King Henry Short Pack One (The King Henry Tapes)

by Richard Raley

  Me screaming at him stop sure never did nothing. Probably why I stopped screaming and just started cursing him after awhile. Made him belt me harder, but it wore out his arm quicker. Started considering it a victory if he stopped belting before I cried out in pain.

  King Henry . . . that’s awful!

  Don’t give me that shit! Even in your head, you nutty fucker. Where was I?

  Oh . . . Susan would’ve been the same with you. She’s the best big sis you can want . . . don’t know where she’s at now, starting to get worried about it, T-Bone. But what can I do? What if she actually was a mancer? What if she’s starting to go mad now and ended up as a homeless nutjob or something? What if I clue in the Recruiters and suddenly my own sister is dead with a needle in the arm because I said the wrong thing to the wrong person? Maybe she just changed her name. Maybe she got married, moved, had some kids.

  JoJo . . . well, JoJo probably would’ve fucked you.

  So there’s a plus.

  Mom . . . guess she would’ve been as absent for you as she was for me.

  How you handle that one, man?

  Think you could do it?

  Think you could live without your mom in your life?

  Walk down them stairs and find her comatose on the couch every four out of five days?

  You strong enough to take that?

  Or would it break you?

  “This is some amazing Pad Thai coming from a white lady, Gerty,” the real King Henry announced suddenly.

  “Thank you, King Henry,” Gertrude Bonnie said with a laugh, though she tilted her head over the racism. “I’ve just about mastered it. I’m thinking about moving into French cuisine next. Give these two a bit of a break from all the spices and learn to cover everything in a sauce.”

  King Henry gave her a smile back. He had his elbows on the table and Tyson’s father kept frowning at them, but wasn’t about to be rude enough to comment on it. “You know . . . you’re the first couple people in months now that haven’t second guessed about my name and asked for my ID.”

  “We did when we first heard it,” James Bonnie said carefully, still frowning at the elbows. “We were curious. But Tyson talks about you enough that we had to accept that it was real.” Dad was always careful, always thoughtful, caring more about reasonable than passionate arguments. Tyson had only ever seen him truly angry a handful of times in his entire life and never at Tyson or Gertrude.

  But he was very good at being disappointed.

  He was on the verge of being disappointed right now.

  At Tyson.

  Not King Henry.

  King Henry wasn’t at fault for being King Henry.

  Tyson was at fault for the unreasonable reason of investing in King Henry’s business.

  I could tell him the truth . . . he wouldn’t be disappointed then . . . just shocked.

  No!

  What are you thinking!?!?!

  But he won’t think I’m giving money to a hitman or something else badass or whatever it is King Henry is pretending to be that way!

  No, but he’ll know.

  Your mom and dad will know.

  About the Mancy.

  About everything else, vampires and shapeshifters, even if you sugarcoat them.

  And more importantly: they’ll know you lied to them about it for over a decade.

  “Tyson wasn’t too certain about the name or about me when we first met either,” King Henry explained while still halfway eating the occasional mouthful of Pad Thai, “I’m a bit of a problem child, ya know? But when you’re the only two Asylum graduates in the entire city, you have to be friends; only other person in town who can relate to you, no matter how different your attitudes are.”

  “The . . . Asylum?” Mom asked.

  Tyson kicked King Henry under the table.

  King Henry’s return expression said: I’m trying not to do it, but it keeps happening to me!

  As usual, it was never his fault.

  “He means the Institution,” Tyson told his parents. “It’s what some of the kids like to call it. I’ve never understood why.”

  “Probably the suicide rate,” King Henry muttered under his breath.

  Tyson kicked him again.

  “Anyway,” King Henry changed direction, “That’s how we got to know each other. The Institution connection. All the seven year-graduates try to keep in contact if they’re near to each other, we were almost ordered to it by one of our teachers.”

  Tyson barked a laugh. Forced indeed.

  You . . . you Tyson Bonnie watch King Henry for me, help him where you can with the Mancy, and be a friend if possible, was what Miss Dale had told him do that first day he’d met King Henry.

  Strangely . . . he had done the exact opposite of what he expected. He was horrible at keeping King Henry out of trouble, but he had become his friend despite everything.

  “Tyson doesn’t talk about his schooling much,” Dad commented.

  Oh God!

