The Imp, heir to all my realms, gazes at me with mocking contempt. His small clothes are in a heap on the floor. He stands before me, naked as the day he was born, and pisses on the floor. Is it three years ago now that he crawled from between his mother’s thighs? Gods, time seems in a rush. And now he stands here, challenging my authority. Impudent whelp. The throne sits unused in the throne room.“I am your lord and commander! You will bend the knee and swear fealty to me or I will have you thrown into the time-out chamber!” His eye glints like Valyrian steel as he skates away from my grasping fingers and starts jumping on the couch singing like a court jester, his penis flopping like a wounded fish.Daddy’s sad, daddy’s mad, daddy’s very very BAD!I drain my goblet in a gulp and call for my squire to refill my glass. The request goes unheeded. My squire is upstairs gaming and can’t hear me with his headphones on. It has been long years since I could get him to follow my commands. My realm is crumbling. I get a towel, clean up the piss, and go to pour my own damn wine. “Don’t forget it’s your turn to do the dishes, honey,” my wife calls from the solar. Curse her, and the Others take her dishes! It occurs to me that I could escape to my man-cave, but the retribution would be swift and terrible.Am I cursed to do dishes every day for eternity? The Imp has erected a fort from the couch cushions, has captured the cat, and retreated within its walls. I can hear him plotting my downfall with his loyal minion. There is no place to sit. The wine bottle stands empty next to the dishes in the sink. The days grow short and my night looks to be stretching on to eternity. Winter is coming!
The Mother
It is a tender thing, marriage, and must needs be handled with the greatest of tact. But after a day of work, I come home to the castle in disarray. The toddler is running amok. The teenager has yet to do his homework and the dishes remain untouched in the sink. Is the man worthless, or just a moron? Must needs I win the bread and bake it too?A writer, what fool woman marries a writer? What does he do all day? The book will be done soon he says - I must pray to the Mother for strength and light a candle in the sept.The young one is a willful beast. He refuses to use the throne and throws a tantrum to raise the dead when his diaper is full. He would run naked all day if we didn’t clad him in Under Armour. Sleep, all I want is sleep. Gods, I pray my lord husband doesn’t have any thoughts of romance tonight. He will be sorely disappointed.Every young maiden wishes to be swept off her feet by a handsome young prince, thrown onto the bed and tenderly savaged. Was I such a dewy-eyed maiden once? Every married woman wants to be swept off her feet, thrown onto the bed and left alone while her husband goes downstairs to do the dishes.
The courtship had been somewhat romantic. There were ball gowns and glowing parties, a royal wedding that my poor father is like to still be paying for. The sex, for a time, was exciting. She had not been a maiden when he first took her, but based on his skill in bed, she guessed she might have been his first. But now, the poor man seemed to never have enough.
It is a chore and a duty I perform for my lord husband, she told herself. “He had better get his royal tubes tied pretty soon,” She confided to her friend over the phone, “If he thinks to fill my belly with child again, now that I can finally see the end of diapers looming on the horizon like a gleaming promise…” she trailed off and thought lovingly of the small tyrant that was her youngest son. She sighed and began to browse through Netflix for one of those Korean romantic soap operas she had somehow gotten addicted to.
The Imp
Why do grown-ups wear stupid clothes? I hate clothes! He was snapping the heads off of his brother’s Star Wars figures because the cat had told him to. “You won’t get in trouble,” she purred, “and if you do, just start to cry and they will forget about everything and give you food just to shut you up.” The cat was his best friend and a Werecat. They could share each other’s minds. Right now he was watching through her eyes as she was tearing the dirt out of a potted plant so she could piss in it. “This is how life should be,” she told him. “A creature should be should be able to pee where it wants.” He had to agree.
She also told him that the toilet was evil. “It stinks, and it will suck you out to the sea if you flush while you’re sitting on it.”
"Why do you drink from it then?" He asked. She looked daggers at him but said nothing.
He had seen his parents both use it, and his older brother and they had never been sucked out to sea. Better to be safe than sorry, though. He felt sad for the grown-ups who always had to wear clothes and do what they were told and sit on their stinky white thrones. He decided that he was never going to grow up.
The Cat
“Why don’t you build a castle with the couch cushions so we can hide from your parents,” she suggested. The boy was so easy to manipulate. The parents look to be on the verge of madness, she mused as she nibbled the plant. Everything is going according to my plan.
She found a warm spot to perch from which she could survey her realm, her kingdom, and reflected. It’s good to be the Queen!
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