Whimsy

Below is the content of a creative writing piece for the Key Center Writer's Group. Enjoy:

Character 1: Maria Hartwig

Character 2: Kareem Brough

Setting: Buckingham Palace

Goal: To return from exile

Obstacle: A cat

The Royal Whimsey: Whispering Cat of Buckingham

I'm just a lowly butler with the unfortunately stereotypical name Jeeves. I've been in the employment of the English royals for many years. I have many stories to tell. If only I could write a tell-all autobiography without fear of royal intimidation! So I guess I will have to write this and just wait until I die to have it published. What are they going to do? UN-bury me? I'll be cremated and still have the last laugh from beyond the grave! HA! They will have to cuss me out from the banks of the river Thames!

There is one story that everyone in the whole of the United Kingdom wants to really hear. It's about two innocents that were caught in a whirlwind of scandal and embarrassment that is only funny in hindsight. At the time, it was a really serious and potentially could have caused major world conflict, perhaps even leading to war!

Maria Harwig and Kareem Buxley returned to Scotland after being exiled by the British tabloids when they were falsely accused of stealing the Royal Family's cat, Whimsey.

It was all an enormous misunderstanding. Maria was hired by the royals to watch over the aging and batshit-crazy Queen Helen, whose senility has taken over--most of the time she thinks she's a doll that she had as a child and that the caregivers are soldiers of the Buckingham guard.

She is often found wandering the grounds on "unauthorized field trips" with her walker, many of those times not wearing clothing that a normal person would find sane or be caught dead at a funeral parlor in. Other times, she is reliving moments in her eccentrically challenged life. Even in her best years as a young woman, she was considered to be a "space-cadet" by her family. She was definitely a black sheep of that family, so when the rest of them died in a freak miniature golf tournament accident and Helen inherited the thrown by default--the cousins of the royal family fled Buckingham palace and returned to their country estates as fast as their chauffeurs could drive them, laying rubber the length of the private drive leading away from the palace.

Kareem was a visiting college friend of Prince Herald. Kareem was the son of an affluent Scottish lord, and his mother a Nubian Princess with beautiful eyes of black and the whitest white parts of the eyes that you could even imagine existed. She followed old traditions of African royals and wore a facial shroud that only allowed her eyes to show. She would bat her long lashes to entice men. Her figure was known to inspire poets and her bronzed skin and delicate long fingers were spectacular. She was promised to Prince Buckly-Buxley (Prince B-B-One) and to seal the deal and prevent a war between the United Kingdom and the Nubian Empire, he agreed to marry her having only seen her photographs. His own twin brother, Lord Gerald Buckly-Buxley (Prince B-B-TWO) called it “Taking one for the Royal Team.” You can only imagine the shocking surprise Lord B-B-One must have felt, on his wedding day, when she pulled back her veil exposing the rest of her face that was adorned with a hare-lip, mole, and buck-some chompers!

Fortunately the rest of her made up for the unbecoming features in spades otherwise the blending of Lord B-B-One and Nubian Princess would never have happened. And fortunately for Kareem, he got the best features of both his parents. The hare-lip, mole and chompers apparently skip every other generation. Although the names of the people in th Buckly-Buxley family resemble a vulgar farce of Star Wars characters. “MAY THE FARCE BE WITH YOU” the headline said in a London newspaper column featuring the political blunder. The anonymous author wrote the parody that became viral on all the social networks in print and on the INTERNET. There were dozens of skits acted out on television all around the world and featured on YouTube.

“How is is that Whimsey became the cause of Maria and Kareem's exhile?” you ask. Whimsey wasn't any ordinary tuxedo cat with the medieval black and white face of a masked axeman/executioner. As a matter of fact, Whimsey is the only cat that is known in existence on the whole of the Planet Earth, that can speak the King James English—complete with the biblical “Thou shalts,” and “So-and-so beget So-and-so” linguistic prowess. But that's not the only thing that makes Whimsey so special, but it's the content of the conversations that Queen Helen claims she has with the cat. Only the Queen can hear Whimsey, but when the cat speaks, the Queen starts barking orders and everyone hops-to.

