Despair and Hope

As John Jenkins sat at his kitchen table one day, eating his meal and trying to find the motivation to get some work done, he noticed his kitchen rug. Oh it had always been there, sitting placidly on the other side of the kitchen table so that spills from the sink and other miscellaneous cooking accidents wouldn't tarnish it. But today he really saw it for the first time.
Today the rug seemed less friendly, almost quarrelsome even. The more he stared at it the more belligerently it seemed to stare back at him. They gazed at each other, for how long John was not sure. He felt that if he broke the visual contact perhaps the rug would come at him in an unfriendly and possibly ruggishly aggressive manner. The longer they stared at each other the more the rugs malice grew.
Suddenly there was a sound outside the kitchen window. John was distracted and turned his head for only an instant but in that instant of distraction the rug was upon him. Upon later reflection John wasn't sure whether the rug had jumped on him or whether he had thrown himself upon it and started wrestling with it but at the time that was irrelevant. Suddenly he found himself struggling for the dominance of his kitchen floor with a heavy and implacable foe. As it strove to best him the dangly bits on the ends of the rug tickled his face and made him sneeze violently. For a moment it covered him entirely and it seemed it would come out the victor but then with a mighty heave John escaped its dark and dusty clutches and the struggled on.
Across the kitchen floor they tussled rolling over and over, wrestling to the fridge and back, colliding with walls and John even bumped his shin quite painfully on a table leg and had to pause for several minutes to rub it and breathe sharply through his teeth.
Eventually John bested his malignant rival and sat triumphant on the defeated rug while he called it all kinds of names and made disrespectful remarks about its mother. After he had quite got his breath back and tired of name-calling he wondered what he would do next. Perhaps the moment he stood up the rug would spring upon him once more and this time defeat him, making it the true master of the kitchen floor. Negotiating a deal was out of the question because everyone knew rugs weren't to be trusted, especially ones with as many dangly bits as this one had.
In the end, and John was never really sure how it came about, they began to talk. The rug conveyed to him that it was in fact lonely on the kitchen floor. It felt unappreciated and sometimes the kitchens accidents did reach it, staining edges and the tassels it was so proud of (this was what it called its dangly bits). John could completely identify with this as this was how he often felt himself. After much sharing of feelings, the consumption of a few beers (John had to drink the rugs beers because as it pointed out it really didn't have any hands or a mouth for that matter) and the shedding of a few tears, it was decided the rug would live in the lounge room where it could converse with the mat in there and John wouldn't have that un-matted bit of floor you had to put your feet on if you sat in the other lounge chair when there were guests.
So the rug was moved and after some brief introductions and some initial shyness the two floor coverings seemed to be getting on quite marvelously. John decided to return to the kitchen table to try to get some work done.
As he sat he noticed the cold superiority of the fridge. In fact the more he looked at it the more it seemed to irritate him. Just then his mother came home. John snapped his eyes away from the fridge that was still smirking at him and tried to look busy. There would be time to deal with the fridge later he supposed.