Haplessly Never Laughter

Once upon a time is a stupid way to begin a story. And nobody, absolutely nobody in the history of the world has ever lived ever after, happily or otherwise. It's all nonsense. The fact is, "once upon a time" is just another way of saying "I'm skipping a lot of important bits to get to the fun part."

Which is fine.

A proper story starts somewhere in the middle, and ends just a little later than the middle. It leaves out all sorts of important, uninteresting things in the beginning, like how the heroine became the morbid, sorry person that she was, and how of course she didn't smile, after all what did she have to smile about?

Then it tells of the intriguing and entertaining challenges and torments that truly tested her patience, but given all of the sorrows and trials she's already seen in her sad, sorry existence, she's predictably well prepared. She rises to the occasion so that everyone can learn a good life lesson from her perseverance and ingenuity, without having to actually live through all of the stress and discomfort and really, it must be said, years of absolute hopelessness that she actually endures.

And then the poor girl is left hanging, presumably with a glowing future ahead of her. But they don't actually tell you about that, which would be the only truly fun part, at least for the heroine, because in reality she has to pick up the pieces of a shattered life, and then live for some while after, though certainly not ever after, while everyone else goes off for a calm bite of bread pudding and a nice cup of tea, with honey, and then a good night's rest.

But that's just the way it has to be.

So, fine. Here we go. Once upon a fucking time...

* * *

Prince Charming was anything but, unless you are into pandering to a self absorbed, narcissistic twit in exchange for lavishing yourself in his substantial wealth. He didn't ride a white charger. He was pulled around in an ornate, comfy carriage, and a new one every year, certainly, like a spoiled toddler pulled about screaming and sniveling in a shiny, new, red wagon. He didn't even carry a sword. He had expendable people to do that sort of thing for him. Anyway, swords were sharp. Incompetent idiots should not be allowed near sharp tools, unless you want to be rid of them once and for all.

There was no grand ball. All of the ladies didn't dress up in beautiful, flowing gowns, trying to win his attention simply by radiating beauty, which he sagely ignored because he looked into their inner souls and saw their innate ugliness. What they did, instead, was to try to get his attention, and they succeeded, simply by exposing their cleavage, boosted by wearing breath seizing bustiers, and by squealing loudly and enticingly as he fucked them in any corner of the palace that was conveniently semi-private.

His father certainly didn't give him the chance to choose his own bride. No, his bride was chosen even before he was born, as dictated by political necessity. That hardly mattered, however, because he would of course have as many young mistresses as we wanted, when the time came. That was where the radiating beauty part came in. If you wanted to be able to tell your friends that you'd been banged by the prince, then beauty, or dressing and flirting like a slut, or just plain flashing your tits, was your ticket.

Let's face it, Prince Charming was, and always would be, a complete fuck.

* * *

"Asswipe!"

The shrew bellowed the name, ending the last syllable in a long, drawn out shriek that turned blood to vinegar.

"Asswipe! Dump the spittoons and the chamber pots! They smell to high heaven. Stop putting it off, and do it now!"

Again, that last was said with another drawn out shriek that turned yet more blood to vinegar.

The words grew louder, along with stomping footfalls, warning of the dragon's impending approach. She wasn't a dragon, really, she was her mother, but it helped to think of her as a dragon. If she was a mother, then the world was too far gone to be bothered with, and checking out of the world just now simply didn't seem like the way to go. At least, not yet.

"Asswipe? Asswipe! Where the fuck are you?"

Aswen shoved the copy of Military Stratagems with Political Considerations back into its spot on the shelf. She'd gotten through seven pages this time before being interrupted, a record for the month.

Asswipe, as she was called, did not have an evil step-mother and two cruel, selfish step-sisters. No, she had an evil real mother, one that corrected and ordered and bellowed and sincerely commented. She didn't criticize, she commented. "I'm not saying this to be cruel," she would begin, "I'm just saying that if you did something, anything, really, with your hair, well, everyone might not look down on you quite so much. Although there really isn't much you could do, I suppose. It's a shame, really. I don't know how Nelly got such nice hair, and you got that."

The word "that" dripped off her tongue like spittle.