  But King Henry didn’t rise to the bait; instead he blew it off with a strange look on his face, “I used to talk about it all the time. Too much really. Pretty boring. Just school, right? Bit commie, but we all turned out okay.”

  “Bit commie?” Dad said like King Henry had declared himself a Soviet spy.

  Oh God!

  “Yeah, well . . . maybe hippie is a better word.”

  “Hippie?” James Bonnie said like King Henry had declared himself a Satanist.

  It just keeps getting worse!

  “You sleep in the same room, they have us all in uniforms, that kind of stuff was all I meant,” King Henry attempted to work his way out of the situation.

  “You sleep in the same room?” Mom asked. “Boys and girls?”

  Tyson stared down at his Pad Thai like it contained the answers of the universe. “Hmm?”

  “Teenage boys and girls slept together in the same room at your school?”

  “There are curtains,” was all Tyson could think to say.

  “Oh my,” Mom whispered, going red.

  “Anything else you want to reveal to us?” Dad asked wryly. “Mandatory drug use maybe? Illegal abortions?”

  “Oh, you can’t get pregnant at the Asylum,” King Henry helped.

  “What?!?” Mom gasped.

  King Henry frowned, realizing he couldn’t explain this fact to a registered nurse without admitting that magic existed. Even then, the Asylum’s field of infertility was a bit of a mystery and a running conspiracy theory with the student body. “Yeah, must be something in the water, cuz I tried really fucking hard to disprove it all.”

  Silence.

  “Cuz I had lots of sex,” King Henry added some clarification.

  More silence.

  King Henry put his fist out for Tyson to tap it.

  “Don’t leave me hanging, man.”

  Sighing, Tyson reluctantly tapped it with his own fist.

  “Don’t worry,” King Henry explained, “I’m a changed man now. Monogamous. Got Tyson for a friend. Focused on business. On the straight and narrow.”

  “With a comic store?” Dad went directly at his largest point of contention . . . not that the ‘lots of sex’ comment hadn’t visibly shaken the man, especially after the elbows on the table and talking with his mouth full.

  Tyson was one of those innocent people on earth that couldn’t possibly picture his parents ever having sex and tried to not think about the matter, complemented by being adopted maybe, just maybe, they never actually did have sex. The Talk between a small Asian accountant and his adopted African-American son had been about as awkward as imaginable at the very least.

  “Sure. Comic store. Why not?” King Henry asked. “Upcoming industry with all those Marvel movies being popular, right? Billion dollars a film can’t be wrong! Sure, DC is shit, but you can’t win them all.”

  “Actually no, despite that they’re still struggling mightily according to a number of articles I’ve read studying the matter,” Dad rebutted,
always having done his homework.

  “They’re probably undercapitalized. I’ve got plenty of investors waiting to take a percentage even if I blow right on through both mine and Tyson’s money,” King Henry claimed, “But I made a promise to only work with people I like. Can’t be in it for the money in a business, got to be in it for the passion.”

  “Like your brother-in-law you mentioned?”

  “James,” Mom whispered warningly.

  King Henry waved her off. “Nah, not him, I’d never let that slimy bastard have a foot in the door.”

  “Because he’s a gangbanger?”

  “Oh, he’s not a gangbanger . . . he’s more like a mafia don really.”

  It just keeps getting worse, Tyson thought, it never stops getting worse. You think it can’t possibly get worse and then . . . it gets worse! Yes, I’m repeating myself in pure panic!

  “King Henry has as little to do with him as possible,” he added hurriedly to try to limit the damage somewhat, not that the conversation on the economics of comic book stores hadn’t already earned him a stern talking to from his father later that night.

  “That’s good to hear,” Mom also tried to limit the damage. “You seem to have a far more interesting life than we’re used to out of our dinner guests, King Henry. If Tyson wants to invest in your business then . . . it is his money that he’s earned on his own and he can do what he wants with it.”

  Dad’s face said he hadn’t signed off on his son’s complete financial freedom, but his mouth stayed shut. “We just worry,” he eventually said.

  King Henry pushed an empty plate of Pad Thai away from him, burping. “I get that. Can’t say my own parents have ever felt the same way, but I get it.”

  “It’s just very obvious that you and our son wouldn’t have had anything to do with each other outside of that school and . . .” Dad sighed and shrugged. “I don’t get it.”

  King Henry kept his mouth clamped shut for once.

  “Unless there’s something else going on between the two of you other than comic books?” Mom hedged.

