Cleaning action

Having contemplated the dishes they’d never put away, the clothes they’d never folded, the toilet seats they’d never wiped, Marley announced, “I’m not your bloody slave!”

Her sons smirked.

“That’s it! I’m going on strike,” she snapped.

They called her bluff.

She noted with increasing apprehension how unperturbed they were by the climbing high-rises of dirty plates, the overflowing laundry hampers, the lack of dry towels.

To defeat them, she realised, she would have to first become them.

A barbarian, an animal, a beast.

Dropping the discarded shoe she’d instinctively picked up, she steeled herself for dark days ahead.

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