#in the pre-hd version she turns her head too but i cannot find a good quality version

[shellymarshdaily]

In the intro to “Pinkeye”, Shelly is shown briefly near a jack-o-lantern! (Old episodes are better, I’m rewatching theme lolol)

I LOVE IT SO MUCH you ave no idea how much i think about it....

[enkisstories]

Teen Mom and the Puppy Mill (Part 2 of 2)

Not much to say about this chapter. Except that I just HAD to include both Jacques’ and Max’s catchphrases from the story. You’ll find them near the end.

 That weekend, when Ulrike was due sitting the Munch boys, she had three other kids in tow: Brandon Colch, Amber Stein and a very embarrassed Morgan Fyres. The fact that little Amber was constantly trying to grab her hand and wave both their arms around didn’t help along Morgan’s mood at all. The two struggling girls fell behind a little. Ulrike didn’t care. She knew Amber well enough to know how this could only end. And predictably, just when Ulrike lifted her hand to ring at the Munchs’ doorbell, Amber closed up with her sitter, dragging a Morgan that was locked firmly in her grip behind her, announcing for all the world to hear that the big girl was her friend. “Hush, hush!” Ulrike shoo’ed her wards. Picking up the hint Donnie ushered the girls around the house, out Mrs. Munch’s sight. Ulrike spent a couple of minutes inside, then Mrs. Munch left and after another short wait Ulrike exited the home with Wolfgang and Lucas.

Wolfie nodded a silent acknowledgement of Morgan’s presence into the girl’s direction. They were in the same year and had some courses together. In fact, nerdy Wolfgang Munch was a prime target of Morgan’s and under normal circumstances the girl would have made sure to exchange neither words nor gestures with the runt of the litter. However, after having encountered Amber, Morgan was past upholding her dignity and still a little weak from the cold anyway, so she blurted out: “Your parents still treating you like a little kid, too?” “Because they hired me to guard you?” Ulrike interjected. “I think that’s less about anything that might happen to Wolfie and more about whom he could happen to.” “Oh, come on, just admit you love me!” Wolfgang snorted. Morgan looked the boy up and down, intrigued. The self-confident version of himself was different from the Wolfgang at school. This Wolfgang was the big brother, the brave one who had stood up against his dad, the one who made his mommy proud by bringing home good report cards. The son who would go far in life. And it showed in every inch of the kid’s movements. Just to test Wolfgang’s true mettle, Morgan brought forth Amber, saying “Meet my friend!” And while Wolfgang fell victim to a charmer toddler assault kicking and screaming, Morgan admired her new close-range weapon from a few heads above. ”Get it off, get it off meeeee!” That was Donnie, after Amber had remembered that she hadn’t hugged him before and went to remedy her lapse. “She’s totally my new friend”, Morgan told Ulrike, beaming. “Just look at her destructive potential!” “Your friend, huh?” Ulrike replied. “So what was her name again?” “Um…”

While the group was moving – trotting in Donnie’s case – down the road, Lucas eagerly explained to the rest that they were headed to the ruins of the old watchtower on a nearby hill. There’s be a fireplace and grass to play in and a bench for old woman Ulrike to rest on.

“That’s not where we are going today, sunshine”, old woman Ulrike corrected.

The group stopped at a bus stop, one of the tiny ones that were littered all across the countryside. Amber and Lucas played a hands-clasping game, Wolfgang studied the schedule and Morgan addressed Ulrike: “You ARE aware that my parents booked a babysitter so I could feel safe in the familiarity of our home and enjoy all the comforts and personal attendance the daycare cannot offer?” What Ulrike became more and more aware of was that the Fyres couple had hired her because Morgan was too old for the daycare, but the house wasn’t old enough to be left to an unsupervised Morgan. And that the older Fyres sister was clever enough to coincidentally have uncancelable appointments whenever she’d have to watch over Morgan… “Girl, the attendance YOU need is a few years solitary confinement and probably several meters of duct tape!” Ulrike accompanied her words by moving her fingers across her mouth in an unmistakeable gesture. “What?!” Morgan flared up. By now she had picked up that this particular babysitter wouldn’t be above doing exactly that to her. “But I’m just speaking my mind!” “That’s no justification for doing it in any imagineable way!” Ulrike retorted. “And ‘sides, poor Donnie’s close to tears already because of all the strangers!” Morgan cried out. “I’m not!” “Are, too!” Ulrike turned away. Kids were kids, and it was best to let them.

