The King of Nowhere

In the days that followed, a lot of questions were asked. There were much of the “why’s” and “how’s” and other theological pleadings native to such catastrophe, but these more profound ponderings quickly gave way to the practical: where is there to go? What shops still have water left? Who can I trust? Who’s still alive?

    Despite the best efforts of Silicon Valley, we lost global communication pretty quickly; and with the cloud evaporated, so too was much of what we had so readily taken for granted by way of solace. A month later, the worst- at least the most violent- had passed, and we began to apply ourselves- the ones of us who were left- towards reconstruction.

    It was in that time that I was out near Golead, having been fortunate early on to have departed the Metroplex for a sabbatical in the country just before the world stopped, holed up in a five-and-dime trying to conserve water and praying I wouldn’t need to expend any more shells.

    I’d been a preacher once, but those who were with me made it plain that my “God-bothering” was none of their concern and I’d best shut up  if I knew what’s good for me.

    Never got their names, labels seemed pointless then when life hung in such a fragile balance, but they were calm enough when it all blew over and my throat hadn’t been cut yet. They were as good friends as I was likely to come across.
    So life went on in simplicity and by and by it was my turn to go out and see what was left and if I couldn’t find something more to drink. I didn’t care much for foraging out there, but then again I don’t think I would have cared much to meet someone that did. But a man keeps well his home, so I just pretend that I was back in Lagarto with my dad shooting bunnies and looking for gold, and that at least calmed my nerves.
    Never helped much to settle my stomach when I saw one of ‘em though. You saw ‘em, I’m sure. You’re old enough. Belly burst open and those things snaking out. T heir faces still screaming and their eyes still pleading and them holding onto their long-dead babies like there was anything at all that they could do. I met a doctor once, early on, who said it was an aberration: some crossing of species that outgrew dog hearts and got curious about mankind. Not that it mattered now. Where it came from and what it was, it died off pretty quick after the quarantines, and took most of the world with it.
    We called them “The Witnesses,” because they stood there watching over all the sinning we did in those days.

They reminded me of a wax museum, and they were all over the place: bearing silent, agonized witness as the man of God made his way among ‘em trying to eek out a living the best he could.

There’s something wrong with a thing that won’t rot and that animals won’t touch. Something unnatural. I wondered that maybe they were just damned from the start. Or maybe we were, seeing as how we were still here. But my God-botherin’ was none of their concerns. Not anymore.
We’d been in Golead for a while, and as such had taken most of what there was in the downtown area. So I had to go out further every time, which never bothered me because any Witnesses I tended to find out in the desert were parked in cars and didn’t seem to look at me funny.
Out there: there were still birds and snakes- it was almost like nothing had ever changed and I was a kid again.
Of course, going that far out meant longer days and maybe nights, and that was fine by me, anything to feel like a bonafide human being again.

I think it was the third day out when I found the school.
It was an Old Mission style, and the thing that struck me about it was that there weren’t any kids left out to Witness on the playground. The grass was still mowed and the sprinklers still ran.

“Impossible,” I uttered in a cracked voice that I had forgotten the sound of.
I may have been dreaming, maybe got my throat cut in my sleep after all. Maybe I had found Heaven, way out in the middle of nowhere. And here it was, sure enough, a lost piece of the world, and I was just a weary pilgrim with a long ways to go.

I got up to the front doors before the sound of a rifle cocking set me still. There was someone in a window nearby. A voice spoke out. I couldn’t see his face, it was too dark inside, but I could hear him well enough. It was a boy’s voice.
He asked me, real polite like given that he had a bead on me: who I was, where I’d come from, and whether or not I served the King?

Gave him my name, first time in forever, told him about Golead, and let him know right off that I not only served the king, but the King of Kings, and didn’t much like not being able to look a man in the eye when I was talking to him.
That answer seemed satisfactory. Down went the gun and I heard him whisper something about me coming from “The Mission,” and before I knew it, the doors in front of me opened and I was let in.

The place reminded me of some kid’s performance of something out of Shakespeare. All around were decorations looking like an art class project trying real hard to make the school feel like a royal palace. Sure enough, when I met the curious watchmen, lo’ and behold he was just a kid, barely old enough to shave. He was dressed in football pads painted silver and touting an old Remington over his shoulder.

“Terribly sorry sir,” he said, trying hard to make his child’s voice match the regal setting, “you never can be too careful these days, the King has many enemies.”

I asked him who the King was, what this place was, and what- minding my tongue for youth’s sake- the hell was going on, but he just smiled and bid me follow him. “Even if you do not know the King, he most certainly knows you, and has awaited your arrival with bated breath.”

We walked down the halls passing by more and more kids all dressed funny like they were townsfolk in this weird grade-school production of King Lear. They all smiled and fell right in with us, dancing and cheering and heralding the coming of the servant of the King.

We got to the school cafeteria and good God, I didn’t think there was that much food left in the whole world. They had all the tables lined up together to form one long table piled high like a medieval feast, but there was no one sitting down to enjoy it. I was enraptured.

