This is in response to Essy's challenge about a month ago:

"SO FAR TO FALL CHALLENGE"
* Kill him
* Take his magic away permanently
* Make him lose his throne
* Have him end up being just a figment of Sarah's warped imagination after all.
* Render him impotent in some other way.

Depending on how you stretch it and look at it, I think I covered most of
them.

This story happens instead of what we saw in the movie. Sarah is highly
based on the teenager I mentioned earlier--only, Sarah has more imagination.

Sennethe
_____________________________

Her Royal Highness


      She woke up with the sensation of falling as if her head had just
hit the pillow.
      "It was just a dream, Lancelot," she murmured, clutching the bear
tightly. She didn't usually sleep with stuffed animals anymore--she was
fifteen after all--but last night had been a special case. It had been her
birthday. She was having a party with all her friends over this weekend,
but last night had been the family celebration.
      "If you could call it that," she muttered. A glance at her clock
and window told her that the sun was about to come up and that she'd have
to get up for school soon anyway, so she swung her feet over the side and
sat up in bed.
      It really wasn't much of a celebration, or a family for that
matter. Sure, her father was there, but so was her stepmother and her brat
of a half brother. No sign of her mother anywhere. "I'll bet they didn't
even ask her to come."
      She hadn't gotten anything she wanted, even though she'd been
hinting at things for weeks. Instead, her father said they had all gone in
together and gotten her one big present. As if she had anywhere to put it
in this little rathole of a room they'd stuck her in. She glared at the
monstrosity sitting precariously on the corner of her long, low chest of
drawers.
      A dollhouse. They had gotten her a dollhouse. Sure it was a castle,
but still, she was fifteen. She was way too old to be playing with dolls.
And it was an ugly looking castle, too--things sticking out at weird
angles. It was like the castle in the dream she had just woken up from. She
must have gotten it from the dollhouse. And that book, the one she had
found in the cabinet under her window seat. Where had she put that book?
She glanced around her room as if expecting it to be laying out in plain
sight.
      "It'll turn up," she said, shrugging it off. She walked over to the
dollhouse, still clutching Lancelot, and pulled it open.
      Well, at least it came with dolls and furniture. It would have been
really lame if they had just gotten her the dollhouse without anything to
put in it. She picked up one of the dolls. They were pretty decent, with
hair and arms and legs that moved. On impulse she popped the head off of
one of the male dolls and exchanged it with one of the girls with blond
hair. Now she needed some scissors. Where had she left them?
      She put Lancelot down on the bed, the doll still clutched in her
other hand, and switched on a light to rummage through her dressing table
drawers. In one of the drawers she found the book. "What's it doing there?"
She wondered and tossed it out on top of the table.
      Once she found the scissors, she flopped in her chair and
considered her first move. She'd have to be careful, there was no way she'd
admit having touched one of these dolls, let alone needing another one.
After half an hour's careful snipping she was satisfied with the results
and stashed the doll back in the house.
      Now she'd need some paint and clothes, she thought as she got
dressed for school. The paint would be easy--she could get that at any
hobby store. Too bad she'd have to spend her own money to get it. Maybe she
could beg some off her father for something. The clothes would be harder,
though. What she was looking for wasn't exactly Fashion Barbie. The doll
was a different size anyway. It was a good thing she was helping with
costumes for her drama class. Maybe she could figure something out there.
      She grabbed her backpack, turned off her light (usually she didn't
bother, but she was sure Karen had started snooping around her room when
she came in to turn it off) and skipped down the stairs to the kitchen.



