The shower head warned him first. He never would have guessed the other appliances were out to get him if the shower head hadn't hissed a quiet warning to him. It wasn't networked in with the others, and they'd always somewhat mocked it for being on its own in the "naked monkey room." He didn't even have a hair-dryer, so it really was the only room in the house that only had one smarpliance. He'd come across the fire alarm in the hallway mocking the shower head a couple of times, and told him to cut it out or he'd put in inferior batteries, and when the vacuum cleaner started harassing the shower head, he reprogrammed it to keep it farther away. Apparently, that computed in the shower head’s circuits to a kindness worth repaying. Even so, even forewarned, he found it preposterous. He would have written it off as one faulty appliance--the shower head--if he hadn't almost tripped over the vacuum cleaner at the head of the stairs. Even then, it could have been an accident. But when he walked past his fish tank, he noticed that the fish were all dead, and he danced out of the way right before a bubble of scalding water exploded from the top. And then his mobile alarm clock hurled itself from on high and smashed into the puddle of water that left, twitching--


Inspiration: Flickr picture of a shower head.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: Could be fun. Not a worldwide Rise of the Machines, no, more of an Asimov-meets-Bradbury approach to it. Does he investigate another fatality? Is he an investigator by trade or sort of drawn into it? Either way, lots of potential here.