Mother and Daughter

            “I don’t know how you haven’t put it together yet, but I’m going to be having another baby, Aspen.” I could have gone into labor at any moment. It was probably best to warn her before there was a screaming baby in the shed.

            Aspen was excited as could be, which I hadn’t expected. “Can I help take care of it? Like feed it and change it and take it for walks?”

            She wanted to know all about her upcoming sibling, asking all sorts of questions that I had no answers for.

            It grew rather dull, so I tested the waters with a light boast of the television series, Werewolf High, I had a minor reoccurring role on in the past. The show won several awards, so it’s not as if the tiniest of roles wasn’t something to be proud about.

            She accepted my bragging, so I went on and on about myself. It felt great to finally be able to tell someone just how important I was.

            She listened to me until morning. As a reward for being an alright child, I decided to take her out to the spring festival. I planned to spend the day with her, but I received a phone call just as we arrived, and needed to take it in case it was Darren.

            When I returned my attention back to her, Aspen had gone off in search of eggs. She didn’t quite have the brightest bulb in her noggin.

            I showed her how easy it was to spot them.

            I tried out the love testing machine next.

            It must have been out of order though; I only got a lukewarm rating.

            The kissing booth, namely the beautiful boy manning it, caught my attention next. I couldn’t believe that I caught myself pulling out a few simoleons to buy affection. How far I had slipped!

            At least he was a looker. And the kiss was nearly worth the price.

            “Geeze, I don’t get paid enough for this,” he scowled as I was walking away. I was a bit hurt, but then reminded myself of how much better I really was than him.

            I perked myself back up with some dancing. Even with a fully grown baby inside my middle, I turned up the heat.

            I managed to pull some of my old signature moves like the What What,

And the Holy Peteran.

            Meanwhile, Aspen was finding herself a companion with similar tastes in fashion, or so she would later tell me.

            See, I had gone into labor on the dance floor, concerning every sim in the area aside from my daughter.

            Two strangers freaked out while some others went to get help.

            I saw Aspen get herself a hotdog while I was being helped into a cab that would rush me to the hospital.

            I hope she enjoyed herself, because I certainly didn’t.

            And I had an even worse time upon seeing my second daughter, Odessa. Even as an infant, I could tell she took after my current form.

Waiting

            Dequan (or David) had boosted my morale so high that I entertained the idea of speaking with the deceased instead of just zapping them right off the bat.

            I believe it is better in theory than practice though. Ghosts can be so rude, not wishing to hear about my years of fame. I thought it was interesting that we both had past lives in a way.

            No amount of good loving can make me withstand being yelled at, so I went back to the banshee banisher.

            I fell back into the drab weekday routine, no call from my last lover to shake things up. I’d come home exhausted and find Aspen already asleep.

            Then I’d sleep until after she left for school. To pass the time until work, I’d sometimes clean up a bit.

            The toilet happened to be particularly dirty when the first waves of nausea rolled over me. I tried to force the sick feeling away, refusing to put my face so close to that filth.

            I found myself with little choice about the matter when the second bout hit.

            I decided to not tell Aspen of her pending sibling at first, and she paid no attention to my staying home from work or my frequent bathroom trips.

            My second pregnancy moved smoothly given the circumstances. I couldn’t help but fantasize about Darren bursting through the door one day to proclaim his love for me and our child. It’d be just like in one of my movies, Oops, You’re Pregnant Again.

            Still, no phone call came.

            And there were only bills in the mailbox.

            And when the idiotic burglar broke into my measly home, he did not show to fend them off.

            Instead, I had to fake being asleep until they occupied the bathroom. I made a hushed call to the police, all the time wondering if the bouncer could be a better champion.

            Thanks to a sneezing fit, a cop was able to arrive in time to arrest the burglar. I sent a text message to Dahlin about the whole mess.

            I did not get an instant response, and had to give up checking in order to explain what happened to a very confused Aspen. Then I was left with the joy of learning how to reinstall a toilet after a robber fails to make off with it.

Not Quite What the Witch had in Mind

            Even as a child, Aspen continued to disrupt my sleep. She was always on about being hungry or wanting a bedtime story or not having enough attention. I told her that nobody wants a clingy woman.

            After failing to get me out of bed too many times, she learned to become self-sufficient. Thank the watcher! I’d already spent enough time on raising her.

            It’s not as if getting herself to school was some huge accomplishment. The bus stopped right in front of the shed.

            While Aspen was off at school, I prepared myself. Calling men had never felt like challenge in the past, but holding that phone and thinking of Dustin, my hand started to shake. I had to quickly punch in the number before I lost all my nerve.

            From his groaning and need to ask who I was multiple times, I believed he was hung-over. Still, he accepted my offer to meet at the spring festival. “Yeah, that sounds fun. Who are you again?” I hoped that he’d cure his hangover with some hair of the dog. That’d be my only chance of getting someone like him to be interested in my old and hideous mask without an elixir.

            Miraculously, he beat me to the park. Perhaps he’d continued to have a wild night after work and woke up there. I know I’d had some evenings like that when I was younger. My father needed to pay off quite a few paparazzi to get most of those stories swept under the rug.

            I could tell that he somewhat remembered me when he stopped collecting eggs to stare with a faint trace of horror.

            I’d worked too hard on him to not fight. I refreshed his memory on the finer points of the previous night.

            I can’t imagine I’d have been as successful if I hadn’t spent all that time honing my kissing skills, so take that all the magazines who published stories about me being loose! At one point during our make out, he even pulled away and made eye contact. “Oh yeah,” he said with just a touch of a slur. “I remember you.”

  

            And then he dove right in for some more.

            Within a few hours I was introducing him to a haystack.

            I had such a good time with Derek that when he complained of stinking like hay after our romp, I invited him back to the shed to get cleaned up. I even generously offered to help him with it.

            He didn’t make any comments about my shapeless nightgown or my low-budget house. I enjoyed his company so thoroughly that I forgot about my curse for a few moments. And I nowhere near recalled when Aspen would be coming home. Let’s just say she received an eyeful.

            As did her little friend.

            As much fun as I was having with Daniel, time for work came and I knew I needed to get changed into my jumpsuit. He was kind enough to lend me a hand with it.

            I let myself get one more good look at his acceptable face, before letting him run out the door. Would he ever call again? How could he want something more than a day’s worth of fun from a monster like me? I knew the situation, and yet I couldn’t help holding out a touch of hope that I would see him again. All the years I spent touting to ugly little girls that they could be just as successful as me, I never once bought my own words. If Dequan could truly want me, then I’d experience firsthand how right I’d been. And maybe that was the lesson that the witch was trying to teach me.