But just in case she wanted even more children, a poster across the road advertised the latest breakthrough in fertility treatments. “Great”, Ulrike thought, “More ways to get children that aren’t me.” There were childless parents and parentless children, but the first didn’t want the second. They craved copies of themselves instead, resulting in kids like Ulrike remaining “in the system” for years. It was what added to the growing discontent between the teenager and Auntie Haas, her adoptive mom. Had Ulrike grown up in a family right from the start, her parents would surely have noticed she wasn’t a child anymore and helped her transition into an artist. Whereas Auntie seemed to view her adoptive daughter as a rescue cat that needed to be coddled all the time to make up for lost opportunities. Maike had it so easy! All one needed to become a writer was a computer, which was an acceptable item in the Haas household, because you could play games on it. A painter had it harder. Everything was ALWAYS harder for Ulrike and there were times when she hated the world for that instead of proudly sailing on the waves of chaos (as Maike had described her adoptive sister once).

The bus arrived, requiring Ulrike to herd the children inside, putting a stop to her musings. And it brought something even worse then the ad to the teen girl’s attention. “What’s the matter, Uli? Someone hurt you?” That was ever-friendly Lucas. Such a darling the youngest Munch brother was! The kind of kid that made Ulrike vomit; whom she developed parenting strategies for like a worker in a garbage processing plant would treat the potentially disease-causing waste: efficient but with utter disdain. Needless to say, Lucas LOVED Ulrike.

“Yes”, Ulrike answered Lucas’s question. “The councilman Harold Bjergsen.”

“Oh!” went Wolfgang, excitedly. “In a past life!”

Donnie stiffled a laugh. He was into rocketships and scoffed on mystic stuff.

“Yeah”, Ulrike said, looking out through the window.

But the unkind truth was that the councilman had hurt Ulrike in this very life. How he had managed that across a century-wide gap was explained easily without resorting to the supernatural: Windenburg’s buses were named after famous sons and daughters of the town. The one Ulrike and the children were riding in at the moment was called “Senior Postmaster & Councilmaster Harold Bjergsen”. Few people took notice of the names, but Ulrike knew all of them and she hated them with passion! That postmaster… he’d had everything in life already, wealth, competence and respect. While she, Ulrike Faust-Haas, was a nothing and would die a nobody. Why did he have to rub it in even after his death? Everything… Why?! Everything... A cold, damp garbage heap outside the city walls for a grave... Nothing...

*

Later that day the postmaster was not forgotten, but shoved into a dark corner for longterm storage just like his bones in the bonehouse. Ulrike and the children were watching TV, all the fun stuff parents claimed made kids dumb.

Wolfgang Munch was munching on - or wolfing down, either made for a pun Morgan just couldn’t resist - the second red apple from overseas. Normally when Mila brought home one of this expensive sort from work, she sliced it into three pieces, one for each of her sons. Not so in this mansion, here the rare treat was considered a snack. For invited visitors, that was... “Don’t be so greedy!” Lucas scolded his brother when Wolfie had finished and grabbed another one. “Think of Snow White! And of Eve!” Wolfgang just shrugged and bit into the uge fruit. It’s juice was dripping down his chin. Amber, however, put hers back into the bowl after hearing the names of princesses who had unfortunate accidents after eating apples. “Apples are good for kids”, Ulrike felt the need to announce. Then she chuckled: “Unlike the Dino Riders...” “Bah! What do the Villareal have a widescreen super-duper-HD TV anyway, if they only use it to watch the news?” Morgan replied. Then the girl paused, considered, went a little red in her face and went “Oh... wow.”

“How does it even work?” Brandon complained, totally missing Morgan’s sudden insight into Mr. Villareal’s mind. “Do I forget triangle equations from watching Dino Riders? So why don’t I forget them from doing household chores?” “Ey?” Morgan shot the boy a puzzled look. Perhaps she had passed her flu on to him and he was fevering? “For real!” Brandon ranted on. “Housework is allowed, but the Dino Riders aren’t. Does mom think I’m thinking of triangle equations while doing the housework?” “Probably”, little Maxis Sandro chimed in. “We’ve got servants for the chores, though.” Now it was Brandon’s turn to go “Ey?”. “I was joking, you know?” he told the pre-schooler. Maxis straightened his small body on the sofa. “Cartoon shows makes you dumber”, he started to explain, “because they steal time from watching shows that make you more educated. And being educated makes you appear smarter!!! And the silly shows only make you crave more of them and so they steal MORE time from honing your brain… And can we please go back to pretending we are children now…?”