"My Whimsey is the greatest and wisest poopsie of all the land," says Queen Helen. "My Whimsey wants his saucer of milk placed on the south facing window of my chambers so he can watch the birds. And he commands that the palace staff are to wear Chaquita Banana Lady fruit hats today."

Of course, the Queen ordered that the cat be dressed with a red cape and have a special throne in the "throne room" of the Queen's private chambers. In the Queen's autumn years, she decided to have a throne placed at the foot of her bed and that became her new "throne room." One funny thing that the Buckingham staff would do is us their fingers to quote "throne room" when referring to the "throne room" while rolling their eyes and snickering.

But to the Queen, this was not a game and the "throne room" was very real. She would often entertain foreign dignitaries from outrageous countries contrived from the warped grandma mind of hers. It was quite the spectacle. And since her son, Prince Pubert Rompole the Third insisted that the Queen be made comfortable at all costs so that he would not be bothered with his mother's deteriorating condition, the staff was forced to play along. And since the first day, fifteen years ago, of her apparently senile condition Pubert was hoping that each day would be her last. It became painfully obvious that Queen Helen was as healthy as Jim Fixx (before his heart failure) and that she would outlive all humankind and commune with the cockroaches in the “End Times.”

Queen Helen had a pet name for Pubert that he truly despised. “Pubertee, where's my Pubertee,” she would cackle. Meanwhile staff members would just choke on their laughter, because being rude and having loud outbursts made them fearful of Purbert's sharp glances and even sharper threats toward their employment if they were caught laughing again. Unfortunately for six former maids, the joking jab “Prince Pubertee Rompole-Foreskin the Third” was the final straw that ended their employment. One butler had to rushed to the hospital when he fell over laughing and was wounded when he landed on a broken glass he dropped.

Despite his christening name, Pubert was exponentially blessed with a shrill, squeaky and nazzly voice, a trait that he inherited from his shallow end of the Royal gene-pool. It was matched by his diabolical and cynical mind. Often his antics would have the tabloids buzzing and the public laughing hysterically, and most British citizens were thankful that the Royals no longer dictated foreign policies. Especially since the Queen was taking orders from Whimsey. Once, one tabloid headline read: “PUBERT, TALKING CAT FORTUNATELY NOT IN COMMAND!”

“God save the Queen. . . . . . from her son and cat!” became the new British motto.

Maria and Kareem met on Maria's second day of employment at the palace. Maria was a 26-year-old nursing and live-in assistant that was referred by “Shady Pines Nursing Home for Celebrities” in Beverly Hills, California. So being an American in an English household was exciting for her, especially working for the Royal Family. She worked for Barbara Streisand, who's head has turned 236-years-old. She has a cybernetic body that keeps her head alive and needs constant monitoring. Despite all the technology and money in the world, the cybernetic body's arms have this habit of smacking Barbara in the face at random—especially when she starts to sing. It was Maria's job to ensure that the arms behaved themselves and to take care of the rest of Barbara's needs. She was higly recommended by “Shady Pines” and Ms. Streisand. “Someday, a mad scientist is going to perfect the technology and I will have full control of my arms,” she would tell Maria. They would both laugh out loud as the cybernetic hand would slap Ms. Streisand's cybernetic knee.

Kareem was pioneering the practice of canine phrenology. He had an office in Edinborough where people would bring in their dogs. He would feel the bumps on a dog's head and tell its master what was on the “furry mind” of his patient. He was met with mixed results, but many people were bored and had government credits to spend. Usually, the reality of what the dogs thought were a bit much for the masters to bare. He was thinking about branching off into cats and rabbits, since there were more of them than dogs in the whole of the U.K. It's important to diversify one's business, he would say.

When Kareem was not working and dressed-down, he reeked of his third-worldly heritage, and the Queen would often make off-handed racial slurs in acute political incorrectness that would take him a few steps backward in time. She called him “that nice mulatto servant boy.” Kareem hated that word: 'Mulatto.” It reminded him of that white ape-like Star Trek creature that Captain Kirk battled with in 1968 called a “Mugato.” Kareem was thankful that was more than two hundred years ago and that there were not as many Trekkie's left in the U.K.