The Decaying Princess in Room Thirteen A

Written By Shelley M. Latreille

I am now eighty years old and I think that this is the right time to write my story. This is the last time I will have a chance to write. I have lived a long and tiresome life. My old bones ache to finally lay in their coffin and rot with eternity. For eighty years now I have danced with devils and tasted the evil fruits of temptation with long-lasting respect.

As I write this letter, I sit at the old dilapidated desk at the Friendly Folks Old Age Home. I hate it here. The only thing to do here is to chase the older old people with my walker. They can’t see, so they think it’s a barking, rabid dog chasing them. And, anyway, the nurses come and knock me down and shoot sedatives in my arm. It’s not much of a life, I know, but it keeps me going.

Well, enough about the gracious present. For fifty years I worked in a dead-end job at Wal-Mart. I was the so-called door greeter, but I wasn’t very cheerful or happy. I usually had to get the carts out for the people, like they couldn’t do it for themselves. If I didn’t like the person that I was giving the cart to, I would turn them around and shove the cart in their ass. The happy, happy people at Wal-Mart didn’t like these little pranks. The supervisor threatened to fire me if I didn’t stop, so I threw a shopping cart at his head. I killed the bastard. I didn’t like him either.

The only reason that I had to take this stupid, dead, ugly, apathetic job at Wal-Mart was because of the government. I was on welfare for fifteen years. I was supposed to go out and try to find a job every hour or so, but it just wasn’t happening for me. So, I got bored as any fifteen-year-old fetus would.

I lived in the dumpy, non-working, non-moving town of Smithville. Doesn’t the name sound fun?! My house was located on a street with many other ugly houses. But it was my neighbors that really livened up my dead soul. They were forming a cult that worshipped cheese. (I quit high school to join this one. It was said that a woman could make something of herself later in life in the beautiful world of the occult, worshipping cheese). We would cut the heads off innocent, unsuspecting woodland creatures, or people if we could find them, and offer them to the Cheddar gods. This was fun for a while, until the welfare services got on my back to find a job. I said that I would try to find one, not really meaning it. I tried to get the welfare service people to join, but I don’t think that they appreciated my offer too well.

After a while, the club chose to make me their president because I worshipped the Cheddar gods better than anyone there. But this delightful position was unfortunate for me, as I was caught sacrificing a burly farmer’s prize cow. I tried to sacrifice the farmer instead, but he ran away and called the police.

For the next ten years I spent my time in the Smithville County Correctional Facility. The place was nice enough, but Big Bertha, my roommate, kept trying to marry me. Let me tell you, it wasn’t a pretty sight, but at least it got those welfare service twits off my back!

For almost all the time that I was there, I was the head cook. It was a very high, and prestigious position. It made me extremely happy and over-zealously thrilled. I had the most authority in the jail. (Big Bertha was happy about this. I think it’s what made her become attracted to me). I could do almost anything that I wanted to. If I didn’t like someone, I would take my steak knife, slice off their fingers, or hand depending on my mood, and throw it in the soup.

This went on for almost all the time that I was there. The police didn’t care. We were all lowlife criminals. It didn’t matter if we lived or died. Finally, I was let off for good behavior.

After my jail sentence, I bummed around the countryside, trying my luck at gambling. It usually was Poker games. I didn’t know how to play, so I lied and cheated my way into the winner’s circle. Anyway, the people who I played with were usually drunk.

I remember that my last gambling day was on a Monday. I had a grand total of one-hundred thousand dollars. So, I decided to go to Vegas, which is where my life’s demise began. I put all the money on one bet. The game was Blackjack. But when I remembered that these people were not clueless and were professionals, it was too late. My large sum of money had dwindled down to nothing.

After that, I walked out to the street. I had no money whatsoever, so on the street, I found a nice homeless cross-dresser and sold my dress to him for five dollars. But now I was naked. I wandered around like this for five hours trying to think of a unique way to spend my five dollars. On my five-hour tour of Vegas, I met some nice prostitutes. The asked me to join their club, but I declined regretfully.

As I walked, a police car began following me. I thought that they were trying to make friends with me, but I thought differently when they got out of their car and began to chase me (since I had become naked, I was becoming popular with the natives!).

I ran behind a dumpster with the two malicious males yelling at me like cavemen. They were too large to fit behind the dumpster, so they kept trying to reach me with their hands, saying that if I cooperated, they would arrest me nicely.

I didn’t believe them, so I crawled out underneath the dumpster, ran around the bumbling fools, and stole their car. I didn’t really know how to drive, but it was sure fun learning. I did well because I only ran over six people and only broke three mail boxes.

