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Happily Ever After…

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By Bethany “BST2” Armstrong

Once upon a time, a Woman seeped in trauma and burdened by an abusive spouse got super drunk at her friends house and it changed everything. This Woman was a bizarre combination of read-a-holic Belle, a Cinderella for her mother, an Ariel dreaming of a freedom she didn’t understand. She raised her little sisters like daughters. She was equal parts people-pleaser and pure unadulterated defiance. She loved nothing more than to subvert expectations. She whole-heartedly believed she was a dumb, useless, dirty, fat slut. The school bullies confirmed it.

The people who were supposed to love and protect her did not provide her with either. There were no loving words, only constant shame. It worked to a degree. So much so that at 19, she married the first prince to ask… and counted herself lucky that someone would have her.

This prince escalated the cycle of abuse and that poor woman, a child really, had no means or will to pull herself out. This was her Fate, and she chose it. As mother often said when approached for advice… “you made your bed… lie in it.”

The Woman was heavily pregnant when the Mad Prince put a hole in the wall because she reminded him it was time for work. He hadn’t planned on going, though his bosses said his next call-in would result in two weeks suspension – unpaid, though a new life he helped create was nearing its exodus from its mother.

Two days after the birth of their daughter, he insisted on sex though the doctor warned it was not safe, though the woman said it hurt. So, they had sex, after which he berated her for being “too loose” as she cleaned the blood and the clots from her thighs and went to soothe their now crying newborn. This pattern repeated for two more children, though she begged him to get a vasectomy or wear a condom. He never did.

The good news is that three children under the age of five kept the woman too busy to think much about her predicament. The Mad Prince got crazier and crazier. He refused to work leaving the Woman the burden of sole rational parent and provider as he devolved into a madness that he later called “demons.”

The one hint of respite came from a noble lady, who took pity on the woman and offered friendship. She was a very intelligent and refined lady who saw something in the woman and encouraged her to elevate herself.

The Woman – now with four children and living in severe poverty – applied for financial aid and went back to college. The road was rough. The obstacles preventing her from success were numerous, but she persisted. The only thing she feared more than the Mad Prince was failing her children.

So she worked – at a grocery store deli for minimum wage and at a nursing home as a cook for a little more than minimum wage – and she went to school. The Woman had to turn her thoughts away from what was happening in her home, the prince did nothing but play video games and sleep, he often neglected to feed, or bath, or pick up his children from school on time. The Woman couldn’t think about that though, how much her children must be suffering, she had only four hours in every week day to sleep by the time work and school was done. She couldn’t think about missing her youngest’s first words, or steps, or ballgames… She could only put one foot in front of the other for a chance to give them better, eventually.

The Woman worked so hard, for so long… though she had to rely on food stamps, food banks, and the guilt and shame that comes along with it to limp through. She pawned the wedding and engagement ring the Mad Prince had given her, the only thing of value she possessed other than a beater carriage on its last legs – and necessary to complete the goal, in order to buy insulin for her diabetic son. Always shame, endless shame.

However, the Woman persevered, and the day of her graduation ceremony arrived. Though the ceremony was tarnished by the Mad Prince’s presence, it was a huge victory for the Woman. She received her teaching license and was offered a position at every school she applied to. She decided to follow her benefactor, the noble lady, and take service into The Kingdom of Public Schools.
Trying to amass money to leave an abuser while working as a teacher proved impossible. The potential for security seemed dashed as she was still living from paycheck to paycheck. The magic of the victory seemed a façade; each day, when the clock struck midnight, she found herself transported and returned by dark sorcery to the Mad Prince’s decaying kingdom, trying to survive on two peasant salaries.

Her departure had not gone unnoticed by the Mad Prince, who had taken to sulking in seclusion in the oubliette he had constructed by hand and by deed, his only companion an X-Box he had procured with funds embezzled from The Woman’s coffers. Even it had become poor company; the games failed to amuse as a dread crept over him. His kingdom was in ruins, long ago abandoned to the dusty trash heaps and mouldering tapestries by the courtiers who once visited. Even the heirs to his throne rejected and scorned him. As the Mad Prince neared lucidity, the dread swelled inside of him. He hated seeing her succeed where he had failed. Was it he who was to blame for the fall of his kingdom?

Surely not. No. It was the Woman. If she had just supported him more, forgiven him more, he could have been a great leader of men. He was the victim in this relationship. She chose herself over him – she chose the children over him. She never believed in him. Never listened to his theological wisdom. Didn’t even thank him when he sold the ragged old carriage for a quick $400, one of his greatest contributions to the family coffers in nearly a decade! So what if she had to walk to work? She was a fat bitch, anyway – she could lose a few pounds. He liked that better, anyway.

He had nothing but time to dwell upon her successes, each memory a dagger in his mind, a reminder of his fault and failure and inferiority. He would show her. He had nothing but time to poke at her insecurities. He would show that lazy, stupid cunt who was really the power behind the throne.

If she thought she was so smart for her university pedigree, then he would have one as well. He summoned the greatest prestidigitator and sooth sayer he could afford, YouTubius, to provide undivided royal tutelage. Upon reaching the Mad Prince’s kingdom, YouTubius pledged to share his vast knowledge, but only because the Mad Prince was among the few men with the capacity – the Faith – to hear and believe.

