This is my response to the prompts listed in the weekend freewrite. Rather than follow the instructions exactly as written, I wrote for three minutes on each prompt and then tried to incorporate the next one in the flow of the writing.
The Vacuum Man From the Future
Kim looked at her teeth in the mirror. They looked like fossils, she thought unhappily. However, that wasn't right. Fossils were rock, actually, right?
She sighed because she couldn't remember and it didn't seem to matter. Her teeth looked old and yellow. She reminded herself that they still served their purpose at least.
The knock at the door was unexpected, but Kim answered it anyhow without even looking through the peep-hole. The man who stood there was holding a vacuum and wearing a smile.
"Can I vacuum your carpets?" he asked. "While I do it, I can show you all the design features of the EZ-Vac 9000."
Kim sighed again. How were there still door to door vacuum salesmen in 2022? She started to close the door, but his thick boot was barring it. "Please let me in," he whispered. I know I messed up. I am from the future, and this disguise is... it's wrong somehow, isn't it?"
"Uhhh..." Kim was too stunned to say anything intelligent, but she stepped aside and he came in, looking furtively around him as he did.
"Do you think anyone spotted me?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"Good," he said.
"Who are you?" she said.
"I am a freedom fighter from the 28th century. This is not a vacuum cleaner, of course. It is a time machine. Well, that's what you would call it. It's complicated, but interesting, really. You see, it opens an interdimensional time portal--"
Kim yawned.
"Wow, okay," the man said. I had heard your century was unflappable, but you are unexpectedly calm."
"I yawn when I am about to have a panic attack," Kim said. "It's a quirk. By the way, just to confirm, you are a hallucination, right? I knew the microdosing was a bad idea. It didn't help. I stopped a week ago, and now this."
"I assure you that I am quite real, and I am here in search of quality coffee."
Kim snorted. "You are a door to door vacuum salesman who is secretly a freedom fighter on the run from the future looking for coffee?" Kim said. "Did I get that right?"
"Well you just make it all sound ridiculous. You don't have the back story."
Kim gave him an appraising look. "Okay. You can tell me. However, the house is a mess, so can you tell me while we do some house keeping?"
The man looked horrified. "I -- I can't. If I am subjected to your primitive household cleaners, why, who knows what could happen?"
"You are just lazy," Kim said.
"There's no such thing as laziness. You have no way of knowing that, but it was proven a couple of hundred years ago in 2532 by Waldo Ferrari, an extremely famous philosopher. So, I cannot, in fact, possibly be lazy." The man got very animated as he made this speech. His face got red.
Kim rolled her eyes, walked into the kitchen, and came back holding a broom. She handed it to the man. "What is this?" he said.
"You really don't know?" Kim said.
"Of course I know. It was an expression of shock and dismay."
"Okay, well, can you be shocked and dismayed while you sweep please?" Kim started walking back to the kitchen.
The man looked at the broom in his hands as though it was an alien artifact.
"Do you want some unsolicited advice?" Kim called over her shoulder.
"If I say yes, it will no longer be unsolicited."
Kim turned around. "Sweep in one direction. Some people sweep back and forth, but that just moves the dirt around and there is no point."
As Kim walked into the kitchen, she paused to look at her teeth in the hall mirror. She wondered if the man who said he was from the future also noticed that they were, well, not exactly perfect. Then again, he was crazy or a hallucination.
The thought briefly occurred to her that he might actually be a freedom fughter from the future. In search of coffee. She laughed to herself. Maybe she really was losing her mind.
