Sex and Porridge

It was a dark and stormy night. The wind whipped around the castle like a roll of duct tape around an innocent hostage. In the top room of the tallest tower, Princess Melanie cried, hidden from the world by an iron door.

Suddenly, the door opened. Sir Daniel entered the room, his cloak sweeping the floor. He was pale, with flame-red hair and dark blue nails. He smelled of popcorn, of long walks in the park, of starry nights with no curfew; he smelled of fish. He glanced around the room before his gaze rested upon the stone table in the middle of the room, and the damsel sitting at it weeping incontrolably. He walked over to her, seeming barely to touch the floor.

"My dear," he said, "whatever is the matter?"

"Oh!" she gasped, "you startled me!"

He waited for her to try to gain some modicum of composure before questioning her further. Men used to do that, you know. Manners, and all.

"Since you have so kindly inquired as to my condition, sir," she finlly began, "I have no choice but to tell you my sorry tale."

"I shall be only too glad to hear it," he replied. His impeccable manners simply would not allow him to call her a little bitch, even though there was nothing he dreaded more than a tale of woe, except maybe the possibility of waking up one morning and finding out that there was no more porridge in all the land.

"It all began a long, long time ago, in a land right here... When I was a little girl, no more than a baby, really, my father was the king of a powerful, prosperous nation. We taxed the peasants, and burned an occasional witch, and everything was just lovely. We never, ever ran out of porridge. Every morning when my nurse woke me, there was a nice, hot bowl of it for me. Ah, I can just taste it, with sugar, and fresh cream from the moat monster... how did you get past the moat monster anyway?"

Sir Daniel was startled by her question, but recovered quickly and answered, "I charmed it. Had I neglected to inform you that I studied hypnosis under the tutelage of Sir Mesmer? That poor harpsichordist..."

"I knew there had to be some explanation for it. Old Bessie never took too kindly to strangers. As I was saying... Oh yes, the porridge. Well, nevermind tht. There was plenty of knights too. The kind with armor and horses and everything. There were almost too many of them; they seemed to be taking the place over. Well, eventually they did exactly that. They all banded together and stormed the castle (they were on familiar terms with Bessie, or they never would have gotten away with that sort of nonesense) and abducted my mother, which didn't really bother me all that much because I didn't really like the old bat anyway, but no one's supposed to know that, so I'd appreciate it if you'd just keep it to yourself. I really hate it when men repeat stories I tell them. They do things like that all the time and I simply cannot stand it. It just makes me want to poison them all. Have you ever poured hemlock down someone's ear? You really ought to try it. It's an awful lot of fun, really. Of course, they do scream and moan a bit, but some people really get off on that sort of thing, if you know what I mean."

Sir Daniel took a hint and ravished Princess Melanie on the stone table. He really didn't moan and scream quite as much as she would have liked him to, but he did tell jokes, so it could have been worse.

Princess Melanie lit a cigarette and continued her story, perspiring slightly.

"About the porridge... no, I think I'd gotten past that. I really shouldn't smoke. I know it's just horrible for me, but I don't really care. I'm determined to die young and beautiful anyway. I might as well die young and beautiful with rotting lungs. No one would know the difference. For that matter, sometimes I doubt whether anyone would know the difference if I died at all. It seems like I live in a lonely world. A dark, dark void, so to speak. Do you ever have the urge to watch your blood flowing across your unscarred skin and see it drip onto the cold floor, and to know that the maid will mop it up in the morning? Or do you at least have the urge to wear all black clothes and really ugly makeup and a lot of chains?"

Sir Daniel had to admit that he did not. Princess Melanie was most dissapointed.

"Dammit, Dan. I'm most dissapointed in you. You're nobility... it's your right, your position in life to feel lonely and suicidal and gothic. Didn't anyone ever tell you the? It doesn't really matter anyway. We're all going to die in the end. You, me, Bessie, the peasants, the porridge. No. Not the porridge. The porridge will live on. It must live on to see a better day, and fight the knights and win back my mother, although personally I don't really care all that much and I'm just saying that so that I won't have to lie under oath if anyone asks what I said about the whole ordeal. God, that would be horrible. Could you just imagine a princess having to lie to her people? What if someone found out? Then I'd have to tell them everything... about the other witch in the dungeon, about the television mind control technology, about the half-million government conspiracies, about you and me..."

Princess Melanie blushed. It kind of clashed with Sir Daniel's hair, but neither of them noticed. A puzzled expression suddenly crossed his face.

"Dear Princess," he remarked, "I can't help but notice your grief has abated. When I happened upon you, you were quite unconsolable. Has my company brought you that much joy?"

"Not really," she admitted, "although the sex was... wow. I mean, God, it was really, really good. In all honesty, though, I wasn't the least bit upset about the knights and all that rot. Poor old Mom couldn't even make decent porridge."

"Then what caused you such grevious disturbance?"

Princess Melanie tried somewhat unsuccessfully to hold back tears. Sha dabbed at her aristocratic nose with a silk handkercheif.

"I can't write fiction," she wailed.

Sir Daniel stormed out of the castle to go fight dragons, slamming the iron door behind him.