Not that her own motherly version of kindness was reserved exclusively for Aswen. She had plenty of love to go around. It wasn't that Aswen was the least favored. All of her sisters were treated equally. Their mother picked at all of her children as if they were scabs, peeling back the ugly, crusty bits that had formed from repeated tongue lashings, only to open the wound and start the bleeding all over, with one more lucky chance at a burning infection from which they might never recover.

"Asswipe, so help me God, if you're pretending to read again..."

Oh, and yes, Aswen wasn't nicknamed anything so quaint and back handedly pretty as "Cinder Ella." That would be far too kind.

Aswen also had seven siblings, not two, all sisters, and every one of them as nasty and selfish and grasping has her own mother. Hell, Aswen was that way herself, really. You had to be. When you had seven siblings, and you spent thirteen hours a day waiting hand and foot on the laziest, stupidest, most obscenely disgusting royal family any kingdom had ever known, well, you learned to take what you could get, when you could get it, without hesitating. If you waited for someone to hand it to you, you died young and emaciated and, well, you really just got what you deserved. The world would be a better place with you out of the God damned way.

"Asswipe," her mother screamed as she burst into the room like a seething storm wave. That was really the only way she knew how to enter a room. If she wasn't all sound and fury, she was asleep. In fact, she even slept with sound and fury, which made sleeping hard on everyone else.

Before she could begin the same tired, old tirade, Aswen slipped into, through and past what narrow space was left between her voluminous mother and the door jamb, with one heavy, tall, bronze spittoon, sloshing with a noisy, revoltingly slimy sound, cradled in two wiry but necessarily strong arms. She made a show of bumping one shoulder into the wooden archway, then almost spilling the contents of the spittoon, before clumsily recovering, with apparent luck, just in the nick of time.

* * *

No one else wanted to dump the chamber pots. No one in their right mind would. Lugging about the heavy, malodorous droppings of a family of royal turds was probably the most vile and insulting thing that any human being could do.

But it had one advantage.

The king slept away most of the day. He was old, and fat, and really a rather useless cog in the running of the kingdom. The kingdom ran itself. If the king tried to help, things got fucked up. Everything was better for everyone when the old fart slept.

The chamber pots had to be emptied early in the morning, to avoid the murderous reek that magnified with the rising heat of the day, but while he slept, no one was allowed into his room. It had to be cleaned in the few hours that he left his bed for meals, or to nap in the garden, or to make a show of making decrees to his generals and secretaries, who made studious notes of every word he said, which were then carefully amended by his personal advisors to ameliorate the plethora of disasters his original, unfettered commands would have rained down on the kingdom.

Although, they had to admit, of late he'd been entirely more right than wrong. It was almost as if he were getting the hang of this whole make friends and ruin your enemies thing. The kingdom was, in some small measure, actually beginning to prosper.

What Aswen knew, that no one else knew, was first that the poor guy, as dull witted as he was, really was a very sweet old man. He was really the only person Aswen knew or had ever met in the entire world that might qualify as kindly. Of course, he could afford to be, because he had anything he could ever want.

Well, almost everything. The poor guy had no freedom, and no peace. His shrew of a wife, the queen, made Aswen's own mother look like a fucking fairy godmother.

Really, that was why the sad sod slept all day, she was sure. It was his only escape from a woman whose tongue was so acid that they needed to replace the silverware on a regular basis.

What they also didn't know was that the guy was as lusty as any man, and he had a cock that made the effort worth one's while.

* * *

Laughter is a weapon, if it is wielded properly, with skill and timing, properly targeted and, most importantly, with restraint. It's almost magic. Laughter may be the closest thing to magic there is.

Not everyone is vulnerable. Some people are immune to laughter. It's just too foreign to their own state of mind. They can't process it.

Fortunately, the king was very, very vulnerable. That was how Aswen first realized that he was actually a nice guy.

Aswen also had an excellent laugh. Really, she had entire arsenal of excellent laughs. She had meek, girlish giggles, and uproarious shrieks, restrained but honest chuckles, and an even but full bodied ordinary laugh that made you at least want to smile, if not laugh with her, and you remembered it fondly for some time after.

