Where flap the tatters of the King

by Various

  —What?...(Moans, presses fingers into eyes. Groggy thoughts: Is I dazed? Am he been drinking? Are mental faculties functioning at a satisfactory level given the nature of the state of his recent my recent recumbent umbent—)

  (ENTER: The EMPEROR. The EMPEROR has not so much entered as come into focus as a thing to be apprehended as something apart from the already visible setting yet upon awareness of entrant not necessarily having already been present despite the sensation as a thing ing that has not ot already eady entered—)

  EMPEROR: Tall, pale as driftwood, a hoary beard flecked with yellow {stains,} in regal robes {purple and red and ermine and white leopard’s fur,} some armour {greaves, gauntlets, of light mail.} and a crown {gold,} A sphere with cross is in his left hand {drops} and a scepter is in his right hand {drops.}

  (EMPEROR reels, cavorts, steadies himself, stands. Man stands, backs off in horror, stares at the newcomer.)

  —Who...

  EMPEROR: (Aside) The melancholy hour approaches, and nothing may withstand that which necessitates you truculent desires. For each beginning there is an anointing; a cleansing. (Implores ceiling.) Even for you, your unholy majesty.

  (Audience: Laughter. The EMPEROR grins {teeth: blackened stubs.} He turns to face the man.)

  EMPEROR: (To man) There is much, lamb, which exceeds your knowledge, much which defies the blackest of hearts. Sanity is fleeting; pluck the fruit—unrind me as you will—and soon taste the nectar that false essence betrays by virtue of creation.

  (Pause. Man is still. EMPEROR clears his throat.)

  EMPEROR: I said taste the nectar that false essence betrays—

  —Who are you? What is this? Who—where am I?

  (Audience: Startled.)

  EMPEROR: (Shocked, then quizzical) In medias res?... Ah, surely. There

  would be a gap for a non-adept of course. Hmm... This requires...

  (Gesticulating, motioning up and at. Audience: Observant.) Foreshadow flashback! Background up front.

  (Audience: Grudging accordance.)

  EMPEROR: (To man) Attend and learn, though this may appear to have little to do with you, insect....

  (EMPEROR moves forward as man, confused, steps back.)

  EMPEROR: (Obsequious at center stage) There was a king who wore a mask and when that mask fell the subjects fell after. But masks must fall so ever more subjects must gather. Did I add the necessity of meat? Yes. When a certain book is opened it will not be closed. So a reader must be ushered in. Through any access. Footnote: physical likeness. Lastly, curtains up. (Simpering smile.) In a nut's hell. (Audience: Reserved chortling.) Now then: Ushers forward!

  (Clock’s hands swing counterclockwise. Door swings open. POLICEMAN, clad in blue, stands in doorway.)

  POLICEMAN: Mister Mitchell? Sir, there’s been a... circumstance upstairs. We want to make sure you’re all right. All right then.

  (Door swings shut. Clock hands whirls counterclockwise. Door swings open. LANDLORD, stout and repulsive, chomping cigar, wears a dirty tank-top.)

  LANDLORD: (Dialogue, rent and irascibility. Evokes nature of the establishment: A run-down hovel for losers all, dreamers doped, drug fiends, welfare whores, fly-by-nights, one night fucks, end of the liners, secret strangers. He holds a paper of legal lease in his hand.)

  PAPER: Signed: Jacob Earwick.

  (Door swings shut. Clock hands whirl clockwise. EMPEROR steps forward and hands man a newspaper.)

  NEWSPAPER: ACID LAB DESTROYED! Lysergic Diethylamide, no less! One Man Found Dead (Murdered!) Shambles! Debris! Room Alone Is Damaged(!)! Chemicals Commingled! Please Bring A Gasmask.

  EMPEROR: (Wiping a tear) Ah, Memories.

  Tap, cap, tap.

  (Clock hands return to their places. EMPEROR steps forward and hands man a key.)

  EMPEROR: Now then. Come. We mustn’t dally.

  (Audience: Murmuring.)

  “Michael?”

  —What is going on here? I—I don’t understand all this. Who are you?

  EMPEROR: The book. We will need the book. The book.

  Tap, tap. “Michael? Michael say you’re awake. The Landlord’s out and we need to—”

  —What book? What are you talking about?

  EMPEROR: The book! The book! The book!

  —What book you fucking—what the fuck is all this?

  Tap, tap! “Michael? What’s going on? Michael, it’s Jess!”

  EMPEROR: (Points) The book in the floor.

  (Man turns to look where indicated by the direction of the pointing of the finger of the— A floorboard among floorboards bears a tiny brass lock. This floorboard is no floorboard! Man looks again to EMPEROR, then slowly shuts his eyes and slowly bows his head.)

  —I don’t understand...! don’t know what is....

  EMPEROR: Yes, you are beginning to. I can tell. Now go get the book again.

  Tap, tap! “Michael, let me in! Michael, it’s Jess and I’m here, now let me in!”

  (Audience: Angry shifting.)

  EMPEROR: (Nervous) Quickly. The book.

  —(Slowly) I...I just don’t....

  EMPEROR: (To grumbling Audience) Patience! Please! (Pause) It is evident that we require the Chorus.

  (Audience: Settling.)

  EMPEROR: Chorus!

  (The clock spins crazily. Enter CHORUS. Two figures of a cadaverous nature, shriven, glassy-eyed, staggering, in robes of white splashed with gore, approach. Figure one bears a placard around the neck that bears the inscription: One Man Found Dead; figure two a small panel that reads: Ditto. They caper past, opening their mouths to speak, yet with the Man’s voice.)

