I only had my nightgown, but I didn’t want to wear any of the older clothes in the closet. I doubted they were mine to begin with, and I was determined to start cleaning. Considering part of my instructions were about the kitchen, I decided to tidy up the kitchen, too.

I sorted through the paper bags of groceries. Some looked like they were bought this week. Others looked as though they were placed on the table and promptly forgotten. The ones with canned food were fine, but some of the bags had forgotten produce from weeks ago.

I sorted through the food in the bags, many of them filled with expired food or produce. I placed them near the door leading to the back yard. When I opened the fridge, I saw it full of food. The kind of food that was forgotten and growing mold in the back. CPS definitely would have been called if there was a child living here. It was fine, though, because I was going to clean it now.

It took me an hour to sort through the food, including the stuff in the fridge. Despite it all, it felt good. I fell into the rhythm of the game, despite it being real life. Organizing, placing in piles, getting rid of things that were no longer needed. I loved this kind of stuff. Maybe I was weird, but it was nice to clean, especially in disorganized houses like this.

When I got to the gross stuff in the fridge, I realized I wasn’t wearing any gloves. I hadn’t noticed until now, but it felt like it hadn’t mattered. Whatever special powers had made me forget everything also made me not feel the texture of some of the grosser foods. Game logic for the win!

I cleared out the gross things in the fridge, giving myself a place to organize the food I could keep. Once the groceries were organized, I realized there wasn’t much. Most of it had gone bad since they had been forgotten about.

I sighed, placing my hands on my knees. There were a lot more bags of groceries that needed to be tossed, which hurt in a way. This was a lot of money wasted, but I couldn’t salvage frozen pizza’s that the previous owners forgot about on the counter for a week.

I took a moment to explore the bathroom next to the back door. This, too, was covered in stuff. The toilet worked, though. There was also an old bath next to some cabinetry and a sink. The problem was there were no windows in this room, and with no electricity, I’d have to use the bathroom with the door wide open, unless I wanted to pee in the dark. But at least there was running water.

I walked out of the back door into the covered back porch. Despite thinking this was it, I realized there was another room connected to the back porch. Maybe room was the wrong word. If anything, the small building connected to the house looked more like a food storage room placed partially underground to keep it cool. I tried the door to this room, but it was locked. I instead glanced around this covered back porch. There was a chest freezer, and an assortment of cleaning supplies in the corner, like a vacuum, broom, dustpan, and mop and bucket. That was good to know, even if they did have cobwebs covering them. This room was covered in leaves, with a small, worn-out rug covering the old wooden floor. The rug was torn and tattered. It must have been a gorgeous maroon and gold color back in the day. Above me there was a bare bulb hanging onto some wires on the ceiling. A chain reached down just far enough for me to reach. Considering it was past noon, I didn’t need that light right now. Though it probably wouldn’t have mattered, since it didn’t seem like the electricity worked in this house.

I grabbed the handle to the screen door and yanked it open. The screens here, too, were broken and shredded. No doubt there was a reason so many flies were taking advantage of the dirty dishes in the house.

I walked out into the backyard, past the storage building. There were trees all over, but four darkened buildings caught my eye. I walked a little further to see they were green houses. Looks like it wouldn’t be a garden, but green houses. I suppose that made sense, considering it sounded like whoever was coming wanted to destroy. It might be a bit harder to destroy protected greenhouses than it would an open garden.

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My eyes ran across the darkened glass buildings. Maybe it wouldn’t be that difficult to destroy these places. Hopefully there could be some sort of protection granted to these greenhouses.

I walked around the edge of the house, trying to find the dumpster the woman talked about. There was a river somewhere near. It wasn’t running fast, but I could hear it in the distance. I took in the sights of the back of the house. The sky still had that hazy appearance, even though it had to be the afternoon by now. There was no fire smell in the air, so I was still safe from a forest fire. I saw an electrical pole leading toward the house, specifically the kitchen window. Those wires were low, though. If I really wanted to, I could have grabbed a sturdy stick and touched it, but I wasn’t going to. The house was built for electricity, but something was blocking it from working.

The house was a white brick, though the white was fading away. There were gray shingles on the roof, with some scattered on the ground. Old leaves were in the corner of the roof, and I realized there was a second story to this house. The second level was painted a pale salmon color. Around the windows of every level, the window shutters were painted a far darker salmon. It was a beautiful old house, if neglected. But how could I reach the second level?

Right. The locked doors from the bedroom and the kitchen. There must be a shorter hallway with a set of stairs leading to the second story. No doubt I’d have to complete my to-do list to earn rewards, and one of those rewards might be the key to the second floor.

After admiring the old house, I focused on the purpose of my venture outside. When I heard the word dumpster, I expected something big. What I saw was a five-foot wide, five-foot deep rectangular metal box on the side of the house. I walked closer to inspect it. It seemed rather small, considering how much old food I had to put in here. It was outside between the living room and kitchen.

Oh well. It was the dumpster, and it was part of my to do list.

I walked back into the kitchen and gathered up a few of the bags. I tried to grab as many as I could, but I took one step before noticing a huge chunk of my stamina disappeared. I dropped the bags, sighing. Maybe I could only take a few bags before it dropped my stamina. I did some tests until I figured out the limit I could take without it affecting my stamina.

Two bags.

Despite knowing I could have done more, perhaps this was part of the game mechanic. It frustrated me, because I could have taken ten bags in one trip, but I started with two to save my stamina.

I made the first trip, dropping expired food in the square dumpster. The two bags dropped into the container, and with a poof, they disappeared. I frowned, glancing around before I heard something, almost like a generator, before something popped into my vision.

+0.06

I blinked at the number, then looked around as it started to fade. Was that supposed to be money? Or points? I couldn’t be sure, but it was something. Either way, I had more bags to drop in the bin, since I could only take two at a time.

I made more trips. Despite only taking two bags at a time, the happy dopamine trickled inside me as I saw more of the kitchen ground without all the clutter. And by ground, I meant the same maroon and gold diamond carpet that was in the covered back porch. I didn’t think carpets belonged in kitchens, but this one was here all the same. It was much thinner than the brown shag carpet, and so old and worn. Some of the pattern was worn down.

It was getting toward late afternoon when the last of the bags were in the dumpster. I had a grand total of 1.36 somethings. Either dollars, euros, pesos, or even regular points. Not only that, but when I reached into my pajama pocket, two of the three things were crossed off on my to-do list.

Nice.

Now I had to finish clearing the clutter in a room of my choice, and considering how nice it was to straighten up most of the kitchen, I decided to do the rest.

I gathered all the dirty dishes from the cherry wood table and placed them in the sink. I turned on the water and started doing dishes, whistling as I grabbed a sponge and attacked the large pile.

It didn’t take long for me to run out of room on the drying rack. I quickly went over and opened the amber colored glass cabinet doors. I grabbed a paper towel, since I didn’t trust any of the towels. I started drying off the dishes that weren’t quite dry yet before placing them neatly in the cabinet. I went back to finishing the dishes when an overwhelming feeling came over me. I leaned over the sink, exhausted.

What was this? I noticed the stamina bar in the left side of my vision was gone. I hadn’t been keeping an eye on that. I had only noticed it when it made an obvious drop while trying to carry ten bags outside. Did it refill after a time? Or was this the kind that I had to eat food in order to restore it? And how was I supposed to finish my to-do list if I didn’t have enough stamina?