“Put-that-disgusting-boot-out-of-my-sight-and-sit-straight-the-way-a-daughter-is-supposed-to!”
Rat takes the leg off the armrest.
“Stop yelling,” she says. “Pull yourself together.”
PRIP, short for Primary Progenitor, has a hard time controlling his runaway feelings. Rat closes her eyes and sighs. She needs to wait out the forty minutes allotted for parental visits. Good thing the chair is so comfy.
“. . . no direction in life! You are completely passive! I’m surprised you even managed to learn how to talk. Must be only so that your mouth could spew forth all those vile abominations!”
“Would you please open your eyes, my girl, when your father is talking to you,” Sheep bleats.
Rat opens them, reluctantly.
“Talking? To me?”
Sheep sighs pitifully.
Rat takes the largest badge and catches in it raging PRIP’s reflection. Now his shiny red visage fits neatly between her thumb and forefinger. Is he ever going to shut up?
“. . . procure those disgusting clothes and shoes and cover your body with sacrilegious graven images, contriving to look even more repulsive than you already are . . .”
Rat covers the paternal countenance with her thumb and presses on it, but the voice keeps wheedling.
“. . . useless trinkets . . . Be so kind as to look at me when I am . . .”
She makes a fist around the badges, all four of them, but PRIP continues to squeak, tickling the palm of her hand, and then with surprising agility jumps on the buttons of her vest. Rat is mortified. She is covered with PRIPs, they crawl over rivets and buckles, they are on the steel toes of her boots, sliding on the shiny armrests—PRIPs everywhere, multiplying uncontrollably, screaming.
“The execrable foulness of your soul is reflected on your face! Out of every orifice you stink! Stink!”
She jumps up and tries to brush them off.
“Stink! Stink!” the PRIPs scream as she sheds them on the floor.
“Ow!” yelps the original PRIP, he who begat the rest of them, and he also darts away from her.
She can’t see him do it, but she can definitely hear. The original PRIP is bulky, and his maneuverability is inferior.
Rat looks herself over, closely examining every button. Her hands are still shaking. At the other end of the room PRIP is trying to convince Sheep that his daughter is possessed by demons.
“Please calm down,” Sheep says sweetly. “She is just upset. Nervous. Your girl has such a sensitive nature.”
PRIP gulps the water he poured from the pitcher. He is aghast. Could Sheep really be as stupid as she seems? He starts to suspect that he’s being played for a fool.
“That’s enough!” he exclaims. “All the time I’ve wasted on her I could have spent on my other children. I have six of them, I’ll have you know. Six!” he repeats significantly.
Sheep quickly gets to oohing and aahing.
PRIP likes that. Rat knows that he’s lifted his eyes to the ceiling. Presumably because all of his six children dropped on him from above, without him being involved in any way.
“Why didn’t you put on a condom if you couldn’t hold it in,” she remarks. “Might have helped with the children situation.”
PRIP is speechless. Usually that only happens when he’s asleep. He can’t remain in that condition when he’s awake; it’s mortally dangerous, since he’s so thoroughly unaccustomed to it.
“Now that was uncalled for,” Sheep fumes. “For shame! Go on, leave now before your father gets upset.”
PRIP finds his voice and starts screaming how upset he is. He’s so upset that he can’t possibly be any more upset. He’d be lucky to make it home safely, because he definitely can feel a stroke coming on.
Sheep pushes Rat out the door and rushes to assist stricken PRIP. In her flower-print dress Sheep resembles a pincushion. Very agitated, but completely harmless. Rat can afford not to even look back at her. She leaves.
Yes, the chair was very nice, but she’d prefer a bed of nails anywhere else. It’s exactly a week until the next time PRIP comes here, and Rat knows that he is not going to miss it for the world. He adores visiting her. It must be his most favorite activity. Rat goes up the stairs, not taking her eyes off the boots, the target of repeated abuse. She always looks where she puts her feet, wherever she goes—this way she can be sure her feet won’t carry her somewhere she wouldn’t like to be. All kinds of people have all kinds of issues. This is hers. The other House maidens prefer lugging their mattresses around, like snails and their shells. They are extensions of the mattresses. Or is it the other way around? Anyway, they seem to like it that way, always being anchored to something familiar, something that smells of you. Lately several of these mattress-trailers have been parked at the Crossroads.
Rat sits down on the edge of one of the mattresses, squeezing between it and the sofa. It’s a tight fit, so she has to shove her boots under the sofa.
“Make sure you don’t break something when you stand back up,” Owl from the Sixth advises. “The human body is a fragile mechanism.”