I looked back, and saw that I was alone. My guide and heralds had left me to partake at this table in solitude.

I had forgotten that food could taste this good, and regretted my relative starvation in the last year that had shrunk my stomach so I could not enjoy it more.

Nevertheless, it was divine.

“Now that you are fed, you must hear my confession.”

His voice was quiet, but enough to break the illusion of plenty and bring me back to the strangeness of the place. I don’t know how I missed him or maybe he had quietly come in while I was eating; but now that he was there standing across the table from me, there was no mistaking him: this was the King.

He claimed later to be in his 30s, but the man in front of me looked more than twice that age. He wore too-small football pads painted gold, and carried what I guess a lacrosse stick done up the same as a scepter. To cap it off, he was wearing a paper crown coated in glitter on top of his greasy white hair. But what got to me were his eyes—they were ancient. They were sad, mournful eyes, and seemed to look past me. They were looking, I think, for salvation all the while knowing that they were damned.

He insisted that we retire to his “throne room” which was really just the school library with a “throne” built out of stacked books. Of course, the kids were bustling all around us making sure he was comfortable and looking at him like he was Christ incarnate. This seemed to embarrass him, but he treated them kindly enough and sent them on their way like an old grandfather might.

“Who’s kids are they?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” the King responded, “I’ve asked many times where they came from, but they don’t seem to want to talk about it. They tend the grounds, keep me well fed… they don’t seem to realize how much of a fraud I am.”

The King’s eyes welled with tears.

“I see it in your eyes, Man of God, and even if your thoughts were not so plain, I am no fool. This is a farce, nothing more.” He ripped the paper crown from his head.

“Your majesty!” A child cried out from across the room.

The King looked from the child, to his crown, mustered what dignity he could, and placed it back upon his head.

“I made this crown when I was ten years old. I had won the school-wide creative writing contest and was made principal for the day. It was magic. Every kid in my class and the rest of the school looked up to me for a whole day.”

He stared into space for a long while.

“I honestly don’t know where they found it.”

“The children?”

He nodded, then moved on.

“I was a writer, though not a very good one. You know how it is though, the folks who would benefit the most from schooling and critique are always the ones who aren’t willing to admit that they need it. I was the best, and was so sick and damned tired of being the only one who realized it. I was going to win a Pulitzer prize and be ushered into the annals of history with Marlowe and Shakespeare, and usurp Twain as the greatest American author.

But rejection letters and an empty wallet were all I had to bolster my claims to greatness, serving only to justify my belief that so transcendent must my work be, that the time had not yet come for them to be lauded. Soon, I told myself. Soon.

Around my 33rd birthday, this was what—two years ago now? I got a phone call from someone claiming to represent a large holdings firm that had been impressed with my work and persistence and ‘would I please come and meet with them in person in a few days to discuss my promising career?’

What choice did I have? First acknowledgement of my talent since grade school, of course I’d meet with them. It was at 5p.m. a gallery in downtown Austin, but when I got there, it was all wrong. Just inside was an empty waiting area, sterile like a hospital, and no receptionist to greet me. I was a few minutes early, and the meter was good for the next two hours, so I sat down and waited. Five o’clock on the dot a door in the back of the room opened and a sharply dressed man stepped out, just smiling at me.
“Mr. Roland?”

I nodded and stood up to meet him. He ignored my extended hand and gestured me to the room in the back.

It was a dark exhibition space, and I thought for a second that I might have been roped into some sort of scam or trafficking operation, but the well-dressed man just walked up next to me and some lights came up.

“Jesus Christ almighty.”

The King coughed and labored to catch his breath. He stared into my eyes with that damned look again.

“You’ve seen them, haven’t you? Like wax dolls exploded with streamers, there’s not a thing on this Earth before or after that I’ve ever seen that compares to them…

Well, these lights come up, and there I am surrounded by them. This was before everything happened, you see, so I had no idea what I was looking at. The biggest thing, besides how grotesque of a showcase this was, was the fact that none of them seemed to line up historically. One was dressed like a prohibition mobster. Another, like a turn-of the century dandy. Another, like a colonial patriot. And so it went, one after another in concentric circles around me going back in time until the clothing was primal. The entirety of human history summed up in a perverse gallery showing: all of them torn up and broken and frozen in unimaginable agony forever in a hall of sculptures.

“We take great pride in our collection here,” the Curator said, “these are truly some of the finest human beings history has ever forgotten. Unremarkable as they were in life, their deaths have each helped usher in great periods of social change and cultural growth. And now, Mr. Roland, you have the opportunity to do the same.”

“I thought we were here to discuss my career.”

“So we are!”

He never stopped smiling.

“You, Mr. Roland, are a failure as a man and as a human being. You are so utterly unremarkable in every way except for the grandness of your delusion that you are worth something and worthy of praise.”

“Yeah? Well fuck you too.” I turned to leave.

