“I live in a flat with four other people: James, Alex, Bradley, and John. We are all in our early 20s. We have been good friends since we were in school, so it just seemed kind of natural that we’d move in with each other for uni. Plus we’re kind of broke, and splitting bills is a lot easier on all of us.
John is a bit of a jerk when he wants to be. He thinks he’s the pinnacle of comedy when in actuality he just irritates everyone with his “pranks” which often revolve around spilling stuff on our good clothes and effectively ruining some of them, switching food around, hiding our things, etc. He’s always liked pranks, but they got unbearable once we moved into our flat together. Before, he could be kind of funny as he only did innocent pranks every now and then, but not they are affecting everyone negatively, but to be quite honest, they’re so annoying.
He is very cruel towards Bradley in particular which has almost led to some physical fights between us on some occasions. Bradley is visually impaired, to the point where he has a guide dog to help him get around. Her name is Trixie and she’s an adorable golden retriever. Not important, but she deserves recognition. John will often “prank” Bradley. He’ll jump out at him to scare him, hide Bradley’s things, move furniture to mess with him, and even went as far as hiding Trixie’s leash, which made Bradley miss an important lecture at uni. Before you guys say it, we are stuck with John until our lease is up, then we are moving to a smaller flat just myself, Bradley, and James as Alex is planning to move in with his partner. We would not still be living with him now if we had a choice.
We think that he’s like this with Bradley because 1) he can’t see very well which makes him an “easy target,” and 2) Bradley has his own bedroom and doesn’t have to share with anyone. Our flat has three bedrooms. I share a room with James, and Alex shares with John. Bradley has the smallest bedroom in the flat, as he prefers smaller rooms. He also checked with us to see if this was okay as he didn’t want us tripping over Trixie or having dog hair all over our stuff. We all agreed that this was fine, but John has always been a bit bitter about it.
The bullying had calmed down since lockdown as we were always there to keep an eye on things, but some of us are back at work now, so there are times where John is alone with Bradley. On one of these occasions, John decided to switch our tomato soup with chicken soup. Bradley always has soup when he gets up, but chicken soup makes him physically ill. He’s not allergic to anything in it, but he doesn’t react well to it. As a result, there is a part of the cupboard in the kitchen that is reserved for Bradley’s stuff, so there’s no mix-up and he knows where his food is. As you can imagine, Bradley couldn’t see the label and ate the soup, making him throw up. It doesn’t help that Bradley gets very panicked when he’s sick. Again, John knew this.
I got back from class and found Bradley on the bathroom floor shaking and crying. I stayed with him till he felt better then helped him get into bed. He told me that he must’ve mixed up the tins. I thought it was weird; we don’t even buy chicken soup, mostly because none of us eat a lot of soup. I questioned John about it and he admitted it, pretty smugly. He even made a joke that he should’ve switched it with Trixie’s food instead. He was not sorry, though, he did reluctantly apologize to Bradley.
The other night, I decided to make bolognese pasta for dinner (one of the very few things I know how to cook). I was waiting for the pasta to boil, just looking around the kitchen when I spotted it. Trixie’s food bowl. Well, John pulls pranks all the time, I’m pretty sure he could cope with a little bit of petty revenge.
I grabbed a tin of dog food and decided to make John his own special bowl of pasta. I drained out most of the gravy from the dog meat and covered it in sauce, just to hide the color (nothing can disguise the taste of dog food, trust me). This is genuinely one of my proudest moments (sad, I know), and I was genuinely tempted to do an evil villain laugh as I plated up everyone’s food and informed the rest of my flatmates that no one was to eat from John’s bowl. Needless to say, dinner was a lot more entertaining that night. John rushed to the bathroom, claiming that I had “poisoned” him. He wasn’t sick, but the thought of what he had just eaten made him feel rather queasy.
He actually called his mommy to yell at me. She claimed that we were “bullying” her son. Though she was not too keen to hear about how he’d been treating Bradley. It’s been kind of awkward in our flat for the past few days, but I wouldn’t change a thing. Bradley gave me a hug the other night and said that he appreciated my little petty revenge in his honor. That’s all I need to know that I will never regret this.”