“We ARE kids!” Wolfgang provided an insight at which Max only shrugged. “Well, lucky you, then”, the Villareal scion told the older boy. In another ‘verse he’d probably fail school at the age of ten and rampage through the countryside with public school trash for his friends. But here, in the real world, Jacques de Villareal would not allow his youngest child to run wild and waste the genes he had passed to him*.

*That “other ‘verse” refers to Sims 4 canon, actually. No one said a word. The show continued. Questar was exiled from the Dino Riders, which was pretty serious stuff, but the children didn’t pay attention. Max Villareal noticed how everyone’s gazes rested on him after his speech, a situation the kid hadn’t been trained for yet. He felt caged, challenged and utterly helpless. Max reacted in the only way his developing brain would allow:

“Go lick a dead dog’s snout all of you!” he shouted, followed by a long wail: “Waaaaahhhhhhhh!”

“Kid’s weird”, Morgan remarked.

“Waaaa! Shut up! I didn’t inviiiiiiiiite youuuuuuu!”

Ulrike shook her head. The pre-schooler reacted just like expected from one who was exposed to what this one was. It was sad, if one thought about it longer. The urge to preserve at least a tiny bit of childhood for one who wasn’t allowed to fully plunge into it rose up in Ulrike… just like it had in her adoptive mom. For a moment Ulrike felt connected, somehow, to Auntie Haas. They needed to have a talk… someday. Probably. Or not. Because first things first:

“Will you stop that already, Maxis Sandro?!” Ulrike yelled.

“Nooooooo! Don’t wannaaaaaaaa!”

“But, Ma… Maxi…” Ulrike stuttered. She had dealt with difficult toddlers before, but Maxis Sandro, shy, soft-spoken (if he spoke at all) Maxis Sandro turning into one came so out of the blue that every strategy the teen mom had ever come up with to counter the tantrum was blanked out, unavailable as if it had never been learned in the first place.

“I… I think all we can do is wait till he ends it on his own…” the teenager ventured.

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!!” went Max, flailing around his legs, fingers clenched into fists.

“That does it!” snapped Brandon. “I’m out of here!”

And off the couch he jumped and to the door he ran. Ulrike followed in hot-pursuit while Max started bobbing up and down triumphantly on his cushion. What a day!

And it got even better when the other children heard Donnie cry out “Wow! You must see that!” in a rare fit of wanting to share something he had discovered with other children. “That pool!!!”

Max jumped off the couch.

“I’m a good swimmer!” he proclaimed. “I’ll show you!”

Wolfgang spat well-chewed foreign apple mush across the living room. The five year old in the deep swimming pool? Wasn’t that way too dangerous?!

“You’re staying right here!” he demanded, but Max had already gotten a headstart and cut the low flight of stairs leading to the backyard by simply jumping down. While running he let fly his shoes, socks and shirt, followed by the older boy who was desperately trying to “rescue” the child. “Quick, Brandon, catch him!” Wolfgang shouted. Donnie looked around, understood, but the much smaller Villareal boy evaded his clumsy attempts at capturing him. Wolfgang sped up, now Morgan (with Amber’s tiny fingers locked firmly into her belt) left the house, too, and only Lucas stayed behind, eyeing the apples not unlike Adam in paradise. “No!” the boy told himself, crossing his arms. “I must not be a thief!” And then he, too, went to see what happened outside.

Ulrike stood by, watching the ensueing chaos with a smug smile on her face, in the comfortable knowledge that Max had lied. The youngest Villareal child wasn’t a “good” swimmer. He was actually a two-legged fish, at home in the water and, as an added benefit, way less likely to break anything while in the pool than in the house.

*

The afternoon sun was crawling across the sky, hiding behind the ruins that were looming over the island in a sort of premature sunset. Long shadows engulfed Villareal Manor and with it the handful of people that were standing just outside the gate. They liked shadows, these boys and girls, feeling right at home in darkness’ embrace. Lucas and Amber had curled up under a tree together, snuggling after an exiting and eventful day. But Ulrike, Wolfgang, Brandon, Morgan and Max stood upright close together, watching the minor sunset.