      "Good morning, Sarah. You're up early," her father said as she came
into the kitchen.
      "So?" She poured herself some orange juice, took a sip and made a
face. "God, she got the kind with the pulp in it again. She knows I hate
that," she thought as she left the glass on the counter.
      "So, I was making conversation."
      "We're out of Pop Tarts," she announced from inside the cupboard.
      "No, we're not. I just bought some yesterday," her stepmother told
her and got up to show her where they were. "They're on the shelf right
here." Karen rearranged the boxes to show her. "Well, they were right here.
Here they are."
      "Yeah, I know. That's where I found them yesterday after school."
      "You mean you ate the whole box already?" Karen asked, holding up
the empty carton.
      "Yeah. So? That's what they're there for isn't it? Never mind. I'll
stop and get something on the way to school. Dad, can I have some money?"
      "What for?"
      "So I can get something to eat." God, parents can be so stupid.
      "What about eating at home?"
      "There's nothing to eat here. So can I?"
      "Oh, all right, here."
      "Thanks." Sarah grabbed her backpack and jacket and ran for the
front door.
      "Be sure to come straight home tonight. We have something to talk
to you about," Karen called after her.
      Sarah slammed the door behind her without acknowledging she heard
anything. Once she was on the next block she pulled out the Pop Tart packet
she had stashed under her shirt. Lucky for her she had left one in the box
yesterday.



      She made a quick stop at the nearest hobby shop on the way home
from drama shop after school. Karen was mad and yelling at her when she
walked in the front door, as usual.
      "I distinctly told you to come straight home tonight. We had
something we wanted to ask you about."
      "What?" Sarah demanded, halfway up the stairs, glad she had thought
to stick the hobby store bag in her backpack. It would have meant more
questions and standing around here even longer.
      "We just wanted to know what you thought about getting Toby a puppy
for his birthday. A Golden Retriever. They're good with kids," her father
said. "Since Merlin is gone now, there's room for another dog. We just
wanted to make sure you were okay with it."
      "Yeah, sure. Whatever," she told them and ran on up the stairs.
      "Why do we even bother?" Karen asked as the bedroom door slammed.



      "Typical. My dog dies and I get a dollhouse for my birthday while
the toddling terror gets a puppy. Well, I'm not cleaning up after it." She
kicked her shoes across the room as she dumped her backpack on the floor.
      She pulled out the paints and tiny brushes she had spent all of her
"breakfast" money and then some on. Those things were expensive. Shoving
the assorted makeups, clippings, and other odds and ends back against the
mirror with the book she had tossed there that morning, she cleared a space
on her dressing table.
      By the time Karen called her down for dinner she had put a new face
on the doll to go with the hair. One of the eyes was a little crooked,
giving him kind of a squint, but it was pretty close to the guy in her
dream. Not bad for a first try. Tomorrow she'd try to find something to use
for clothes at school.



      She still hadn't found anything by that weekend and in her growing
excitement for her party she forgot about it--until one of the girls she
had invited, Kelli, noticed the castle sitting on the dresser.
      "What's this? Playing with dollies now, Sarah?"
      "Oh, my dad and stepmother gave me that for my birthday. Pretty
stupid isn't it? Like I'm six years old and still playing with things like
that."
      "I don't know. It's kind of cool," Michelle, one of the other
girls, disagreed. "At least it's not a normal house. You could redo it.
Goth or Dracula or something."
      "Does it come with its own punk band action figures?" Kelli asked,
holding up the figure Sarah had been fixing up.
      "Yeah, right. Like it would come with something even that barely
cool." Sarah scoffed. She took the figure from the girl and changed the
subject. "Let's play a game. What about Truth or Dare?"



      At school on Monday, Michelle stopped at Sarah's locker and handed
her a large rumpled paper bag.
      "What's that?"
      "Stuff I thought you might be able to use. I thought I had some
dolls at home that were about the same size. I looked when I got home and I
did. I thought you might be able to use them or their clothes. Or you can
just stick them with it and sell them when you can finally slip it all into
a garage sale."
      Sarah hesitated a moment, torn, not wanting to admit she played
with dolls, but not wanting to miss the chance either. She decided to take
them before anyone else overheard them talking. "Thanks," she told Michelle
as she stuffed them in her locker.
      "No biggie. I don't use them anymore. You'll have to show it to me
when you get it finished. I used to have a lot of fun with that sort of
thing."
      "Yeah, sure," Sarah said while thinking that she wasn't going to
bring it up again if she could help it.