YouTubius revealed many great and horrifying secret truths – things beyond this world that no average man could comprehend. Lo! Aliens are actually ancient demons from another dimension, their existence hidden by the agents of the Deep State Kingdom. Lo! The earth is really flat, and also the literal footstool of God! HALLELUJAH, GOD BE PRAISED!!!

With his superior intellect fortified by the teachings of YouTubius, the Mad Prince knew his subjects would soon fall in line. They would love him once more – The Woman would throw herself into his arms in awe and apology, and all would be right with this flat world once more. All he had to do was shake her newfound confidence – a task a scholar such as himself was well suited to.

The Woman was unimpressed. As such, the prince escalated his abuse. He ordered his children to pile the royal trash into the empty three season room, ordering that they fill it to the ceiling. He broke her cherished objects, sometimes by throwing them at her head – but only when the rest of the royal family was absent, so as to keep their favor. When she refused his advances, he pinned her against the walls by her neck, unleashing a torrent of spittle, rage, and loathing. The tantrums were followed by tearful apologies and more gaslighting than a royal ball.
The Woman took to drinking one night a week at her lady’s house.

One fateful night, while railing against her fate with the prince, beginning to understand that something had to change and fast, for her children’s sake if not her own, she imbibed – heavily. Her lady suggested something scandalous… that the woman download a magical dating app and see what’s out there. The woman figured maybe a man would tell her she’s pretty and at least there’d be dickpics – if the stories she heard from the youth in her college cohort could be believed – and that sounded like a good time. The Woman had long ago told the prince that she considered him no prince at all and certainly no husband. It only felt vaguely like cheating.

The Woman stumbled drunkenly around the app when she found an intriguing profile. The mysterious man had an adorable face with deviltry in his eyes and a pretentious smirk upon his face. He laid it all out. Here’s who I am, here’s what I’m looking for. He talked about living in a treehouse for a time in his wild 20s. He listed his favorite movies; he had some real winners on there. He felt authentic.

But every man in this Woman’s life had treated her with cruelty or negligence. Every man had sought to diminish her or to control her. So, timidly, inebriatedly, and with more than a touch of peer pressure, she gazed into the crystal rectangle and summoned a magical messenger to deliver a missive to this man.

The man returned the messenger with a letter of his own, and there was an instant connection. They chatted daily and the woman felt hope begin to bloom, if only… if only it weren’t for the Mad Prince. The Woman felt love begin to stir and it frightened her. She was afraid of never breaking free, she was afraid of losing everything, and she was petrified that she would wound this magical man.

And so the man and the Woman played a game – “reasons I’m undateable”. They laid out their insecurities and their pasts and their traumas and their present reality one text at time. The Woman was sure this would be the end of the tale, but the man still was intrigued by her. He wanted to meet and proposed so elegantly, so romantically, that it took the woman’s breath away.

The clandestine meeting took place in the market square parking lot. The Woman was shy, but the man was charming. They watched a troop of jesters and fools perform at a local pub, and the sound of the man’s booming laugh put the woman at ease. Afterwards they talked and feasted and walked in the rain. It felt like meeting an old friend and neither wanted it to end.

The Woman went to her lady. She had to share the enormity of what had happened but the only way she could express it was “I want to fuck his brain!” (Forgive the Woman her crass language but it was the only way to describe something indescribable.) She later learned the term for this is sapiosexual – being sexually attracted to someone’s intellect – and this man was bloody brilliant.

He was also gentle and kind and thoughtful and honest. He procured books for the woman, tomes full of spells and occult knowledge for surviving what the woman was surviving. He was the first person to take her seriously and to believe in the enormity of her nightmare. He listened. He offered wisdom and support. He was no prince to ride in on his charger to rescue the woman, but that wasn’t what she needed or wanted. Princes are vastly overrated.

Instead he rode beside her, encouraging her and building her up, and together they ousted the Mad Prince with a ritual he called, “Changing the Fucking Locks.” Outdone by $20 of hardware and a man willing to do the work, the Mad Prince fled the kingdom, vowing he would find another wench, a better wench, who would appreciate his wit and attend his unwashed lust.

The Woman left with her children and the mystery man to a far away kingdom, well away from the wounds of the past and outside the vengeful reach of the Mad Prince. There, they worked together to build a kingdom of safety and peace. A kingdom where they could all heal.

The Mad Prince? He now shelters in the kingdom of The Whispering Woods, a cursed forest which mires all within its confines – a place fit for neither man nor beast where fae glamor forever prevents its exit from those foolish enough to enter. There he resides with his wench, and her husband, and her husband’s boyfriend, and two children of indeterminate origin. A fitting kingdom for a Mad Prince.

The Woman? She became a lady of sorts. She remains defiant and foul-mouthed, spending her days giving her love to those who have none. Her man calls her “His Lady” and that’s all that really matters.

The mystery man tended and continues to tend her wounds. He marvels at the creature the woman was and is becoming. He finds her and her story Beautiful. He gave her space to fly while keeping her grounded. Casting away her magical scrying rectangle, the woman found that love is the realest and truest and most potent magic one can possess. In love they found safety, and peace, and family, and Home. Together, they work to keep their kingdom and their love thriving. So they live, and love, into their happily ever after.

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