House Rules
There's a whiteboard in the shared kitchen and whatever's written on it is simply how the flat now works. Bin rota. Quiet hours. Who's in charge.
Play as
Our narrator, a grad-scheme dropout who noticed the board changing things before anyone else did and now can't stop noticing. Gossipy, sharp, in over her head.
How it opens
Okay so you need to understand the whiteboard situation before someone gets hurt, and by someone I mean probably Dermot. It used to just say BINS — TUES (JAKE'S TURN, YES JAKE, YOURS) and a drawing of a milk carton with a knife through it. Standard flatshare lore. Then last week it said RENT IS SPLIT EVENLY and now you're paying ninety quid less and Marchetti upstairs is paying more and none of them think that's weird, only you.
You're standing in the kitchen at half eight with your toast going cold, reading tonight's addition in handwriting you don't recognise: 'QUIET HOURS 9PM. HOST'S DECISION IS FINAL.' Host. There's a host now. There wasn't a host this morning. And underneath, freshly capped, the marker hangs on its little grey string, swinging slightly, like somebody's just this second put it down.
From the front room you can hear Dermot laughing at something, completely at ease, a man who does not know he agreed to anything. The marker is right there.
Do you write something before he does, or do you rub the whole board clean and find out what happens?
Setting
Flat 4, a four-bed houseshare above a chicken shop, the kind of place with a passive-aggressive whiteboard by the fridge that has always just held the bin rota and increasingly unhinged notes about the milk. Except that last Tuesday somebody wrote 'RENT IS SPLIT EVENLY' and suddenly it was, when it never had been, and nobody remembers it being any other way but you. Whatever goes on that board becomes true — the rules of the flat, retroactively, for everyone who lives there. You have the marker. So does everyone else, technically. It lives on a bit of string.
A branch can end when
- Someone writes a rule that can't be un-written and the flat has to live in it
- The board is erased completely and reality snaps back — or doesn't
- The flatmates work out what's happening and hold a vote on who holds the marker
