Unsteady Betty

Unsteady Betty was reading the newspaper and eating toast. Her fingers were covered in jam. The newspaper was smudgy and newspapery, like all newspapers are. Normally she'd be like "Ah screw it," and keep reading but this morning felt a little off. She licked the jam off her fingers and then, even though she didn't really taste anything, felt grossed out because she had just touched the newspaper. And even though a newspaper isn't dirty per se, it kind of feels like dirt. So she felt like she was licking jam flavored dirt. Not to mention the pages were getting all sticky.

"Ew." she said.

Unsteady Betty got up to go wipe and wash her hands. She walked to the sink. She grabbed the knob to turn it and grabbed it right off. She was holding it in her hand. She looked at it like "Huh?". Then she thought "Oh darn." It just broke right off in her sticky dirty fingers. No water sprays or geysers. Then she figured she'd better try the other knob. That one broke off too and sprayed all the way on to the ceiling and everywhere. It dripped down on top of her.

"Oh shoot." she said.

She tried to cram the knob back on over the spray beam of the water. That didn't work. She squatted on the floor to open the cabinets and cut off the water from the pipes but a squeaky floorboard gave and a gust of dust from under the floorboard clouded into the air and combined with the water and made her dirtier. She went to grab a bucket and all the brooms and mops that were leaning on the cabinet fell out and bopped her on the head. She picked a bucket and ran back to the water, but she ran so hard that she shook the room, rattling the walls, and it knocked a loose picture off the wall. Before could slow her momentum, as she passed the picture, her sweater got caught on the nail in the wall that hung the picture. It ripped.

"Oh no, I like this sweater. Darn that picture and nail!" she said.

Then she went and put the bucket under the geyser landing to fill it up. It quickly filled to the top and spilled all over the floor. Then an earthquake happened and shook everything else in the house. Unsteady Betty lost her balance and fell down.

"Ouch!" she said.

All the faucets spouted water. A beam supporting part of the ceiling broke and caved the roof in. She didn't get hurt. Then from a hole in floor another geyser spouted up but this was a geyser of oil from the ground. A large oil corporation with lots of lawyers were able to claim that the oil was their's, due to a strange technicality with the city zoning laws, so she didn't get any money from it.

She didn't get to read the paper and overall the rest of the day was ruined because of that bad start in the morning. But because of all the water, she at least got the sticky and dirt feeling off her fingers.