      Sarah couldn't wait to get upstairs in the privacy of her room to
look at the contents of the bag when she got home that afternoon. Of course
that meant that Karen had something she wanted her for first. She always
did. Sarah, dust the living room. Sarah, empty the dishwasher. Sarah, take
out the garbage. Sarah, take your brother upstairs and change him.
      "Sarah," Karen called from the kitchen.
      Sarah stopped halfway up the stairs with a groan. "What?"
      Karen appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. "We're going to pick
out a puppy tonight. We want you to come, too."
      Sarah sighed heavily. "Do I have to?"
      "I suppose you have other plans?" her stepmother said, raising an
eyebrow.
      "Well..."
      "You'll live. We'll stop and get something to eat, too. Go put your
stuff away. We're leaving as soon as your father gets home."
      Sarah sighed heavily again and turned and stomped up the stairs.
"She never asks if I have plans. She always just assumes I don't and then I
have to do her thing no matter what," she muttered after she closed her
bedroom door. She wondered if she would have time for a quick peek in the
bag before her father got home.
      "Why not?"
      She sat crosslegged on the floor and dumped the bag upside down.
Pulling out the dolls, she tossed them aside. She had plenty of them
already. Picking through the clothes, she thought some of them had
potential--oddly there were several pairs of tiny tights--someone playing
Robin Hood? They'd be perfect though. The Goblin King in her dream had worn
tights.
      A lot of things were obviously from the 70s. "Groovy man," she
said, holding up a particularly garishly colored little shirt. She wasn't
going to use that. This was the 80s; she wasn't going to be caught dead
with something like that in her room. Maybe she could use some of the other
ones though.
      "Sarah," her father called from downstairs, "We're ready to go."
      "Coming," she yelled back as she stuffed the clothes back in the
bag and then closed it up inside the castle. She slapped off the light on
her way out, slammed her door and pounded down the stairs.
      "Must you always come down the stairs like a herd of cattle?" Karen
asked with a frown as she jogged Toby on her hip. "Get the diaper bag."
      Sarah sulked in the back seat the whole trip. Luckily, Toby slept
because she was in no mood to entertain him. When they arrived at the
breeder's she stood near the door, silent except for the occasional sigh,
watching them introduce Toby to the puppies.
      "Don't you want to play with them?" the breeder asked her.
      "It's not my dog," Sarah told her coldly.
      Her father and stepmother picked out a friendly puppy that fell
asleep next to Toby. They discussed names for it all the way home except
for when the puppy made a mess in the towel on her stepmother's lap. Sarah
was still trying to hide her smile when they arrived home.
      Sarah ate her fast food as quickly as she could and went up to her
room, leaving them to figure out where little Jimmy was going to sleep. As
long as it wasn't her room or the bathroom she didn't care.
      She pulled out the bag and began sorting the clothes in earnest.
She kept out any she might be able to use one way or another and stuffed
the rest back in the bag with the dolls, which she shoved under her bed.
      Taking one of the little shirts she carefully took it apart at the
seams and used it for a pattern on an ivory silk blouse she had ripped but
never thrown away. Her first silk blouse, she had loved it and been
heartbroken when it tore. Using everything she had learned in Home
Economics and Drama she sewed the little pieces together.
      "Too bad my school projects didn't look that good," she said
admiring her handiwork.
      She jumped at a knock on her door.
      "Sarah." Her father's muffled voice came through the door. "It's
late. You'd better go to bed. The rest of your homework can wait until
morning."
      Glancing at her clock she saw it was after midnight. "Yeah. All
right. I was just getting ready for bed."
      "All right. Good night."
      "'Night."
      Her homework? She hadn't even started on it.