“You are not to tell anybody about today”, Ulrike instructed the children. “Otherwise you won’t…”

“Give that back! It’s mine!”

“Race me!”

“A moment, please”, Ulrike said with a sigh, then strolled over towards the patch of sand where the older Villareal children, Hugo and Luna, were argueing.

After solving the conflict, Ulrike returned.

“Ey, sorry, clandestine oaths ain’t what they used to be”, she apologized.

“Otherwise we won’t be allowed to return here, we know”, Morgan finished the teenager’s sentence from before the twins had interrupted the pledge. “Trouble is, I don’t need to play here, our house is almost as nice. But I won’t be a telltale if I can bring my friend next time!”

“The one with the mirror?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“Good thing he didn’t break it and conjured seven years of bad luck upon the two of you, then. Okay, bring him.”

“But he must take the oath!” Wolfgang demanded.

“He will, I promise!”

Wolfgang took a few steps towards Morgan. To his delight he discovered that he was actually taller than his schoolyard nemesis!

“This is serious, Morgan!” the boy snarled. “Your boyfriend’s behavior is on your hide!”

“Oh… okay”, Morgan whispered, then grinned. “You should be mean more often, Wolfie! It becomes you!”

“I…” Wolfgang’s hand shot to the back of his head, but Ulrike grabbed and forced it down.

She watched as the children came up with their own words for a pledge and recited punishments for speaking about this place or, worse, leaving the group for any reason. But just when the girl wanted to wake Lucas and Amber for the journey back, Max grabbed her by the wrist.

“Come on, Uli”, he urged her. “You must take the oath or you cannot be a Renegade!”

A what where how?!

“That’s us! Our name for our group!” Max pressed on.

“Ah. And not pleading loyality to the, erm, Renegades, would be bad how exactly…?” Ulrike inquired.

“You wouldn’t be allowed to return here with us!”

“But I’m your nanny! Without me you CANNOT come here at all. Well, YOU could, obviously, but none of the others.”

“Yes, exactly!” Max cried. “That’s why it’s so important that you take the oath!”

The sun was setting. There was no time to argue or try reason. Besides, what could it hurt? It was just another game Ulrike way playing with her children. Nothing soul-wrenching that would bind them beyond death at all. Now where had THAT thought come from...?!

*

Skipping forward a couple of years the summer sun found the “Renegades” frolicking in the Villareal mansion as if no time had passed. They had grown older, more capable in what they put their energy to, but those endeavours were no longer the ones their parents had expected their darlings to undertake.

Wolfgang wasn’t bringing home straight As anymore, but had nevertheless managed to score a scholarship. He seemed to care about nothing, taking nothing serious. Morgan had come to the conclusion that the betterment of humankind had to start by putting them all behind bars, locking the door and throwing away the key. Carlos was into videogames and talked about becoming a career soldier, because that was where the big money was. This in turn irked Brandon, because he was into videogames, too, but he got ridiculed for it. So for a time he tried to emulate Carlos. Since this worked out well, the boy continued mimicking others until it was hard to pinpoint whether he had an actual personality. Max was still unstable as a thrust sheet and that was the best that could be said about the boy. In between starting and scraping paintings “Teen mom” Ulrike continued to work as a babysitter, nevermind that the toddlers and infants she was to watch were locked in a room somewhere in the mansion. The Renegades would occasionally feed them and they held drinking contests over diaper cleaning duty. They also practiced taking sweets from babies at the children in Ulrike’s care. You couldn’t threaten babies into handing over their candy. And if you attempted to just take it from them, they’d cry, cries that you couldn’t stiffle without suffocating the little ones. So you had to grab the goodies without making them go off. All things considered, taking candy from babies was a form of art that the Renegades strived to master. ‘On a sidenote, Ulrike and Wolfgang as well as Morgan and Carlos were definitely no couples, no Sir! Just practicing for a real relationship sometime in the future… one of the kind that Brandon of all people already had. That lousy bastard thinking he could go ahead of his friends!

