Filed on September 19, 2026
(Satire. Fiction. No real HOA, Board, person, or throne — only the idea of a neighborhood that is definitely not this one. Entertainment only.)
The February meeting of the Covenant Hollow Homeowners Association was standing-room only, which itself was a signal. In thirty years, the Board had learned to read such portents: folding chairs set up in the back, the smell of coffee, and a row of House Flamingo supporters who had all, suspiciously, brought the same shade of pink.
President Hargrove sat in the Chair. He did not lean back. No one leaned back in the Chair. It was beige, it was wheel-locked, it famously smelled of an old bank that had closed in 1998, and it had been occupied — continuously, by the same dynasty — for eighteen years.
“Motion to seat the year’s slate,” he said.
The motion was seconded by a man who had not missed a meeting in nine years, largely because he was the one who brought the cookies.
Then House Flamingo’s candidate rose.
“Covenant 9.1,” she said.
The room went still. 9.1 was the little-used clause that allowed any resident to challenge the slate, provided they had been a member in good standing for no fewer than three seasons and provided they had never once complained. The Board’s own lore held that 9.1 was a dead letter, a leftover from a draft by a long-ago president who had a grudge against his own board.
“It’s been a long time since a resident dared the 9.1,” Hargrove said, which was his way of saying nobody has ever been this foolish.
“It’s never been a fair 9.1,” she said. “You keep the bylaws in Room B. You read them over the loudspeaker. You seat the slate by voice acclaim.”
“An open, transparent, democratic process,” Hargrove said.
“And a contested one,” she said, and slid a folded paper across the table.
That was the moment. The potluck knives were out; the casseroles were still warm. Hargrove picked up the paper with the care of a man reading his own obituary. His hand — the Hand of the Board, technically, a man with a name badge and a deep sense of duty — went to his hip, where there was no sword, only a set of keys to the equipment shed.
The room held its breath. A door creaked. Somewhere out on Sempergreen Way, a dog barked at a flickering streetlamp.
“The Chair is not for sitting,” Hargrove said at last, rising slowly, and the room understood, in the sudden quiet, what he actually meant: the Chair is not for relinquishing.
And from the back of the room, in perfect deadpan, came the reply that history would remember: “Then how do you vote?”