Short story - Porridge Oats

        For almost a single week, the house was a place of peace and private coexistence. The housemates therein greeted each other with nonthreatening mumbles as they entered rooms, passing by those uncomfortably narrow corridors in their morning routines. Plates were frisbee'd less violently from the drying board to their cupboards in the early hours of the morning, the borders between territorial fridgespace were duly respected and no drunken wanderer helped himself to another's unsupervised perishables. But this civility, like the lifespan of those fractured, poorly washed plates would dryup in the grey, cloud-choked sunrise of the following morning. 
         He sulked and stirred in his sleep. "My porridge oats", he grumbled. "It was definitely them, I'm sure of it". The paranoia of his resources being exploited by others, beyond his control, constantly haunted him. They must have been eating it, together, in a big bowl and laughing, he thought. Images of his cohabitants sharing a bath-sized bowl of his porridge, with appropriately large spoons and sinister milk-stained grins, tormented him through hours of failed slumber. At some point he awoke and had not his bed been placed directly against the wall and so therefore had only one exit, he would have gotten out of it on the wrong side that day.
        "I'm as taken back by this as he is!" the first of the suspects declared to his fellow accused inmates, shiftily with his mental tennis, looking to evade any immediate case against himself. His eyes darted everywhere, except where one's should. His mind was as paranoid as the Victim's. The Victim was of course a self-described one. It greatly puzzled the second and most Sceptical of the accused as to whether any porridge had been stolen at all. Every other day, the world descends upon him like a suffocating black cloud that vanquishes all joy and reason. Nothing new here... he thought.
        The third and final of the accused would enter diplomacy first, if not to preserve his precious Neutrality, then to declare that his porridge preferences were without "fruit and shit" in it. This did however confirm to both the victim and the accused that he was the only suspect with a taste for the oat-based evidence.
        None of this would satiate their porridge-loving-pal's self-pity and loathing for his housemate's possible wrongdoings. As far as he was concerned, Mr Shifty, Sceptic and Neutral all shared in responsibility for the disappearance of his beloved breakfast snack. 
        A cold war of tension would surely follow. A cold war wouldn't bother the Sceptic much, at least no more than the usual bitter hostility that radiated from the Victim at all times, stolen porridge or not. The Sceptic rested easier longing for the day he would leave this dungeon of anxiety, empty king-size rizzlas and subversive despair. It would not be so simple though, for Shifty and Neutral, who dwelt in those rooms and corridors day and night, sharing spaces that the Victim would undoubtedly roam. Where Sceptic spent most days working in the class studio, they preferred the low light levels and pressure-less atmosphere of their converted living room workspace. There they could operate at whatever time they woke up and however productive they wished to be. 
        Sceptic would return in the evenings, to a pungent aroma of smoked substances and the echoes of streamed cartoons, bellowing through the cracks of the antiquated doors and down the hallway towards the entrance. He wondered whether any productivity had taken place in that living room at all most days. The Victim would usually try for short periods to flip between integrating himself into the living room setup and venturing to the class studio with his sunglasses adorned and headphones firmly secured around both ears. He would eventually concede that both routines entailed far too much engagement with his fellow human creatures and would spend most his days in his bedroom instead.
        Such conflicts were not uncommon in this place, but this was a big one. It dwarfed the previous engagements and made them seem bearable. That porridge was personal. Unswept floors and unwashed dishes could be papered over and repressed, but another man's cereals had gone missing. This was a casus belli for war.
        The following morning, the victim ensured that when he had finished cooking himself breakfast, his pans were not removed from the hobs, but obstructively strewn across the kitchen surfaces. Such prudent considerations for the next operator of the hobs would have meant collaboration with one of the accused. A percussive, steelpan symphony erupted from the kitchen whenever he was searching for his kitchen utensils, as if to say: "Hear I am", "Twenty five percent of this kitchen is mine, and I will use my quarter howsoever I wish". His kitchen blockades and campaign of noise terror held up for the rest of the week. The sounds of cartoons that Sceptic would return to in the evenings was now accompanied by a high decibel composition of bangs and swearwords from upstairs. Any onlooker would wonder whether he was waiting for an audience to hear him through his door's cracks or if he was banging his furniture and swearing before they arrived.
        His animosity was fierce, and his housemates were new to the intensity of it. His fury was like a cast iron aga cooker; nothing could cool it but time. nobody in this house was very good at being open and now wasn't the time to have a go at it. Everybody tiptoed around him and avoided all dialogue however necessary.
        What would continually baffle any of the residents or observers, however, was the sterile normality to which everything could return just the following week. Nobody owned up to the porridge theft. No porridge was reimbursed. Nobody apologized for their uproar. A curious feature of this household was its bizarre capacity for burying without resolve the issues that plagued them so immediately before. After a week of relentless hostility, one morning, the victim entered the kitchen where the Sceptic was preparing breakfast. He almost grunted a full "good morning". Sceptic could sense a tremendous subsiding of tension. Shifty and Neutral were again ingesting cubic gallons of cannabis smoke with the Victim that evening. Nobody ever again mentioned the porridge drama. Everybody pretended that nothing had happened just a week before, until after pretending, they had genuinely forgotten.
        The violent weather system that had smothered the pool of peace was broken up and cut through by the same sun that dried those plates. Everybody pretended that everything was the same. The housemates straightened their spines out and stretched their limbs after bracing through that period with their heads between their legs, but regardless of the restoration of superficial peace, nobody was feeling peckish for porridge.