One year later, our heroine wakes up and groggily heads to the bathroom to freshen herself up. She turns the shower on. The water begins to pool slightly in the tub when she notices it: a dark spot on the shower floor. She peers in and sees she disrupted a centipede’s stroll with the sudden deluge.
Disgusted, she turns the water off and decides to wait for it to drain so she can extract the beast from the tub. Once the water empties, he lies there, drowned and lifeless. She grabs a spare scrap of junk mail to hoist him up out of the tub, and proceeds to walk the carcass to the kitchen trash bin, past a table littered with a collection of overturned cups on top of scraps of junk mailers that imprison several other species.
She has a well-honed process now; her reflexes quick as a cat. A small cache of cups and sturdy paper scraps are available in nearly every room. She had become an expert hunter of all manner of petite vermin. The spiders/centipedes/hornets that managed to get into her castle were no match for her prowess. She captured them all, ensnared them in her simple traps, and—for good measure—duct-taped the overturned cups to the paper so there would be no chance of escape. No spastic hand movements would ever again overturn a cup and allow its inhabitant the opportunity of escape. She learned from her previous mistakes, you see.
But this poor creature was already dead. No need for extra layers of security. He was disposed of forthwith, and the day proceeded as planned.
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Later that evening, Oliver became restless. Mommy wasn’t paying nearly enough attention to him, and he couldn’t take it anymore. In an act of open defiance, he looked straight at her and peed on a side table nearby. That got her attention. She retrieved the kitchen trash bin along with some paper towels and cleaning solution to take care of the mess, carrying it all over to the side table. She set down the trash bin, proceeded to mop up the mess, and just as she leaned forward to throw the soiled paper towels in the bin, she saw it—a quick flash darting around the interior of the bin.
It was alive.
She jumped back. “AAAAAAIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!”
“Are you KIDDING me?!”
“I thought you were dead!!!”
“YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD!!!!”
She circled the bin, eyes flashing, furious that this foul creature had outwitted her and lured her into a false sense of security. She would have his hide.
“The f***ing AUDACITY!! How dare you!?”
She hurried to pull the drawstrings closed and tight on the trash liner before he could escape the bin and scamper out into the living room. THAT was a problem she didn’t need.
“SO. MUCH. AUDACITY.” At this, Oliver (who had sheepishly kept his head down and a safe distance away once Mommy started yelling at the trash can) perked his ears up and slowly started to wag his tail uncertainly as he watched her work. He did not know the meaning of this word “audacity,” but he had heard Mommy say it many times before during playtime when she would chase him around the room. She said he was full of audacity. He assumed it meant something nice.
Mommy was looking at him now, shaking her head and fighting back a smile. “So you think this is funny, do you?” His tail wagged much more confidently now. He raised his head high, waiting for playtime to commence.
Sigh.
She disposed of her audacious foe in his container, and marched resolutely forward to engage Oliver lest he get bored and pee on anything else. It was so hard to keep the place clean. She reached to turn on a lamp as she passed by, and noticed a ladybug perched on it. She peered closer, surprised and a little bit pleased—this was a comparative delight. He stared back at her, stretched his wings a little, and slowly crawled around the back of the lamp. She realized this was undoubtedly as close an equivalent to adorable talking mice and songbirds as companions as she was likely to get in this lifetime, so she accepted it.
“YOU can stay.”
And so it was that the princess lived out all her days with a loyal following of pugs, centipedes, and other sundry creatures.
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