  King Henry and Tyson shared a look.

  “I’m not gay!” Tyson yelled out.

  “That’s not what I meant, sweetie!”

  “You did.”

  “No! Of course I didn’t! If you were gay I’m sure you’d have had your boyfriend over by now. You know we don’t care about that kind of thing. One of your cousins is gay and we still love them the same as always!”

  Tyson blinked. “They . . . are?”

  Mom frowned. “I think I just let a secret out of the hat with my need to assure you, sweetie.”

  “Oh . . . I’ll pretend I don’t know.”

  “Good boy.”

  King Henry had pulled out his phone and suddenly held it up to Tyson’s dad. “And just for the record, that’s my girlfriend.”

  “Bullshit!” James Bonnie cried.

  King Henry grinned like a fool. “Yeah . . . I’m a lucky son-of-a-bitch, ain’t I? My days of one-night-stands are over . . . I mean, now when I get to the bar all I have to keep me entertained is trying to get T-Bone laid.”

  “T-Bone?” Mom squeaked.

  Tyson pushed his own plate out of the way so he could slam his forehead onto the table top.

  “Sweetie?”

  Dad finally had a target he could actually target. “Son, I know you’re getting embarrassed by your friend, but that’s no reason for bad manners.”

  Manners.

  Manners got him into this.

  Maybe manners could get him out of this?

  Maybe it was time.

  Had to be better than them thinking he was a gay, gangbanging, commie, hippie, whatever-the-next-thing would be coming out of King Henry’s big mouth.

  “I can do magic,” he said into the tabletop.

  “Oh fuck,” King Henry whispered.

  “I can do magic,” Tyson said louder so his parents couldn’t mishear. “So can King Henry. His shop doesn’t sell comics, it really sells magic items. It’s the only shop like it in the western hemisphere. It has a massive growth potential. I could be staggeringly rich if this goes our way and, frankly, he’s crazy but he’s also a genius.”

  “Yeah,” King Henry tried to save the day, “I make really awesome saws and wands and mechanical rabbits in hats and shit.”

  “Nope. Real magic,” Tyson said. “That’s what the Institution teaches us. How to do real magic. It exists.”

  “Son, you okay?”

  “Do you need to lie down, sweetie?”

  “Bad idea, man. I know I was teasing you, but you got to calm down—”

  “You said you’d stop causing problems and you’d help,” Tyson growled at King Henry.

  “I’m trying, but stupid shit just keeps coming out of my mouth!” King Henry shot back.

  Tyson looked each of his parents in the eyes.

  He saw concern and love and confusion.

  He brought up each hand, extending two fingers about a foot away from each other. Inside of him, the ball of electro-anima in his chest uncoiled and traveled down his arms, up into those fingers. “Real magic,” he said one last time.

  Between his fingers a pure line of blue electricity flashed, sparking and zapping at the air. He threaded the electro-anima through that line and it all stabilized; a pure blue light of energy between his finger tips.

  “I’m a Stormcaller,” he said, “I can control electricity.”

  It felt like a weight had lifted off his shoulders.

  Then . . .

  .

  .

  .

  His parents fainted.

  They ended up on the floor.

  “Mom? Dad?”

  It was King Henry’s turn to slam his forehead into the tabletop. “I’m not taking the blame for this. Sure, I fucked everything up leading up to it, but this shit is all on you, man.”

  “Mom? Dad?”

  “Family,” King Henry said like it was a curse, but not nearly as colorful as all the rest of curses that usually flew from his mouth with such ease. “Guess this means I have to stick around and back you up? Since you’re my partner now and all that?”

  “Of course you do!”

  “Oh . . . think we have time to check out that spy van before they wake up?”

  THE END

  KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR KING HENRY SHORT PACK TWO

  COMING SOON

  About the Author

  Richard Raley was born and raised in Fresno, California and even still lives there on account of the city being an evil vortex you can’t escape. He grew up on Star Wars, Transformers, Legos, and Everquest—he never escaped them either. The King Henry Tapes now has five novels, with no plans of stopping any time soon (hint: there will be twelve of them!). Keep an eye out for King Henry updates at:

  http://richardraley.blogspot.com

  www.twitter.com/richardraley

  richardraley@gmail.com

  If you loved this work or even liked it then please take the time to give it a positive review wherever you purchased it from. You wouldn’t believe how much that helps us Indie authors out!