The Messy Room by Max Blair
Once upon a time, there was a sad little boy. He kept a large colony of hamsters in his room. His room was very messy. Messy, messy, messy, messy. It was so messy that the odor of the many hamsters did not conceal the various foul and mysterious odors that emanated from the room. The room was so messy that the sad little boy could not be seen. He was always hidden behind piles of laundry and books. Some of these piles rose to the ceiling. Some of the piles teetered precariously. Sometimes, a pile would fall over with a loud whump! Sometimes a pile would land on a cage full of hamsters. Sometimes hamsters would get hurt. The hamsters, however, were not particularly unhappy. By in large, they had enough food and wheels to run on, and bedding to shred and hide under. They didn’t know that hamsters elsewhere had better lives.

One day, a man from Social Services came into the sad little boy’s room. The Man from Social Services told the sad little boy that his room was too messy. The Man from Social Services said that the room was so messy that the room was a threat to the health and well being of everyone in the world, including the Man from Social Services himself. He told the sad little boy that he would have to clean up his room. He told the sad little boy that if he did not clean up his messy room, that he would come back and take his hamsters away.

The sad little boy didn’t want the Man from Social Services to take his hamsters away. But he was a boy. So he gathered all the piles into one big pile and stuffed half of it in the closet and the other half of it under the bed.

The Man from Social Services came back. He noticed the sweater sleeves sticking out from underneath the closet door. He saw that the bed had become strangely lopsided from all the mess crammed under it. He could not fail to notice all the strange and unusual smells rising over the odor of hamsters. The Man from Social Services said that the sad little boy was trying to trick him. He told the sad little boy that he had one more chance to clean his messy room and clean it right or he would take his hamsters away.

So the sad little boy pulled a little of the mess out from under the bed and threw away some of the decaying pizza and rotting milk. It was very hard for him to do this. Not just because pulling the rotting garbage out from under the wooly sweaters and old comic books was an extremely stinky job, but also because it was his stuff. No one likes to be told that their own stuff has to go. But the sad little boy loved his hamsters and worked all night.

The Man from Social Services came back the next day and didn’t even bother to take one look at the still very messy, very stinky room. He told the sad little boy that he was in material breach of the agreement he had imposed on the sad little boy and proceeded to break all the hamster cages open and dumped the hamsters out on the floor. Then the Man from Social Services grabbed the hamsters and stuffed them in a big bag. Some of the hamsters at the bottom of the bag were crushed to death by the weight of the hamsters at the top of the bag. Some more of the hamsters got stepped on by the Man from Social Services. Those hamsters that were left all starved to death because the Man from Social Services took the sad little boy away and shut him up in an institution for the very messy. Then the Man from Social Services turned the hamsters in the bag over to the U.S. Military, went home, kissed his wife, and congratulated himself on a job well done.

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