I’m sure all y’all have experienced one to ten of these crrrraaazzzziiiiiieeesss in your lifetime so you’ll relate. We’re all friends, right?

I guess if you have yet to experience the joys of flatting, then you may be put off the concept but when you’re flatting with people you gel with, it truly is an experience of great camaraderie. Plus, y’all new gen kids need to move the f**k out of your parent’s house so they can finally have a life too after raising you pesty little creatures. It’s not normal to outstay your welcome within your mother’s warm metaphorical bosom. Go and get your own milk.

Anyway, back to the story. The ex-flattie in question often left me shaking like a chihuahua from pure fury and I could feel cancer brewing inside of me - a burning sensation that only a handful of people in this world has given me - my boss, ex-boss and ex-flatmates. I couldn’t even read my phone screen properly as I was shaking it like a Korean singing room’s tambourine.

To give you some context, it all started 3 years ago. I moved into a St Mary’s Bay flat after viewing what seemed like 20+ flats, including a hoarder’s house, until alas, I finally found one that was clean and spacious. However, like everything in life, there’s always a catch that will test your limits.

The catch can come in the form of either a flatmate riddled with hygiene issues, a sociopathic head tenant with control problems or an alcoholic, abusive landlord that tries to take you home in front of his partner. If the catch came in the form of living quality, then that can be easily fixed with a trip to Bunnings - degreaser, sandpaper and paint, maybe a new toilet and some rat poison will do the trick. However, when it comes in the form of humans who haven’t fully developed yet, that is a string of never-ending toxicity and flabbergasting disasters that will completely f**k up your zen that you’ve so dedicatedly accrued for months.

If you’ve read my post, “Cosmic Retribution,” then you know that the flatmate this one replaced was a piece of work. How about we give the late flatmates pseudonyms. Let’s call her… Maleficent. The one who she replaced, we’ll call her Gina; and the other flatmate, Kate, who dodged a bullet and left nice and early.

When I moved into the flat, it was just Gina in the flat and she brought in myself and Kate. Kate was pretty cool but she also never wanted to ‘rock the boat.’ So she cleaned after Gina when it was her turn to clean the house. Then Gina, after having a full meltdown at work (the ones you see on T.V. shows that we don’t think will happen IRL... except for that one time at Pak’n’Save when an old bat started screaming at the cashier and the whole supermarket went silent), was not allowed to go back to work for a while. Her job was the same one as Halle Berry’s in The Call. But I won’t delve into that as Gina has a tendency to sue every Tom, Dick and Harry and the last thing I need is to be summoned to court.

Anyway, Gina was replaced with an equally unagreeable person - Maleficent, the antagonist of this story. And I’d say she’s worse than the guy I flatted with who threw his rubbish and newspapers out of his window… that landed in our backyard anyway. He had issues - and clearly, an idiot. Does he think that the Earth is made up of wormholes?

Anyway, signing the agreement as head tenant, Maleficent had say over everything that happened at the flat and boy oh boy, did she make use of the opportunity to be a tyrant.

First, she gave us a CURFEW of 11pm for the communal areas. Meaning no use of the kitchen or living area past this time. I’ve been independent since I was 18 years old and now 6 years down the track, I was being mothered by some crazy 30 year old woman? My friend asked me, “what if you need water in the middle of the night?” Really good question. The only option was to get water from the bathroom or to simply fight the dehydration overnight. Despite the ridiculous demands of the tyrant, we tried our best to abide by this rule because there was no compromising in this household.

Second, we had a cleaning roster - pretty basic rotational roster in which each flatmate will take turns to clean the house. An issue that you’ve probably dealt with too. Maleficent would never clean. Kate, who had co-signed the tenancy was Maleficent’s friend and you already know she’s pretty passive about these things so she cleaned when it was Maleficent’s turn to clean. OK, all good, as long as someone’s cleaning during her turn. BUT THEN, Kate moved out to be with her partner and Maleficent kept up her habit of not cleaning so my partner and I continued to clean the house.

Once, we left it to see how long it would take her - dropping some hints here and there - and it took her FOUR WEEKS to vacuum. We began to match her standard of living because having to clean up after some crazy unappreciative bitch was making us so angry. But then, she started messaging us about how dirty we were and how we never clean… so you see the irony here but this woman doesn’t. She also made a rule of ‘NO POTS ON THE STOVE’ to which we were expected to follow overnight. So as any typical flatmate would do, she took my pot of food, placed it in the sink, and put water in it. You could say I was pretty f**ked off.

And just to describe her as a person… a large portion of her friends didn’t turn up to her 30th birthday. A big milestone in one’s life that should be filled with love and support and plenty of fun. So as any normal person would do, she fined her no-show friends $40 each.

Anyway, after three years of my living there, she kicked us out because she had a friend who wanted our room and gave us three weeks notice. Then she messaged us on FB a day later telling us to leave earlier because her friend could move in earlier. I was mad. But still breathing and telling myself that it’s the universe pushing me out of this toxic environment. I was still mad though. Obviously.

I was chatting to Kate’s partner and we were wondering what rules she would make for her future boyfriend… *hahahahahaha*... if she gives her flatmates these rules, and a curfew. We couldn’t come up with anything - coz Maleficent is BAT SHIT CRAZY YO and there ain’t nobody who can get on her level even if they tried. Kate’s partner also very perceptively said that Maleficent is what people call ‘a user’ to which I was also a victim of but that’s boring so we’ll skip it. I feel like living with this incommunicable wench who has so many fundamental issues, really helped me learn about different types of people and how low they can go.

Anyway, you’re probably wondering, ‘OK Chatty one, What is the case of the adjustable oven rack?’ This is the last encounter I plan to have with Maleficent because I blocked her on all social channels.