Princess

Princess was anally retentive by nature. Her monthly bleedings were logged accurately in colour co-ordination; green ink for regular bleeds, red to note anomalies and black permanent-marker-felt-tip for breaks in the cycle. No bleeds would ever escape her records for these patterns held the very answer to the meaning of her life and she would discern the clues; it was simply a matter of time and exact recording.

Meat and poultry purchases were chronicled; dates, times, places and names everything noted for there was nothing more agonising than not knowing precisely which fowl was purchased at what time in what manner and how it came to reside in her gut at any given time.

Her car was to be revved in order to maintain its battery proficiency and this was to be done so that it made a sound but not too loud, that it rumbled but did not roar, that the speedometer should dial between 10 and 20 mph but probably not between 17 and 19 and god forbid it should tinker on the verge of 20 and 21 because that would be guzzling petrol unnecessarily; positively sinful.

So it was nothing short of a cosmic joke that she should have been diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome and that it was this prognosis, which sent her straining into the worst rectal performance of her life. From the 60-paged brochure she had downloaded at work entitled, 'IBS and You', she had learned that it was a stress-related ailment and that she could defeat it through positive mantra. She sat on the crapper; face contorted, while pebbled turds shot reluctantly from her rectum. She pleaded with her bowel for it to co-operate and emphasised the merits of teamwork.

But sadly her anus refused the bait. This lead her to wonder at great length about the effectiveness of the remedies listed in the brochure. She became agitated by the possibility that IBS was bigger than her, that it would extend its hold on her intestines and eventually take over her entire body and she would become helplessly victim to a life dictated by shitting and not shitting.

Fear gripped her like fat on thighs causing a shiver to pass through her rectal walls, the tremors from which opened the floodgates and suddenly she was defecating faster than she could fathom. It was glorious. Euphoria swept through her faecal tunnels and she wept for she did not know when she would shit again and goddamn it if she wasn't going to remember this moment for the rest of her life.