Katy, Bar the Door. (standard:Satire, 936 words)
Author: Oscar A Rat	Added: Jul 16 2020	Views/Reads: 1442/963	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
When James I, King of Scots was cornered at an inn, his enemy stormed upstairs to the King’s chambers. Catherine is said to have barred the door with her arm until James’s knights rescued him.

When James I, King of Scots was cornered at an inn, his enemy, Sir
Robert Græme, stormed upstairs to the King's chambers.  Inside, his 
queen and a maid, Catherine Douglas, stood between James and certain 
death. Catherine is said to have barred the door with her arm, keeping 
it shut until James's knights rescued him: Then the Queen cried, 
"Catherine, keep the door, And I to this will suffice!" At her word I 
rose all dazed to my feet, And my heart was fire and ice. ... Like iron 
felt my arm, as through The staple I made it pass:- Alack! it was flesh 
and bone - no more! 'Twas Catherine Douglas sprang to the door, But I 
fell back Kate Barlass. (Gabriel Rossetti 1881) Catherine laughed, 
hitting the button that closed her web browser. 

Talk about stupid, she thought. That girl actually broke her arm to try
to save the wimp.  It would be a cold day in hell before I would, she 
thought.  Laughing, she considered, they sure grew a lot of idiots back 
in those days. 

Catherine Barlass had been on the Internet, researching her namesake. 
The original had been a girl who had tried to use her own arm as a 
door-bar to keep a door closed.  To save a wimp of a king yet.  THAT 
Katy Barlass was giving the cowardly despot time to hide in a closet.  
The present Catherine thought he should have been fighting to defend 
the women, like most modern men would have done. 

Teenage Catherine often fantasized about living in those long-gone days.
She would have had servants and plenty of rich and powerful lovers. 

Why, she'd have loved riding in large horse-drawn carriages, with
footmen and brakemen.  Even men running ahead to clear her way.  Those 
must have been the good old days, when men were men and women were 
women, being fought over by armored hunks carrying sharp swords and 
pointy sticks. 

The thoughts fresh in her mind, Catherine changed to her Oscar Rat
pajamas and crawled into bed – the next day being yet another school 
day.  As she slept, she dreamed.... 

*** 

“It's chilly, and where are my blankets?”  Catherine asked herself, idly
stretching cold legs around to find them.  “Straw?  What the hell is 
straw doing in my bed?”  Head clearing, she sat up,.  “This isn't my 
room.  No bed at all, even.”  She was lying on a pile of itchy and icky 
straw, morning sunlight coming in through a crack in a wall, a thatched 
roof over her head. 

Why, it seemed to be in a little shack; not a very well-made one, at
that.  Luckily it was warm outside, because the inside must have been 
the same temperature, along with a steady wind blowing on her naked 
body.  “Naked?  Where are my pajamas?” she cried, cuddling up into a 
girlball. 

Finding a rough-textured brown frock lying beside the pallet, she
hurriedly dressed in heavy itchy wool.  It wasn't much, but the only 
clothing in sight.  Catherine noticed a small rough wooden table in a 
corner.  All it contained was a piece of dried sausage and part of a 
loaf of uncut dark bread -- hard as hell. 

As Catherine poked at the petrified bread, she heard a voice outside the
hut. 

“Come on Katy, time to go to work.  Mistress Mason will be pissed off if
we're late again.”  A woman's voice. 

“Just a minute,” Catherine called, more immediate natural concerns
stirring her bowels, “I have to go to the bathroom first.” 

“Well, hurry up, you can't do it in there," was the anxious reply. 

Catherine looked around and saw that it was true.  No bathroom doors
were in evidence.   It was funny, but she seemed to know where the 
outhouse was located, out back.  She felt very mixed up and 
discombobulated -- as though there was such a word.   the scene was 
both strange and, in another sense, familiar.  It was hard to decide 
what was real and what was fantasy. 


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