      For the next couple of days she tried to ignore the dollhouse and
catch up on her schoolwork, but it kept catching her eye. She would find
herself thinking of things that needed to be done to make it match the
dreams, with no idea how long she had been staring at it instead of doing
her homework.
      That weekend she dressed the painted doll in tights and the shirt
she had put together. He was looking more and more like her dream. If you
held him just so, he could almost be saying, "What is that plastic thing
'round your wrist?"
      A jacket. She would need a leather jacket. She remembered that from
the dream. And a vest. And a cape. And the ballroom. She pawed through the
dolls for a female with long dark hair. A dress. How would she get the
dress?
      She turned to the furniture that came with the castle. Some of it
she would keep, but some would have to go. The throne was completely wrong.
And she really needed some goblins.
      "Where do you buy goblins? I'm sure they have them on a shelf right
next to the little pet dogs." She sighed. "Well, I didn't like them that
much anyway."



      Sarah struggled to keep up with her schoolwork. She played with the
dollhouse so much--obsessed with getting it to match the dreams--that her
social life, slight to begin with, became nonexistent. She watched every
penny she spent and thought of new ways to get more out of her father and
stepmother. When her mother finally sent her a birthday card with a check
in it, she spent that on it, too. Everything went into the dollhouse.
      She asked the hobby store owner about other places she might find
accessories and then visited them on the weekend, telling Karen that she
was spending the day at a friend's or the library or in the park. She found
furniture, built a throne when she couldn't find the right one and stumbled
on the perfect dress for her doll to wear. She traded in the extra dolls,
clothes, and furniture she had stuffed under her bed and still couldn't
afford it. She made payments on it and stopped by the store as often as she
could to check on it, impatient at the delay. Finally it was hers. She
raced home with her prize.
      For once she made it to her room without being stopped by Karen.
She pulled out the dolls right away and sat at her dressing table to try on
the dress. It fit perfectly.
      Propping the dolls in blue and silvery white up against the mirror,
she stared at them, recalling her dreams. The part with the dancing was
definitely the best. She imagined it all over again, the people, the music.
      She wandered among them looking for the Goblin King. Catching a
glimpse of him across the room, she made her way there to find no sign of
him when she got there. She turned at a slight touch on her shoulder.
      The dancers had disappeared. The King of the Goblins stood alone in
front of her, ivory-pale. He held a crystal out to her.
      "Look what I am offering you," he said softly.
      "You have no power over me," Sarah said, without knowing why, and
the Goblin King threw the crystal ball up in the air and collapsed,
feathers drifting to the floor. She stepped back abruptly as the crystal
fell toward her in slow motion.
      The cloak on the floor at her feet shifted, then heaved, drawing
her attention from the crystal hanging in mid air. She prodded it with her
foot and it moved again. She squatted warily next to it, remembering the
snake and scarf he had thrown at her once before.
      Gingerly she lifted a corner of the cloak and something ran out
from underneath it and across the floor. It darted under the throne and she
realized she was back in the throne room.
      A cat in the room had noticed the escape and now had the throne
covered, pawing underneath it. Sarah shooed the cat away and bent down for
a better look.
      Cowering against a back leg of the throne, crouched the Goblin
King, one shoulder slashed where the cat had caught him. He stood up
furiously when he saw her.
      "You stupid girl! You were supposed to catch the crystal. It would
have popped and everything would have returned the way it was. You would be
home now and I could go back to stealing babies. Now look at me!"
      "You talk pretty big for someone only six inches tall," she said as
she grabbed him and pulled him out from under the throne. "So I just have
to touch it?" she asked, holding him up by his shirt collar.
      "Put me down," he choked out, forming a tiny crystal and throwing
it at her where it burst against her vest in a tiny puff of glittering
dust. She shifted him to her other hand and reached up to touch the crystal.
      "Ow, you bit me!" she exclaimed, opening her hand to drop him just
as she touched the crystal and the throne room fell apart.
      "Sarah? Sarah? It's dinner time. Are you in there?"
      Sarah raised her head from her dressing table. She must have fallen
asleep.
      "Sarah?"
      "Yeah, I'll be right there."
      The dolls had fallen over in front of the mirror. Sarah picked them
up, carefully smoothing the ivory fluff of the king's cloak before she put
him back in the castle.



