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Chapter 7217 wordsCompleted

Mrs Sisyphus stands alone in darkness and launches a tirade at the mythic figure of Sisyphus, who she derides as “the jerk” pushing a massive stone up a hill. She describes the stone as “nearer the size of a kirk,” notes how his labor once merely irritated her but now “incenses” both of them, and muses that she could stab him with a dirk. She scoffs at his “perk” rhetoric, dismissing it as meaningless when there’s no time for simple pleasures like opening a cork or walking in the park. She ridicules the spectators who flock to watch, calling the whole spectacle “old bollocks” and likening his futile effort to “barking at the moon.” She compares her own solitary anguish to that of “Noah’s wife” hammering at the Ark and to “Frau Johann Sebastian Bach,” noting that her voice has become a “squawk” and her smile a “twisted smirk,” while Sisyphus continues his relentless work on the hill.

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Through chapter 7

Little Red-Cap meets a poetic, wine‑drinking wolf at the edge of the woods, follows him into his lair, loses her shoes, kills him with an axe, fills his belly with stones, discovers her grandmother’s bones, and escapes the forest alone with flowers. Three enigmatic queens gather at the palace gates, prophesy a new star and command a scar‑marked chief of staff to launch a ruthless eastward raid against every mother’s son. Mrs Midas recounts a night of chaotic intimacy with a gold‑obsessed lover, their volatile interactions in a domestic setting, and her eventual decision to leave him behind. Mrs Tiresias recounts a surreal tale of a man who returns home transformed into a woman, describing the gender swap, a menstrual curse, and a glamorous encounter with a lover at a glittering ball. Pilate’s Wife recounts watching the Nazarene enter Jerusalem, dreaming of his crucifixion, sending a warning, and later seeing him crowned with thorns and taken to the Place of Skulls; she doubts his divinity while Pilate is depicted washing his hands and believing he is God. Mrs Aesop confronts a pompous suitor, mocks his futile pursuits, and silences him with a brutal fable. Mrs Sisyphus is introduced, delivering a bitter monologue that likens her own loneliness to mythic figures while condemning Sisyphus’s endless toil with the stone.