A STORY FOR SAFETY
AND MADNESS
By Mike Richards
Once
upon a time, in a land rather closer to you than youd like to think, there
lived a prince and a princess: Prince Malachi and Princess Susan. The prince
and the princess had been lucky in life, so they thought. Theyd met at college,
where they had been training to be royalty, and had gotten on quite well.
She had found his jokes to be quite funny, and he was glad that Susan didnt
seem to want too much out of life. All that the princess needed was a plush
castle, somewhere safe where she wouldnt be afraid to go out at night (not
that she ever did anymore), an nice carriage to take her to the local suppliers
of food produce, and a lifetime of making babies.
Malachi never did see a problem with this. He had gone to the Princes University and had gotten a good degree, and his parents were rich and insisted on bestowing all the fruits of the kingdom upon the couple. As such the prince and the princess were still quite young when they could afford to buy their own castle. Sure, they had needed to borrow a bit of money for it; theyd spend the rest of their lives paying it off, and the castles in the area were very close together, not like the castles Malachi remembered seeing when he was a young lad.
So they settled down. All their dreams had come very nearly true. They had their castle. Susan had her carriage. They had yet to make any babies, because Malachi had suddenly found himself unable to perform in bed. But Malachi had explained to Susan that this happens to men sometimes, and it was nothing to worry about because they can get drugs for than sort of thing.
The years passed, and nothing happened. Well, of course some things had happened, but the general order of things remained the same for another 20 years.
Times were hard in the kingdom. Malachi was under a lot of pressure to get the kingdom back on track. The king had warned him that if the job wasnt done properly hed find someone else to do it. So apparently he was expendable. Funny that, because Malachi had always thought that the kingdom cared about his welfare. How could the kingdom leave him with no means to pay off the loan he had taken? Didnt they understand that money was really tight? Especially now Susan seemed to be spending a lot more, although he couldnt work out what on. And of course he had to pay for those stupid pills that didnt even work. He still couldnt perform in bed with Susan.
So in order to pay the bills, Malachi had to work very hard. Susan didnt get to see him much at that time. She once sat with a bottle of gin, wondering how she would tell Malachi that the doctors had told her she could never make babies. Susan wondered whether Malachi was on to her alcohol problem yet. Probably not, she had thought, he never was the sharpest tool in the box. She had looked back over the last twenty years
Malachi was home late again. He was pretty sure Susan didnt suspect he came home late because he had been fucking the peasant girl who did the paperwork for the kingdom. Susan never was the sharpest tool in the box, he had thought. He called out his beloveds name, but got no reply. He assumed shed fallen asleep again. She often did fall into a very deep sleep quite early in the evening, and he couldnt work out why. Malachi climbed the staircase and went to the bathroom, to make sure there was no peasant girl lipstick on his face, or anywhere else for that matter. Malachi wondered why he had bothered paying for all those pills when all he needed was an easy peasant girl.
Upon reaching the bathroom, he saw Susan lying face down. There was a note, but he couldnt read the writing. There was an empty bottle of tranquillisers, and an empty bottle of gin. Malachi really wasnt the sharpest tool in the box, but it was obvious what had happened here.
Malachi didnt know what to feel. Had he loved Susan? If he had he should feel bad that she was dead. But if he loved her why had he been fucking the peasant girl who does the paperwork for the kingdom? He couldnt get his thoughts straight; he didnt know what to feel. So he felt nothing.
But what would he do about the corpse in his bathroom. If word got out amongst the other lords and ladies in the castles around him, there would be a scandal. Around there they just didnt talk about that kind of thing. To live in these castles, you have to keep things to yourself.
Malachi
picked up Susans body, carried into the bedroom and laid it on the bed. She
hadnt looked very peaceful sprawled out on the bathroom floor, dribble oozing
from her half opened mouth. She looked OK on the bed. He would miss her, he
thought. Maybe he had been wrong to spend his evenings fucking the girl who
does the paperwork for the kingdom. He would miss her. But then, he thought,
why should he have to?
...
Three months later, Malachi returned to his castle after a hard days work. The girl who did paperwork for the kingdom had been a little confused when Malachi had suddenly broken things off, but she never did understand men. Nobody had found out about Susan yet.
He walked upstairs and went to see Susan, who was still in the bedroom. As always happened, he immediately had to run to the bathroom to be violently sick. But he found that eventually one got used to the smell, and it ceased to bother him. He sat on the bed next to his wife. She was getting a little fat around the ankles, he thought. While he picked pieces of flesh from his wife’s bones, to counteract the swellings that made her look bloated, Malachi thanked the Lord he knew what it was like to have love, security and safety. He kissed Susan on her swollen cheek, and turned out the light.