PRE-APOCALYPTIC PRINCESS
by Jayt

Her soundtrack was the tortured harmonising strains of the Mavis's, her inheritance was a world on the brink of armageddon. Her parents and her parentsâ parents, and all their parents before them, had visited environmental ruination upon the world. Every one of her ancestors, back up until the beginning of time when the first ugly monkey used a rock to smash up the bones of other monkeys (as seen in Space Odyssey 2001), every little link along the evolutionary chain had been one part of the creation of this Great Big Problem that the girl was now in charge of. Every ancient relative of hers had in some way contributed to this Really Huge Disaster and now the girl found she was going to be expected to deal with it.

The princess lived in the castle. She assumed her parents, aka the King and Queen, aka the Bosses of The Royal Company, still lived there too but she hadn't seen them for years because it wasn't in her job description to see them. Born into the role of royal princess the girl was expected to fulfil her job requirements without a qualm. She did do this for the early part of her life, attending princess school and princess university and doing all the obligatory princessy things.

A generalised vibe of loss and lowly dull restlessness followed her around like a dog. It rained a lot. Sometimes the sky dribbled down acid rain, but a lot of the time it was just half-hearted splishy splashy rain cutting through the humid air, the kind that used to be known as Summer Rain. When seasons like Summer and Winter and Autumn still had names that is.

The princess-girl sat around in her rainy pre-apocalyptic world waiting for her job requirement to change, in other words waiting for a promotion. By this promotion she would know that the ruling King and Queen had finally passed away. She knew that one day when she was Boss of the Royal Company, she would have to make decisions and take action on the impending environmental collapse that past generations had brought about. The idea of the world lost in a wasted filthy desiccated state didnât bug her much, indoctrinated as she was by The Royal Company. It was just the press conferences and media relations that made it into her dreams and snapped her sweating from her sleep.

Like I said, she went along with princessy stuff for the early part of her life. One night she was going for a walk in the royal gardens. The clouds in the sky were reflecting a nice grey-orange colour onto the concrete gardens and the nearby power reactor was giving off a little heat. The princess-girl was listening to an illegal dub of Garbage's WHITE album, the one with fluffy pink feathers on the front, on her Walkman (not her Discman, the job at the Castle paid well but not well enough to buy luxuries like a Discman).

The princess wandered out into the gardens and walked around a bit. A feral girl, who had broken into the palace gardens, came up to her and started ear-bashing her about the fate of the planet. This irritated the princess; ferals werenât an uncommon occurrence and it bugged her that the castleâs security was so lax that they could allow scruffy, dirty people to infiltrate its ranks.

"Go on, scoot!" yelled the infuriated princess. She stood there with her hands on her hips until the feral had gone away.

When she was sure no one was watching, the princess-girl jumped around and sang really loudly and closed her eyes and jumped around a bit more.

She was pissed off about the pony. The princess knew lots of other girls her age owned ponies and she wanted one too. A princess in a neighbouring kingdom had a golden goose as well, and so she certainly wanted one of those. Life just wasn't fair. She'd sent countless memos to the upper management of the castle but didnât get any response. She couldnât wait until she got her promotion; sheâd be in charge of Ordering and Purchasing so sheâd finally be able to score herself a pony. Thank goodness for that.

The princess went up to the big turret. She climbed the one hundred and forty one thousand six hundred and twenty-two stone steps to get to the top. She looked out over the fields and fields of newly built estate houses. She watched the young families harvesting weeds in their back yards. The sun glowered down and she breathed with difficulty in the fetid, humid air. Time passed. It rained a lot. Lately it had rained acid more often than water. The public were beginning to get anxious. The weeds in their gardens were suffering. Sometimes the princess thought about throwing herself off the highest tower. However, with her higher educational training, the best that money could buy, she knew a fall from the tower would only injure her.

Salination began to have an effect on water supplies as bad agricultural practices poisoned the underground water table. This didn't effect the princess; her servants just had to work a bit harder as they had to purify her bathing water with rose petals before she would get in. People outside the gates evolved so that their bodies could withstand the level of salt in their water and food. The princess waited around for her promotion. Waited for the media frenzy.

One day she noticed that all her servants had been replaced by automated machines. She hadn't noticed how long they'd been like that. As they were solar powered, it didn't effect the princess when the power grid went down. From her tower she watched the rioting in the streets which took place once electricity no longer flowed like water through the streets. This went on for a surprisingly short period of time, only a few decades. Many of the formerly neat little residences were reduced to rubble. She couldn't understand why there were no reporters nosing around, making her answer questions and generally being annoying.

Hyper-evolution was going on outside the castle gates. This was in part due to the tough conditions and in part due to the radiation emitted from the nuclear bombsite a few kilometres away. Their skins grew thick and tough and hairy. They could survive being outside in the acid rain for short periods of time. The princess watched them place little packages of food at the base of the castle gates. Her robots collected the parcels and brought them inside.

The princess sat at the tippy-top of her tower and waited to be promoted.

[fairytales]