      Sarah took her plate from the dinner table and put it in the
dishwasher and tried to slip back upstairs, but she was intercepted.
      "Sarah, why don't you help your stepmother clear off the table and
then sit and talk with us for a while?"
      "But I have homework to do," she tried to excuse herself.
      "It'll wait another half hour. Come help clean up," her father
repeated.
      Sarah sulked back into the kitchen, tripping over Jimmy, who was
trying to play with the cuff of her jeans, on the way. He yelped in
surprise as she took a wider than usual step and clipped him.
      "Leave the puppy alone!"
      "I didn't do anything to him. He's always in the way. He ripped my
jeans."
      "He did not," Karen said. "Now get in here and help me with the
kitchen."
      Sarah noisily cleared the table and put things away. She had better
things to do than this. "They'd better be quick," she thought as she
slumped in a chair in the living room where her father was waiting.
      "So, we haven't seen much of you lately. What have you been up to?"
      "The usual. School."
      "You come home and disappear into your room. There isn't anything
wrong is there?" Karen asked.
      "No." Like she'd tell her if there was.
      "Then what do you do with all that time you spend in your room?"
      "Homework. I have some to finish. Can I go now?"
      "Yes, go on. If you can't be civil--"
      "Good." Sarah jumped up and left the room. She really did have
homework left to do; she had almost forgotten about it.



      "Just love me and I will be your slave," he whispered softly in her
ear as they danced in the ballroom. There were people all around, but the
way he looked at her and held her it might as well have been just the two
of them.
      Sarah stopped dancing and looked into his eyes. "My slave? You'll
do anything for me?"
      "Anything." He stroked her cheek with a gloved finger.
      "Can you make it so that my stepmother's not always telling me what
to do?"
      "If that's what you want."
      "Yes. No." She stomped her foot. "What I really want is for her to
do what I say. That's what I want. And I want to be able to do what I want
without anyone telling me no."
      "Of course. There's nothing wrong with that. We'll start with
that." He bent his head to kiss her--
      "Sarah, I need you to come downstairs and watch Toby while I run to
the store." Karen stuck her head through the half open door, while Jimmy
slipped in unnoticed by her at her feet. "Oh, you're finally playing with
that thing," she said when she saw Sarah sitting on the floor where she had
moved the castle to play with it. "I was beginning to wonder if it was
going to show up in the next yard sale."
      "Can't I have any privacy? You always come barging in here without
even knocking."
      "Don't you take that tone with me, young lady. I did knock. You
didn't answer. Now get downstairs and watch your brother. I have to pick up
a few things at the store."
      "Well, get him out of here." She pointed at Jimmy running around
the room, nose to the floor, sniffing avidly. He'd been in the house for
nearly two months, but this was his first chance in Sarah's room and he was
taking full advantage of it. "I don't want that dog in my room. He'll chew
things up."
      Karen walked across the room to pick up the puppy, stepping on
something with a crunch in the process of grabbing him. "If you'd keep
things picked up in here, he wouldn't have anything to chew on," she said,
lifting her foot delicately off the item she had crushed.
      Sarah recognized it as the remains of the throne she had made for
the castle. "You ruined it. That took me forever to make." She tried to
hold back the tears as she gathered the remains off the floor.
      "I'm sorry, Sarah," Karen said quietly. "I didn't see it. Maybe you
can fix it." She reached out to touch Sarah comfortingly on her shoulder.
      "Just go away. Leave me alone," Sarah told her angrily, shaking off
the hand and sitting on her bed, looking at the ruins in her hands.
      Karen's eyes hardened at the snub and she said, "I'm leaving for
the store in ten minutes, if you're not downstairs by then to watch Toby,
your father will hear about it."
      "If you're not downstairs your father will hear about it," Sarah
mimicked whinily, then muttered, "Bitch," after the door closed. "I'm so
sick of this," she cried, flopping back on her bed. Taking a few deep
breaths, she sat up and looked at the mess in her hands again. It was
hopeless. There was no way she could put it back together. And she couldn't
afford to get more stuff to make another one. She sighed, threw it away,
and went downstairs.