She didn't use her laughter for entertainment, and certainly not as a sign of her own amusement. She had very little to laugh about, without some purposeful second intention. It was a weapon, and she knew it.

In this kingdom, one needed weapons.

* * *

Aswen leaned in close to the king's ear, treating him to one of her shy, girlish giggles.

"You're not asleep, old man, and I know it."

He opened one eye to look at her, as a boyish grin crept across his face.

"I've been waiting all morning for you, child."

She gave him a smile, and a laugh that made it seem like a clear, sunny day, even in the cold, damp, dreary confines of his own self imposed prison, his private, expansive, well appointed castle suite.

* * *

It wasn't at all that Aswen didn't enjoy his company, or his body.

She looked down on his red, swollen, sweating face as his cock pushed up into her again. It was so fucking big. She'd had enough cocks crammed inside her. It was necessary to surviving castle life, and she was certainly pretty enough to attract them, in a skinny, boyish way. That was even a turn on for a lot of the aristocrats. Boys were their thing. And Aswen's cunt was as tight as any boy's arse hole, but wetter, and more agile. It was like having the best of both worlds, for them, a young boy with a tight cunt.

But the king liked girls, young maidens, and the king's cock was thick like no other, and long like no other, and hard like no other. More than all that, the old guy had stamina. Aswen was sure that she could ride him without stopping for hours, if she ever got more than twenty minutes with him, which she didn't.

She had long enough to get the chamber pot, quickly leave, empty it, freshen herself for him, return, and then pretend to be politely and demurely conversing with the king for twenty more minutes. Anything more would draw too much attention, particularly from the ever vigilant queen.

She laughed as his cock stretched her further. He grunted as he bucked, clearly annoyed that her mind had wandered, and using his battering ram of a cock to remind her that she was under siege.

She had a particular laugh that she used when he fucked her. It had to be perfect. It couldn't sound silly or flighty. It couldn't be annoying. It certainly couldn't be insulting. It had to be perfect.

Of course, the waves of pleasure his cock sent through her, the way his cock made her body respond, made the laugh easy to make.

It was a sound like sheer joy, like beautiful clear crystal shattering and tinkling in an echoing cave, but with a song behind it, with a rising pitch and tone that implied something more was coming. It was a laugh that sucked you in, and made you want and anticipate more to come. It made a man want to hear that laugh again, to force that laugh again and again from a woman, but also to hear what came after.

Every time she laughed for him, with his cock inside her, it made him crazy. He found a fury and an energy that had long ago left him in his kingly endeavors. When she laughed, he wanted to please her. He'd sweat and grunt, he'd labor and strain. With his cock inside her, making her laugh, he became young and virile again.

He rolled her onto her back, now, and she laughed at that, too, a wicked, screeching laugh like a child trying to escape a barrage of tickles from a most favorite uncle.

Once he had her pinned beneath his great girth, he thrust into her with his fairy tale giant's cock, and an ogre's brutishness. Such a thrust temporarily silenced her laugh, replacing it with a rapturous moan. It took her a moment to compose herself, to find her laughter again, to be sure she kept control of him, and not he of her.

His kindly, sweating, laboring face panted and puffed above hers, with deep, serious eyes that wanted only to please her. She smiled up at him, with a true sense of longing, and let his body take hers where they both wanted it to go. Her arms and legs ringed and held him tightly, made daily as strong as a horse's by more strenuous and constant labors than any beast of burden in the kingdom endured.

Her cunt pulsed, reflexively grabbing at his cock with all of its strength, like a boa constrictor popping the eyes out of a rat, as she came for him.

She laughed like a crystal song, and he came for and into her with matching glee.

* * *

He lay atop her, panting, while she kissed the king's earlobe, waiting for the moment when she could speak to him. She really had needed to finish the chapter on Second Intention Gambits and Territorial Acquisition, but there was nothing to be done about it. The earlier chapter on Timing, Opportunity and Third Chances had made it very clear. She couldn't wait.

She told the king what he needed to hear. She made sure that he understood. He was so pliant in this state, after sex, after he was spent and on the verge of sleep again, yet more vital and alive than he spent the rest of his day. She'd quickly discovered that he was sharpest, then, that he listened and remembered, even if not entirely realizing and properly remembering where the thoughts had originated.

