That's right, you've got your work cut out for you,’ Colm chuckled. ‘Better get to it.’
Tapping one finger against his thigh as he lit up another spliff, he mused:
‘How the hell do I order you to do stuff, huh? Like wash the dishes.’
At once, the diminutive, brown creature trundled over to the sink, climbed it gracelessly, tiny legs pumping in the air as it hauled itself up onto the plastic counter and began washing. Colm grinned.
‘Alright, what else? Can I give you a bunch of stuff at once? After the dishes vacuum the carpets. And pick up all this shit.’ He gestured vaguely at the piles of empty crisp packets and beer bottles littering the floor. Dutifully, a half hour later when the thing had completed the stack of festering washing up it began scooting around the floor, collecting the debris into a single, messy pile.
‘You don't say much, do you?’ Colm said loudly, watching in high amusement as the creature started to wrestle with the oversized vacuum cleaner. As it finally got into position, a mean-spirited impulse took him. Colm directed a hard kick at its backside as it came past the couch, laughed uproariously as the stocky imp went flying. The Borborygmi didn't react. It simply picked itself up and scurried back to the vacuum cleaner, face calm and inscrutable.
‘You know, I'm starting to like you,’ Colm chuckled, looking around for other tasks he could set.
‘After that, clean the tub, maybe I don't know, bleach it or something. It's pretty gross. And the bog. And inside the fridge. Keep yourself busy.’
He looked around the apartment for more until his gaze finally settled on Rosemary’s cat. Slinking in the corners as always. Colm's lip curled into a nasty sneer. The damn cat had always hated him and the feeling was mutual. It even had fleas. Rosemary had asked him to bathe it in that flea killing goop but Colm had argued her out of that one, pointedly rolling up his sleeves to reveal yet another set of scratches where the rat animal had attacked him in the night. Now, a vicious impulse took him as he watched the small tabby’s eyes widen in fear at the bustling elemental.
‘And the cat. Wash that damn cat, really well.’
Satisfied with his own ingenuity, he settled back on the couch. The place was going to be sparkling tomorrow when his girlfriend got back and he'd even earn some extra brownie points for sorting the cat out. He smiled. Lit another joint. The last thing Colm saw as his eyes grew heavy was the little brown man bustling away at a filthy stain in the corner of the carpet.
***
When Colm awoke it was evening already. It was the cat that woke him, with a strangled yowl. He lay a few moments longer, listening intently to the sounds of water gurgling from the bathroom.
‘Little bastard,’ he thought muzzily, letting his gaze adjust to the dim light and finally settling it on a large bald patch on the carpet. Concrete. Why the hell was there concrete? A slow dread began to permeate his muzzy thoughts. Staggering to his feet, Colm headed in the direction of the bathroom, stopped, stared slack-jawed, the splashing forgotten, at the apartment around him.
In the open-plan kitchen, a stack of dishes perched precariously over the ruins of the rest, scattered as they were in pieces over the floor and counter. As he picked up a piece of plate it cracked in his hands, paper thin. The rest too, were all scrubbed to within a millimeter, along with the pots and cups. In the corner of the kitchen, the fridge stood, door ajar, releasing cold air into the room. Utterly empty. Some few fragments of dishes had found their way onto the carpet and with a start, Colm realised it too had been shorn to its foundation. Squatting in the center, the smoking ruin of the vacuum cleaner.
A faint whiff of bleach drew his attention back to the far door, punctuated by that incessant splashing from the bathroom. The dread turned to rage in an instant as he raced for the door, shouting as he ran:
‘What the hell have you done!’
As he barged in, the anger drained from him at once. His mind struggled to take in the scene before him. Blood, everywhere across the otherwise sparkling bleached white tiles.
It was the source of the splashing however, that transfixed him. There, squatting beside the bath-tub, his summoned help still slowly and methodically washing the now dead cat. Bits of her fur floating in the red, chemical bath of bleach as slivers of skin continued to peel away under its industrious brown hands.
‘What the hell have you done?’ He asked again, his voice now catching in his throat. The thing stopped, turned that blank white stare towards his face as if patiently awaiting his next instruction.
In the silence that now permeated the apartment, the sound of the key in the door was as if Colm had strayed into some awful, macabre dream.
‘Colm?’ Rosemary's voice rang through the tiny apartment brightly, then more querulously Colm? as she stumbled onto the scene he himself had so recently witnessed. Her crunching steps across the carpet drew inexorably closer.
‘Jesus Colm, what did you…?’ She began in irritation, then her voice tapered off as she reached the bathroom door.
‘Baby, I can expl-’ he began as he met her gaze. Disappeared into his throat at the look of utter horror on her face as the scene sank in.
‘I didn't think you'd be fucking stupid enough to tell it to wash the cat, Colm.’
Rosemary's voice, when it came, was strangled. Through the fog, her words sank in.
‘What do you mean you didn't think - you knew?’ He finished, lamely.
‘It was a product test,’ she said flatly. ‘They are paying me to trial this thing and and I knew you were going to trash the flat. That's why I downloaded the app onto the phone. You're such an asshole. I knew if I told you about it you wouldn't do it out of sheer stubbornness. You had to think it was your idea. I was going to break up with you after I'd gotten back. I just needed someone to look after the c…’ her voice trailed off into a sob.
As Rosemary broke down beside the bath, Colm became aware of a jingle emanating from the lounge. He left her there, walked through to pick up the phone. A message flashed across the screen in cheery, pink letters:
‘Would you like to rate this app?’
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