How long had it been now that her babysitting job had turned into getting payed to hang out with her friends, Ulrike wondered? Bringing all her clients’ kids into the spacious Villareal estate had been her best idea! The younger ones resigned pretty quickly and the older ones joined into the ruckus around the premises. If anything broke, it could always be blamed on the ever-squabbling Villareal twins Hugo and Luna and the twins would lower their heads in their father’s presence and “confess” their misdeed. Because if they didn’t, the Renegades would tell Jacques about all the things the twins had done that warranted sterner punishment then the occasional trashed vase and handrail. “What if the parents realize you’re herding their darlings to the island?” Max asked one day while handing her a tankard. Ulrike shrugged. She accepted the beer, overlooking the fact that Max leisurely drank from another beer-filled tankard himself. “They simply mustn’t. I need…”

“…the money”, a rasping voice finished the sentence. “I understand.”

Ulrike, Carlos, Brandon, Morgan, Wolfgang and Max turned their heads.

In the door stood the widower Jacques de Villareal, wealthiest enterpreteur and rumored godfather of Windenburg. The man had been standing in the hallway all the time, watching, drawing conclusions and smiling.

Wolfgang dropped his tankard. Morgan quickly disposed hers by forcing it into the hands of whoever stood next to her. Turned out it was little Max…

Jacques took the beer from Carlos, who didn’t even try to fight. “Thank you, my boy”, the houseowner said and took a deep gulp, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened and he had just returned to be greeted by his faithful, because well-payed servants.

Next the man casually strolled over to the table where Knights of the Hedge Action figures were pitted against monsters from outer space. It spoke of how their owners had not matured, but at least aged, that a number of those space warriors were locked into what could be called “couple poses”...

“Brings back memories”, Jacques remarked, but didn’t dwell on that notion. “Whatever. You’ve got a remarkable grasp of timing, Ms. Faust, with getting the kids here and back again without anyone ever noticing. But let’s not squander your other talents. There’s something you could do for me… something that would make me refrain from telling your other clients that you are running a puppy mill and also forget the fact that you are doing it in my house. We understand each other?”

“I’ll get payed eventually?”

“Certainly.”

Determined Ulrike raised her tankard and Jacques banged his against the girl’s.

*

“A nice selection of retainers you’ve acquired there, son”, Jacques told his youngest child later. “Very different from your sister’s Paragons or Hugo’s insistence on working alone. I approve of that. Diversifying is nature’s most powerful strategy and it should be ours, too.” Max turned his head ever so slightly. “You make it sound as if I owned the Renegades, father…” he started, only to be silenced by Jacques: “You think they are your friends, then?”

The boy nodded eagerly!

“Oh, Max! Friendship means exchanging favours on more generous terms. It can only happen between equals. These kids have nothing to offer you, at least not on the scale you and me measure ourselves.” Max pressed his lips tightly together. Eventually he opened his mouth again: “You want me to believe that, father, because if they weren’t inferior, the Renegades might be rivals for you in my heart!”

SLAP!

The bitchslap was followed by a series of hits that left the boy lying flat on his face.

“Damn… damn you… old man! I know I’m right!”

Jacques sighed, then knelt down.

“Hate me now?”

“No…”

“Okay. Listen… and sit up for hell’s sake! Okay, that’s better.”

Looking his son into his eyes more seriously than Max had ever seen his father do before, Jacques said: “Everyone is a slave of something or someone. No way around that, kiddo, sorry. We can only choose the ties that bind us. And I’d rather see you choose your family than a bunch of random thugs, Maxis. Because when push comes to shove, can you really trust these strangers?” “I…” Max started. “I think I understand what you’re trying to say. But, father, I don’t think I approve of it.”

“Well, that’s the priviledge of youth, I suppose. Something I’ll have to endure with the three of you for some more time. So go out into the world and make your own experiences! I can wait.”

*

From now Ulrike Faust copied artwork “for the man”. But the young woman found less and time to concentrate on her art, improve it or develop her own style. The forgeries Ulrike churned out were sold to unsuspecting customers or swapped for originals in museums. And more often than not the Renegades were the ones doing the swapping. In turn Jacques had promised to promote Ulrike’s original works. There were times when the Renegades didn’t agree with the aging godfather. Those times they told themselves that they had been a gang and the scourge of the schoolyard before becoming the newest addition to the mob. But every time they went their own way, the Renegades did nothing different than in Jacques’ employ: performing minor crimes (but for ourselves this time!) and cowing people (but this time for fun!).

And so it began.