//------------------------------//
// 10: Nope! 
// Story: Prompt-A-Day Collection 
// by Admiral Biscuit 
//------------------------------//

The Rich mansion has exactly twenty-four rooms.

This is a well-known fact around Ponyville.  It’s frequently the topic of conversation, as nopony knows what use twenty four rooms in a house would have.  Conversations often hinge around the purpose of each room in the mansion.  It’s assumed that Mr. Rich and Diamond Tiara each have their own bedroom and their own bathroom; some ponies believe that Mrs. Rich has her very own bathroom, as well.  Naturally, no mansion is complete without a kitchen, dining room, foyer, ballroom, and living room of some sort.  It’s assumed that Mr. Rich has a study, and there may or may not be a private library.  However, a simple count would indicate that is only around a dozen rooms.

Debate continues on what does or does not count as a room, but that’s really irrelevant.  The fact is, there are twenty-four of them.  Naturally, somepony needs to clean every one of those rooms—except the kitchen.  The kitchen is the duty of the cook, who will allow nopony into her domain.

I know twenty-three of the rooms intimately, more intimately than even the Rich family.  I have been into every nook and cranny of every one of those rooms with a mop and dustcloth.  I have cleaned every pane of every window in the house, inside and out.

I know where every bit and bauble in the mansion is located.  I know that Diamond Tiara has exactly 257 dolls, and I even know what order to put them in.  She is very upset if they are out of order.

This was not a bad job.  I wish to stress that I enjoyed the job very much, from the time before Diamond was born, throughout her foalhood, and through most of her education.  I enjoyed the job until yesterday afternoon, in fact, when I quit suddenly.





I usually did a little tidy-up in Diamond’s room right before she got back from school.  It was kind of a routine for me—major cleaning was done on Moon’s Day, as she had spent the weekend messing up her room.  For the rest of the week, there was little enough to do, except for a quick tidy-up.  I nosed the door, expecting to just have to neaten her bed, straighten out her desk, and be done.

The door was locked, which was odd.  Of course, I had a key.  When I pushed the door open, I heard an odd scuffling from inside, but the thing which caught my attention immediately was a large crate in the center of the room.  One side had been pried off, and splintered boards were strewn about the floor haphazardly.  

I levitated the crate and all the boards out into the hallway.  I could deal with those later.  I was curious what had come in the crate—and who the idiot deliveryponies had been that had just left it in the room like that—for there was nothing new in the room.

Strangely, her bedspread was also gone.  She’d had a habit of hiding her covers when she was a foal and still wet the bed occasionally, but that was long ago.  The rumpled sheets were still on the bed, so that was an unlikely theory.

Sighing at the confusing behavior of young mares, I opened the closet intending to find another bedspread.  Whatever had happened to the other was none of my business anyway.

Inside her closet, in the very back—beyond her formal dresses and saddles—the comforter was draped across some large . . . something.  With a exasperated huff, I grabbed it off with my telekenesis and pulled it towards myself.  I took one step back out of the closet before I realized that there was some kind of . . . creature hidden under the blanket.  It had skin like a pig, but weird monkey arms.

I flung the blanket back at it and slammed the door shut, just as Diamond walked into the room.

“What’s all the commotion?”

“Get back, miss!  There’s a monster in your closet!”

“Pfft.”  She waved a hoof at me.  “That’s just a human.  Lyra was talking about how all the cool ponies had them as pets, so I asked daddy and he got me one.  It came this morning, but I didn’t have any time to play with it before school.”

She boldly walked into the closet and with some scuffling and a meaty thump, coaxed it out.  It was clutching the blanket around itself with one hand, while the other rubbed its backside.

“See?  Nothing to worry about.  You just have to hit it a couple of times, and it cooperates.”  She grinned at me.  “I’m sure you’ll have no trouble with it.”

“Me?”

“Well, I have to go to school, so somepony will have to take it on walks and give it baths.  And feed it too, I suppose.”  Her eyes hardened.  “You have to, ‘cause you’re my maid.”

“Not anymore.”  I tossed the feather duster on the floor.  “I’ll have nothing to do with this monster.”

“I’ll tell daddy!”  She shouted as I left.  “He’ll fire you.”

“He can’t,” I said smugly.  “I already quit.  Good day, miss.”