* * *

In time, with patience, a certain day came.

Aswen giggled softly behind the curtain as the Vizier's fingers found their way up under her skirt. She kept the giggles excited and enchanting, but to a minimum. She needed to hear the reports of the spies, the generals, and the ambassadors. The Vizier should have been listening, too, instead of dallying, but he was easily distracted. If he weren't, Aswen couldn't be in the room when it was necessary.

Her breath caught in a moment of excitement, though certainly not because of the skinny old creep's clumsy, bony fingers. The Kingdom of Sandler had surrendered. Just as the book had suggested, the neighboring kingdoms fell like ten pins. They sought alliances, with their neighboring realms one way or the other, but mostly this kingdom's way, with the victor... her way.

It had happened so quickly it had caught her off guard. The way was clear. Until now, their tiny little kingdom was poor and crowded, hemmed in and surrounded by foes. There was no place to go, even if you could escape. The only place to run to was poverty, famine or violence. The roads were clogged with unruly soldiers and brigands, the fields full of dying peasants. Life as a castle servant, ceaselessly hauling putrescent royal offal in brass pots, was like living in luxury.

Now the way was clear. The roads had been emptied of brigands. The soldiers had moved on to fight in wars beyond their borders, and the borders has moved further and further afoot. There were merchants and caravans coming and going. The borders and high ways were open all the way to distant cities, wealthy cities, with spires and markets and ships and people. Beyond that were oceans and adventures and freedom.

Somewhere, there were people that were able to laugh, and now there was a way to get there. Aswen had opened one, almost as if by magic, but without the help of some fucking fairy godmother, because there was none to be had, here, there, or anywhere.

Aswen made her body quiver under the Vizier's touch, feebly and artlessly using one of her most standard fake orgasms in her hurry. She squealed, and panted, quite purposely a little too loudly. He bought it. His own hips, dry humping against her tight little ass, shuddered as he came too soon, long before he could lift her skirt and enter her. A moment later he panicked, afraid of being discovered.

She moaned more loudly. He hushed her, using feigned anger at her partly to mask his embarrassment at his own sexual ineptitude. He hurried her along and out, so he could return to the meeting unnoticed, soiled robes and all.

As inexperienced as she was at such a maneuver, in his moment of flustered orgasm, he hadn't even felt her lift his purse. The time spent reading Petty Crimes and Cons had, in the end, been very useful.

She hurried along through the castle hallways, her feet clicking too loudly on the stone floor. She avoided the room she shared with her sisters and mother. There was nothing there she wished to take, and too much she wished to leave behind.

She passed through the kitchen, grabbing a satchel full of food stuffs that would keep, dried apples, potatoes, and bread. Stealing food had earned a young scullery maid a stump on her left hand, along with no future as either a worker or a bride. No matter. Aswen didn't plan on getting caught, and food would be the least of her thefts. She took two long, sharp knives as well.

She raced to the library. She only had room for three books, really, but forced in four. It was a shame to leave Military Strategy behind. It was such an interesting read, and had been so crucial to her plans, but it would be useless from here on out. She needed to be practical. She selected her first three books based on their usefulness and merits, as well as their limited bulk, weighing the contents of each carefully. She took a sinfully raunchy collection of tales and plays as her fourth, as a sinful present to herself.

Hell, she'd earned it.

She hurried down to the stables. Stealing a horse was easy. No one even knew that she could ride. Riding was easy. A few days of watching the trainers, scraps gleaned from Equine Contest Techniques and Tactics, and a few late nights of practice was all it had taken.

Out the stable, out the castle gate, out the surrounding town, slowly, methodically, all the way purposely making little mistakes, drawing attention away from herself by drawing annoyed attention to herself, she invisibly made her way out onto the long winding forest road, until it was too late for anyone to stop her, if they even ever noticed that she was gone.

So that was all it took. After all this time, after so much planning and effort and acting and fucking and fucking laughing, it was that simple. She left the entire kingdom behind the steaming droppings that plopped down from her horse's rump, without the tiniest, weakly sentimental glance back.