The Great Cereal Heist of Apartment 12B

Every morning at precisely 8:03 AM, Gerald Fumbleton shuffled into his cramped kitchen like a man on rails. It was not that he particularly enjoyed breakfast—he considered taste a distraction—but routine was everything. He would open the third drawer from the left (always the third, never the fourth, lest disaster strike), extract a single, unremarkable spoon, and approach the pantry. There, without fail, sat his box of Quantum Oats™—the cereal engineered by shadowy scientists to taste like absolutely nothing but to fill the void deep in your soul where meaning used to reside.

Until one morning, it wasn’t.

In its place was a handwritten note on the back of an unpaid electric bill:

“We have taken your cereal.

Meet us on the rooftop at high noon.

Bring no milk.”

Gerald blinked twice. A lesser man might’ve assumed a prank. But Gerald had lived long enough in Apartment 12B to know that this building had… peculiarities. Last summer, the elevator started dispensing unsolicited advice in Latin. The mailbox sometimes delivered letters addressed to entities that hadn’t existed since the Byzantine Empire.

Naturally, he grabbed his expired bus pass (for confidence), his jacket (it was March), and headed to the rooftop, suspicion already gnawing at the edges of his punctual mind.

⸻

The Rooftop Standoff

The rooftop scene was an avant-garde fever dream.

Arrayed around a collapsible card table were:

• Five pigeons, each wearing tiny, hand-knitted balaclavas. One puffed on a breadstick like a cigar.

• A raccoon, adorned in a purple velvet smoking jacket, shuffling tarot cards with unsettling dexterity.

• Mrs. Penelope Thistlewaite, Gerald’s neighbor from Apartment 11C, wielding a bullhorn with the casual authority of a dictator at a bake sale.

A pigeon cooed menacingly.

“Gerald Fumbleton,” Mrs. Thistlewaite announced, voice amplified to a garbled shriek, “your breakfast transgressions have destabilized this entire reality!”

Gerald adjusted his glasses. “…My cereal?”

The raccoon flipped a card. The Soggy Spoon.

“Your Quantum Oats™,” Penelope explained, “are infused with chronotonic particles. Each bowl you consume ripples through time-space, causing minor breakfast anomalies. Yesterday, for instance, my toast buttered itself, then tried to unionize.”

Behind her, the skyline twisted unnervingly. Gerald noticed the Empire State Building had grown legs and was absently wandering toward New Jersey.

“You’ve violated Clause 47-B of the Interdimensional Breakfast Regulations!” shrieked one pigeon, unfurling a parchment longer than the IRS tax code.

Gerald opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. The raccoon dealt another card. The Infinite Loop.

“There’s only one solution,” Penelope said gravely, “The Cereal Gauntlet.

The Cereal Gauntlet

Without warning, a portal opened mid-air—a swirling vortex of milk, floating spoons, and faint jingles from forgotten cereal mascots. Everyone, including the raccoon, stepped through. Gerald sighed, shoved his bus pass into his pocket, and followed.

He emerged in an endless, cosmic supermarket aisle. Neon signs blinked cryptic slogans:

“Part of an Unbalanced Timeline!”

“Free Toy Inside: Your Own Mortality!”

Shelves stretched infinitely in all directions, stocked with surreal cereal boxes:

• Frosted Existential Dread

• Captain Crunch’s Infinite Loop

• Cocoastrophic Crisis Flakes

• Raisin Nihilism (Now with Extra Raisins)

A bipedal toaster with philosophical leanings tried to sell Gerald a subscription service for artisanal wheat. He politely declined.

The raccoon explained the rules:

1. Assemble a bowl of cereal using ingredients scattered through shifting reality.

2. Avoid obstacles like judgmental cows, sentient bread knives, and intrusive memories of failed childhood dreams.

3. Finish before the sun implodes into a bagel.

Simple enough.

Gerald wandered the aisle, pursued by a Pop-Tart reciting Kafka and narrowly dodging an oat that claimed to be his estranged father. He gathered:

• Quantum Oats™ (liberated from a time-locked vault guarded by nihilist cheerleaders)

• Milk from Schrödinger’s cow (which was simultaneously expired and not)

• Bananas that reversed aging (he briefly reverted to an angsty 12-year-old)

• Cinnamon harvested from a parallel universe where everything smelled faintly of regret

At one point, the aisle looped, and Gerald encountered an alternate version of himself—wearing sunglasses, radiating cool confidence, and holding an already-finished bowl.

“You’ll never finish in time,” Alt-Gerald smirked. “You’re too attached to causality.”

Gerald ignored him, added a dash of Temporal Sugar, and stepped forward.

The Breakfast Duel’s Conclusion

Back on the rooftop, he presented the bowl. The raccoon sniffed it, nodded. The pigeons flapped their approval. Mrs. Thistlewaite solemnly retrieved the original Quantum Oats™ box, now labeled Certified Safe for All Known Universes (Except Cleveland).

The skyline normalized. The Empire State Building sheepishly reattached itself. A toaster on the fire escape whispered, “Maybe tomorrow.”

The pigeons departed to start a jazz band. The raccoon vanished in a cloud of powdered sugar.

Mrs. Thistlewaite gave Gerald one final warning: “Moderate your breakfasts, Fumbleton. The fabric of brunch depends on it.

Back in Apartment 12B

The next morning, precisely 8:03 AM, Gerald retrieved his spoon, poured his cereal.

This time, the oats blinked at him.

He shrugged, took a bite.

It tasted like Tuesday afternoons, mild existential dread, and just a hint of cinnamon-scented victory.