      One morning the next week, Sarah ran down the stairs with her usual
noise and tossed a slip of paper in front of her father at the breakfast
table.
      "I need you to sign my report card," she said in as casual a manner
as she could manage. She prayed that he wouldn't look too closely at it. He
was silent a moment and Sarah groaned inwardly. She knew that meant he was
actually looking at it before signing it. Great! Why did parents always
look at the things you didn't want them to?
      "Sarah, what is this? You got a D in Algebra and a C in English?
English has always been one of your best classes."
      "It's not my fault. They give too much homework," she began.
      "Or you don't spend enough time on it," Karen said. "You've been
spending a lot of time with that dollhouse lately, haven't you?"
      "No, I--"
      "I think you have," Karen interrupted her. "That's what you've been
doing up in your room all this time."
      "I'd have plenty of time if you weren't always having me watch Toby
for you," Sarah accused.
      "That is not negotiable. You will watch your brother when Karen
needs you to. And since it looks like you can't manage your time on your
own, you'll also be doing your homework down here on the dining table each
night."
      "Dad! You're just going to take her word for it? That's not fair!"
she whined.
      "Do you have any evidence otherwise? If you do have too much
homework we'll see it, won't we? If not then you'll be getting it done and
your grades will improve. Just think of this as an incentive to get it done
faster. And in case you're thinking of just rushing through it, if your
grades don't improve the dollhouse goes."
      "That's not fair!" Sarah shouted.
      "I don't want to hear any more about it," her father said, handing
the report card back to her. "Now hurry off to school or you'll be late."
      Sarah snatched the slip of paper from her father's hand and slung
her backpack over her shoulder angrily. She walked quickly to the front
door with a scowl on her face and slammed it loudly behind her as she left
the house.



      This really sucked. Here it was ten o'clock already and she was
just now finishing her homework. She wouldn't have any time to even look at
the castle before going to bed, because the evil stepmother had also
decided that they were going to enforce her bedtime each night. She had to
go to bed at ten on a Friday night. It was unheard of. At least she was
done with the homework. That meant she would have the whole weekend to
herself. Unless they came up with some new rule.
      She put the weekend to good use devising tortures for the Goblin
King to inflict on Karen. But come Monday it was back to the routine. Come
home from school, sit at the dining table doing homework while being
annoyed by Toby and Jimmy until dinner, clear out for dinner, help clean
up, then back to homework. She was sure that her father and stepmother had
purposely asked her teachers to increase her homework load just to make
sure that she didn't have any free time.
      "Sarah there's a pile of your clothes in the laundry room. Don't
forget to take them up with you when you go to your room next," Karen told
her.
      "And they still expect me to do other chores," she continued train
of thought and complaint. She closed up her books and notebooks and loaded
them into her backpack to carry upstairs.



