Forgotten Ground Regained
The King in Red
An Abomination in Four Anglo Saxon Attitudes.
Attitude One: Anticipation
On a desolate street, the dingy neonsketched a lady lewd with lighted titsrudely blinking. A blended stalenessof beer and smoke, of smut and rot,greeted me at the door. The graying proprietorlet me talk as he smeared the tableswith an un-rinsed rag. He raised a sneer."No warrant I guess? You’re wasting time,but I’ve nothing to hide, so have your way.Look all you please. I’d like to knowwho stole the tarts." I turned to my search:dressing rooms and dreary nooks,the tawdry stage and narrow stairsthat led below. I’d laughed beforeat my sister’s belief in superstitious talesof girls who disappeared down those stepsnot to be seen or numbered againamongst living or dead. A dampness rosefrom the windless dark: a winding caress,the last weak breath of a broken soul.My deception felt thin: no detective in truth,only a woman seeking a sister and peace.I had made ready for mundane ugliness:for a grimy passage and grisly secretsnot for this naked feeling, this nauseous senseof standing poised, one step from falling.My heart staggered with a hopeless lustto cast my soul into the sensate void.Black stars rose at the stairwell’s footand a sudden wind whipped through my hair.One wanton step, and the world was gone.
Attitude Two: Incomprehension
I gasped and staggered in the gaping air.A fetid field gave my feet purchase,crusted with dank and crippled weeds,overlooking a lightless, brooding lake.A towering barrow was built on the shoreon which a lordly figure was laid in statedraped in royal robes as red as blood.Another man stood, crowned and starkly palehis hair a halo of high flown cloudsthat dog the moon, his clothes milk-white,near to my side. He said, with a smilemore fey than kind: "That is the King in Red.He buries himself in heedless slumberdreaming of your life to draw his mindfrom sorrow’s grip. He sacrificed all the ones he loved, and lost just the same.I was his doom. I took daughters, sonshorses, halls, even his haughty queen:laid waste his world. No wonder I becamea hated thing that haunts his dreams."He might have spoken of sports or games,so casually he talked, so calmly he smiled,but it hurt me to think of hatred and love.I said, "I am seeking my sister and otherswho came here as I did." He cocked his head."I told you: your talk, in turn my answers,even the airy stars are all stuff of his dream.There were no women. He’ll wake and then,you’ll cease to exist." I saw no truthin his murderous logic: "I live and am morethan a fancied shadow: I feel my reality.""You remain a part, whether real or not,of the king's dream. You cannot denyonly the dreamer is real in the realm of sleep.That makes a syllogism, only solved one way."I saw neither solution nor sense in his wordsand replied, "I will rouse him and reveal the truth."His locks shivered. "A shame," he said.
Attitude Three: Bravado
Down I went through that dismal placetreading on rocks and treacherous thornsto the barrow that shaded the bitter lake.As I climbed aloft, the altitude swayedand space distented in dizzy perspective.The earth receeded; the edifice stretched.There lay the king all lost and lornhis face a study in stricken linesno gentle sleep could slur to peace.I put out my hand, then halted in pitythinking that, waking, he would be sureto relive once more the wretched despairthat carved his face in furrows so cruel.Yet he lay so still that I started to thinkhis features formed: a fanciful design as if he wore a mask or was made of wood."Where are the women?" I wondered aloud."Just disappeared? Is my doom like theirs?A forgotten woman: who wonders aboutone more marked down missing or murdered?Is the price for letting my precious sistersuccumb to hardship, for hating her need,for saying I hated her, the same dark fate?Did I learn too late that I loved her?"I closed my eyes and clutched his armbut hesitated to speak. A hellish fearcoursed through me of things unknown,and my resolve faltered. Then rage in turndrove back my fear. I faced my weakness.I meant to act and make an end.I wanted my life, my world, my sister.I shook him, shouted, then taken by a shift,queer and quiet, a quickening and death,I woke but not to greet the world of bustlingjoy and sorrow that once seemed so real.
Attitude Four: Despair
I lay on my back, and back to me camemy true memories marching in step:the dear, dead demons of my distant past,the old happiness all hewn to shreds,the land and loved ones lost forever.I screamed aloud. I scratched wildlyat my loathsome face, too late knowing howto wit the words of the White King.My dreamworld was a wish and no moreto live another life, love other kin.Now they were nothing, nobody, nowhere.There were no women, not even the oneI had dreamed of being; no dreadful stairsno sister unburied or hope of salvationnor the scant empathy of an enemy lingeringto meditate on the pain of the man he abased.I was the most miserable of mortal menrecalled unready to regrets and the cruelcurse of knowing I was the King in Red.
Copyright © J.Y.T. Kennedy, 2018
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