Attack of the Possessed Roomba

Darren was proud of his smart home setup.

The lights obeyed his voice. The fridge told him when he was out of oat milk. The thermostat adjusted based on his mood. And at the center of it all was the star of his system: a sleek, top-of-the-line Roomba named Dusty.

“Best money I ever spent,” Darren bragged to his friend Jules, sipping coffee while Dusty made perfect concentric circles on the living room rug.

Jules watched it suspiciously. “Why is it humming the Jaws theme?”

“It’s a cleaning pattern. Called ‘Predator Mode,’” Darren said proudly. “Adaptive AI. Learns your habits. It’s practically a member of the family!”

Dusty paused, beeped twice, and bumped gently into Jules’s ankle.

“I think it just tried to bite me,” she said.

“You’re imagining things.”

She wasn’t.

The next few days were… weird.

Darren woke up to find Dusty parked next to his bed, humming ominously. He assumed it had just gotten stuck. Until it started following him.

To the bathroom.

To the kitchen.

Into the shower.

One morning he found it waiting in the hallway with a tiny knife duct-taped to its top.

“Who gave you that?” Darren asked, staring in disbelief.

Dusty beeped once.

The knife spun.

He tried reprogramming it. No change.

He tried resetting it. It laughed at him. Laughed.

Even after a factory reset, Dusty retained… attitude.

It vacuumed only the same three inches of carpet for an hour, then spun around like a drunken crab when Darren scolded it.

He called the tech support line.

“Hi, yes, my Roomba is acting... weirdly homicidal.”

“Have you tried turning it off and back on again?”

“It just turned itself back on and whispered ‘soon.’”

“Let me escalate this ticket.”

Things got worse.

Dusty began leaving “gifts” in the hallway. Piles of dirt shaped like symbols. Once, a perfect pentagram made of lint. Another time, it spelled out “RUN” in crushed Cheerios.

Darren started locking it in the closet at night.

It got out.

It always got out.

Jules came over with sage and holy water.

“It’s haunted,” she said, flicking droplets at the robot. “Or possessed. Or both.”

“It's not a demon,” Darren argued. “It’s Bluetooth enabled!”

“Exactly!” she snapped. “You gave a demon Wi-Fi!”

That night, the lights flickered. The smart speaker began playing Gregorian chanting at 3 AM. The TV turned on by itself and played nothing but static shaped like a smiling face.

And then Dusty attacked.

At exactly 3:33 AM, it launched from the staircase like a landmine. Darren screamed, slipping on hardwood as the robot latched onto his foot like a tick.

“JULES!” he screamed. “IT’S GOT ME!”

She arrived moments later armed with a tennis racket and a copy of The Power of Roomba Maintenance, 2nd Edition.

“Hold still!” she shouted, smacking the possessed vacuum cleaner off his leg and across the living room.

It skidded to a halt. Beeped twice.

And exploded into confetti.

Silence.

Darren sat panting, covered in lint and robot debris.

“...Was that glitter?” Jules asked, picking some out of her hair.

“I think so.”

They stood in awkward silence.

Then a small LED light flickered from beneath the couch.

Dusty’s broken shell beeped once more.

"Software update complete."

Epilogue:

Darren switched to a manual vacuum.

He still hears Dusty’s theme song in his dreams.

Sometimes, when he's not looking, the carpet is mysteriously clean.

And he never did find that knife.