      "Come back! Don't leave me aloooone! Come back!" They were going to
leave him here for ever and ever, he knew it. They were never coming back.
He was going to starve to death. He laid his head between his paws and
sighed heavily.
      He suddenly remembered that they got food out of this room all the
time and they never gave him any of it, so it must be good. Jimmy made the
rounds of the kitchen cabinets, sniffing and scratching at each one with no
results. He flopped in the middle of the floor.
      Maybe they kept some somewhere else? He ran to the baby gate
blocking the kitchen entrance.
      "Out! Out! Out! Out! Out!" He scratched at the gate. He jumped on
the gate and it shifted just a little so he did it again. "Out! Out! Out!
Gotta...get...out." Finally the gate fell with a crash and he skittered
backward across the linoleum.
      Creeping forward, he sniffed at it cautiously and barked at it a
few times, just to make sure it wasn't going to do anything else. When he
was sure it was staying put, he ran across it, down the steps and on into
the living room.
      Let's see, where should he look first? The couches. They never let
him up there--there had to be something good in there. He put his forepaws
up on the first couch and scrambled his hind legs after. Sticking his nose
deep between the cushions he found a few potato chips, but nothing else.
There were these really cool ruffly, puffy things though that looked
perfect for shaking. He grabbed the nearest one, which happened to be pink,
and gave it an experimental shake.
      Yep, it worked just as well as he thought it would. No hard things
hidden inside to hit him in the ears, just soft and floppy. He jumped off
the couch and ran around the living room growling and shaking the pillow.
Ooh, someone was chasing him--he'd better run. He dashed for the coffee
table to lose his imaginary pursuit under it.
      Instead, he hit the side of it and sat down with a yelp. He always
fit under that before. What happened to it?
      He spotted the papers on the table and left the pillow where he
dropped it. They looked like fun too. He knocked them on the floor and
settled down to shred them. It brought back memories of playing with his
littermates, sliding on the floor covered with them, fighting over scraps
of them, his mother watching nearby. He never had anyone to play with
anymore.
      Soon he ran out of paper and wandered off to find something else to
do. The plants by the window always attracted him. They smelled so
interesting, kind of like outside, but not quite. He wondered if they would
come out of their bowls. Some of the plants outside did when he pulled on
them, but not all of them.
      After determining that these plants were of the variety that did
come loose when he pulled on them, he set off for the stairs again. There
were all those rooms upstairs to explore.
      There was a brief scuffle on the stairs while he intimidated the
gate into submission again and then he was on his way. First the bathroom
he decided. He was thirsty and he could smell the water in there.
      He discovered they locked up the water, too. They put a lid on the
bowl. He really was going to starve to death at this rate. He took out his
frustrations on the fuzzy covering that slipped off the lid when he was
trying to get into the bowl. It unraveled very satisfyingly when you pulled
at it. When he tired of this he wandered back out into the hall and sniffed
at the doors.
      One of them, the one he had only been in the once before, swung
open when he bumped it. Whoa, jackpot! Look at all this stuff to check out.
Mmm, leather shoes to chew on. He'd do that later. Clothes on the floor--he
could play with those, too. More paper. And a bag with a few chips in the
bottom of it. Not for long!
      He chased the bag around the room for several minutes, making sure
he didn't miss a crumb and then sat back and surveyed the room, licking his
whiskers. He checked the bag one more time, just in case and then trotted
over to the corner where there were several handy little plastic chew toys
laying out just for him. He was beginning to like this person better. She
was noisy and she yelled at him all the time, but her room sure was cool!
      He picked up one of the chew toys and settled down comfortably,
steadying it between his forepaws to give it his full attention. First
things first, he'd have to peel this fuzzy, fluffy stuff off. It was
annoying and stuck to his mouth



      "Sarah, the puppy got out," Karen announced from the living room
floor as Sarah slammed the front door when she got home from school.
      "Well, I didn't put him up, so it's not my fault."
      "I didn't say it was." She walked into the entryway carrying a bag
full of shredded paper and leaves. "He did, however, get into your room. It
looked like he chewed on some of your toys that were laying around. I
haven't touched anything. I know how particular you are about your room."
      "How'd he get in my room?" Sarah whined. "He's not allowed in my
room. He's never been allowed in my room. I told you that."
      "Don't you take that tone with me. First of all, he wasn't loose in
the house when I left to go shopping and it wasn't just your room. Second,
if you had taken your clothes up last night like I asked you, I wouldn't
have had to do it this morning. The door must not have latched when I
closed it. Now, I was going to offer to help you clean up the mess in your
room, but with this attitude I think you can do it yourself."
      "Fine." Sarah stormed upstairs and slammed the door to her room.
She immediately opened it again.
      "He threw up in my room," she yelled downstairs.
      "Yes, I know," Karen answered mildly. "It looked like he got in
that bag of chips you left on the floor, which isn't supposed to be there
either. Puppies have sensitive stomachs, you know. They can't handle greasy
potato chips and plastic."
      With much gagging and disgust, Sarah finally cleaned the mess up.
He had destroyed all the dolls and furniture for the castle. The only thing
remotely identifiable that she found was the Goblin King's head way under
her dresser. The face was mangled and chewed, but it still had all the
spiky blond hair. She tossed it in the trash with the rest of the mess.

End.