I drove around for another hour, until I came to the drug dealer’s neighborhood. I finally had found a good investment for my five dollars. I pulled the police car up to a dealer. He looked scared at first, but when he realized it was a naked old woman behind the wheel, he relaxed. He must have figured that I was some sort of deranged criminal. I gave him my five dollars and told him that I wanted some good stuff. He gave me some white powder in a plastic bag. I thanked him and drove away.

I came to a river and drove over the bridge. I threw the drugs out the window. I had never bought drugs before, so I felt privileged. Actually, to me, it looked like flour. I would have baked it in a cake, but I didn’t have time at the moment.

Right about now, the two policemen caught up with me. They had chased me on foot. As they angrily forced me to step out of the car, I asked them how their jog had been. I don’t think that they appreciated my warm gesture of friendliness.

They took me to the police station. I still didn’t have any clothes, so I had to get my picture taken naked. This didn’t bother me, but I think that it bothered the people at the station. They threw me into a dull, metal cell that was rapidly rusting.

Two hours later, a jubilant psychologist came to visit me. He asked me many questions and we hit it off. He told the police captain that I was just a psychotic old crony, so I was released.

I walked down the street again. I passed by this club that had a band playing death metal music. I went through the mosh pit four times. That made me happy. I decided that I really liked the band, so I went backstage to meet them, naked of course!

The band really liked me. In fact, they liked me so much that they asked me to join. I accepted their invitation gratefully. I found out that the only reason they wanted me to join was because my skin was shriveled and crusty looking. Their band was called the Skinless Apes, so I guess that’s what I look like.

I became the band’s mascot for a month. That’s when I went back out on the street. Even though I had earned fifteen-thousand dollars, I still didn’t have clothes. Some of the people on the street stared at me as if it were public indecency, but I call it art.

I found a homeless shelter and spent two weeks there. I was always getting into fights with the other homeless people. I didn’t like them very much. I always knocked out a tooth or an eye.

The owners of the shelter felt sorry for me. They asked me where I was from. I told them that I used to love in Smithville. They didn’t know that I had fifteen-thousand dollars, so they paid for my airfare back to Smithville.

That’s how I ended up here at the old age home. Now that my life is coming to an end, I just wish that my life had been more exciting and exhilarating.

Right now, I’m bored to death (a good word for the moment). The only remotely fun thing to do is to play bingo on Wednesdays, which I usually cheat at and win anyway, and to kill an occasional rat as it creeps silently across the floor. I don’t usually eat them, but I do when I’m really hungry. Sometimes the arrogant jackasses at the home forget to feed me. So, I have a pile of about thirty rats in my closet. They are rotting and molding as of now.

Sometimes the mold is my only friend. We talk to each other a lot. The mold has a good home in the closet. Right now, it’s beginning to grow up the wall. It’s all right with me. I don’t use the closet anyway. There’s no television in this hellish domain, so every night for three hours, I watch my friendly mold grow.

But tonight, I had decided to write my life story. It’s almost time for me to leave this enormously revolting earth, so this is the last time I’ll have to write. My skin has almost rotted from my bones anyway. Sometimes a piece will fall off on to the floor. I try to staple it back in place, but it falls off again anyway, so I just feed it to the mold.

Enough of my exciting life, now back to the letter at hand. I would like every word that I have printed in these pages to be put in the Smithville paper. I will pay for it with my fifteen-thousand dollars. This seems like a likely cause. I can’t remember my name because it’s been so long since someone used it to get my attention. I don’t care anyway. I’m not a dog. Instead everyone will use “The Decaying Princess in Room Thirteen A”.

Now, about the burial… I don’t think that there will be anything left to bury when I die. I’m decaying as I write this. But if there is something left, I would like to be cremated because fire represents Hell, which is where I think that I shall be going. After all, I have leprosy, the Devil’s disease.

But before I’m cremated, I would like to have a wake in my room for the mold, who are seeking world domination. The wake must be held precisely at midnight because, who knows, I just might come back from the dead to bring some of the living with me.

Decaying, my skin has almost rotted from my bones. Sometimes a piece will fall off on to the floor. I try to staple it back in place, but it falls off again anyway, so I just feed it to the mold... I don't think that there will be anything left to bury when I die. I'm decaying as I write this. The mold feeds and grows healthy from my dead skin and will soon seek world domination.

Time stalks, watches, always waiting, always there, hovering... Listlessly attempting to murder you in your sleep ever so silent to steal your soul before the Grim Reaper can come to claim it... If you listen in the silence of the night, you can hear time slowly creeping along, its nails clawing, dragging towards you.