“You have a choice, Mr. Roland, and a chance to realize the fulfillment of your dreams. But I assure you, if you walk out that door, your life will continue exactly as it has, and you will die alone and regretful of the wasted life you’ve been afforded.”

I looked back, “cut the shit.”

The Curator kept smiling.

“You have just finished your great novel, but not a single reputable publisher has deemed it fit to print. My employer can change that.”

He extended his hand, offering me a business card.

“Submit to him your work, and I will personally guarantee that it will be published by the month’s end. Further, you will be adored by your true peers, your estate will know plenty, and you will live the life of three men. When you die, you will do so upon a throne of your own making, and the world over will know the fruits of your labor.”

I reached for the card.

“Or,” the Curator said, pulling it from my reach, “in lieu of your work, you may submit yourself to my employer. But, you will know none of what I have just offered you. You will instead be gifting it to the world around you as you and you alone shoulder the burden of this age. Just as they did.”

He gestured to the obscene gallery around us.

“History will never know you, but through your sacrifice, all will be blessed.”

I looked at the gallery, and then the Curator. I thought for a long moment, then took the card. It just said “Management,” and an address way outside of Golead, Texas.

“Choose wisely, Mr. Roland.”

I guess I don’t have to tell you what my choice was.

I sent in the manuscript that very night.

By the end of the week, I got a check in the mail from “Management” for more than I’d ever seen, and a letter of congratulations at my forthcoming release date, as promised, by the end of the month.

My phone was ringing off the hook. Every major news and marketing firm had a copy. Everyone wanted a piece of me.

Then the first one happened and all of the calls stopped. Suddenly, the “Pandemic” was all anyone cared about. Before cable got shut off and they evacuated the major city centers, I saw one of the victims up close. Sure enough, just like that gallery showing, a wax doll exploded with streamers, face contorted in agony.

I tried to get to my mom… by the time I got to her she was already crying blood. She popped right in front of me.

My dad… he’d already shot himself, said that “he could feel them inside of him,” according to the note he left me.

So I left. I got the hell out of Dodge. I didn’t know what the hell was going on, but I had one hot tip and decided it was worth following up on. Maybe the “Management” would reconsider.

I got to the address and all I found was this school.

I ran around the halls screaming and begging and crying for someone to help, but there was nobody. Nothing.

Then I found the first of the children, smiling and reading quietly in the library. He told me that he had been sent to await the arrival of the King.

It wasn’t long before the rest showed up, all eager to meet the King. I’ve tried very hard to find out where they come from or who they are, but they all same the same thing: ‘I’m here to serve the King.’

They start hurting themselves if I protest too much. I stopped trying after a while. Like I said, they don’t seem to realize that I’m a fraud.”

He grew silent for a long moment and wiped a tear from his face.

“It’s like when I won the writing contest, to tell you the truth. This whole thing. My true peers…”

He stood up with a feeble groan and lurched towards me, furious.

“But, no matter. They told me upon my coronation that a man would come from Golead Mission to hear my confession, and then my kingdom would fall and the world would begin again. And here you are, and you have heard. I am sick of watching my skin shrivel, and feeling my bones turn to dust within me—the life of three men for sure. I’ll tell you plainly that bullets have done nothing, that swimming takes on a particular macabre joy when it’s impossible to drown. So, what say you, Man of God? What sort of release do you have for me? What weapons do you possess that I have not considered?”

“I didn’t come here to kill you…”

The King, seething, staggered back and collapsed upon his throne. He began to laugh, cackling out in a wailing laugh that echoed throughout the library and the entire school building.

He was crazy, senile, some poor old doddering fool that finally snapped when the end came. I reached out to him, I wanted to tell him that there were folks who could help him. Folks who could help the kids—but it was too late.

The King of Nowhere drew deep his final breath and, before I could grab his hand, he crumbled to dust upon his throne.

It took me a second to process it, but then I noticed the wind blowing through the shattered windows, and saw it blow away the dust upon the throne itself. Each and every book that made up the King’s seat was the exact same novel: a pulpy detective novel bearing the name “Jacob Roland”.

I choked. The air was musty, and things seemed different all at once. The electric lights were out and all of the decorations were discolored and rotting on the walls. The door to the library was hanging off of its hinges.

I tell ya, I looked, and I looked good, but I couldn’t find anybody in that whole building. I hadn’t been there more than a few hours, but the whole place was falling apart now. All that food in the cafeteria was rotten—seemed like it had been rotting for a while. The grass outside was yellow and overgrown.

I fled from that place and never looked back.

My friends in Golead wouldn’t let me back in after I told them what had happened. The old preacher, it seemed to them, had finally snapped. Maybe I had.

So I decided to hit the road, see what else was out there, see if maybe someone doing the rebuilding might take something away from the King’s confession.

Maybe I’m just a crazy old man like they said; but before I left from Golead, the first of the Witnesses had started to rot, and the birds were taking the rest.