  FIGURE ONE—Jess, you’re into the occult, tell me. You know something about a French play, late nineteenth century, author unknown? It’s been linked to various obscure occult sects, some even earlier than the date it was supposedly written. I’ve encountered five separate references to it in researching my thesis—even one in this, God, this sickly-sweet Celtic Twilight poem.

  FIGURE TWO-— No it’s on Victorian age drama on the continent.

  Here let me have a hit. Will you sleep with me?

  (Audience: Boos. CHORUS continues to shuffle across the room.)

  FIGURE ONE—Jess, come on, you don’t believe all that. Look, if I get a hold of this it will be a neat little addition to my paper. Bill, you know, Bill’s Books? Anyway, says he has a lead for me, “snare” he called it. A collector name of Earwick. Oh, now you may know an Earwick yourself, huh? Really.

  FIGURE TWO— A little apartment way over on the east end, told me to meet him there. If I pretend I’m interested in the occult, will you drive out and let me feel your breasts?

  (Audience: Hisses. CHORUS staggers. )

  FIGURE ONE— Yeah, it’s me, I—I don’t feel so well. No he wasn’t here, I’m here alone. It was unlocked, so I looked around. Empty and all so I thought I’d been had but there was this key on the floor and, well, I found it! I just read a page and of course now this headache. Yeah I know you told me to wait but come on it’s just—what? What’s wrong? What do you mean they’ll need access now? Who? Are you all right—

  FIGURE TWO— No there’s no pictures in here. No, I’m not planning on getting stoned—what is wrong with you? More information on the play? Okay, okay, just— please hurry over. I’m not feeling so well and I do so need your wet flesh your wet raw flesh—

  —(Aghast) No!

  (Audience: Boos and hisses. CHORUS “exits.”)

  EMPEROR: Thank you Bill, Thank you One Man. Fine exposition there. (Clicking his tongue at man.) Pathetic. Still, we’re so happy you've arrived.

  (The man, nonplused begins to tremble, staring off into space, pace, ace, ace, ace—)

  EMPEROR: The book.

  “Michael!"

  (Man goes to the floorboard that is not a floorboard that is a floorboard that is not a floorboard that— He kneels, unlocks it, pauses, pulls it open. A small recess holds the book. Man pulls it out, then winces at the sight and touch of it.)
/>   —Oh no....

  Tap! Tap! Tap! “Michael who are you talking to—oh Christ. Michael! Open the door!”

  (EMPEROR gazes at the man, eyes resting upon him softly as, thinks the man, a beast to its meat.)

  EMPEROR: Ah. Now then. We will continue. You know the page.

  —This can’t be happening....

  (Audience: Further angry shifting. EMPEROR is fearful, then angry himself at the man.)

  EMPEROR: (To man) Up, insect! Ready your meat! (Continuing) When the king takes the knife, the sheep will be carved and the blood will spill down his mad climax—

  —No! Wait! (Aware and terrified) I took the precautions! This can’t be!

  Bang! Bang! “Dammit, let me in! Listen to me! A tenant told me there was an acid lab—Jesus Christ, I can smell it in the wood....”

  (Audience: Grumbles, groans.)

  “Michael! You’ve got to get away from here!”

  EMPEROR: (Pointing at the ceiling, smiling) The doors of perception, my friend. There is always a way in.

  (Man looks up at the stuccoed, tuccoed, shuccoed, succoed, uccoed, uccoed, code, ode, ode, ode-— He grabs his head, book to temple, and winces, as if to squeeze the drug free.)

  (Audience: Grumbling, and amused grumbling.)

  —(Fearful) Only a page! Only one page! (He throws book.)

  EMPEROR: A single word is all you need to read.

  "Goddammit!’' Bang! Bang! "Michael, don’t pick up that book again! Listen to me. This was all a trap. Earwick is a sorcerer! Now unlock the door!”

  —(Frightened) There is no access! I did what Jess said and there’s no access!

  “Oh my god...Michael! Whoever it is don’t listen to it! Just walk away and open the door slowly. Just a bad contact high. That’s all it is. It’s nothing—don’t...Do you hear me?”

  (EMPEROR smiles wide)

  “Michael! Listen! No physical likeness means no physical access—it’s okay, just open the door! I’m here!”

  —No access!

  EMPEROR: Ah, but there is.

  (EMPEROR kneels, stretches hand to floorboards. A finger digs, and an object is pulled from the space between the floorboards. A single card is held up. The reverse is blue vines; the painted side bears a picture of a seated figure, pale as driftwood, a hoary beard, in armour and regal robes, holding a scepter and globe.)

  —(Despairful) The Emperor....

  EMPEROR: (Shaking his head) Alas no. Only meat for the one true emperor.

  "Michael! Don’t listen to it! Open the door! Please!” Bang! Bang!

  EMPEROR: There are many masks, but only one may wear the pallid one. He who shuffles from the shore in his tattered mantle.

  —(Inquiring of speaker) Earwick?

  EMPEROR: (Smiling acquiescence) Of this form, now, your guide and...play mate. (He smiles.) Now all doors may close.

  EMPEROR: Serendipity. You see you were, as was I, ready just in time for this present performance. You’ll do well for a matinee. (Smirks.) Meat is meat. For here the plot is actually secondary to the reaction the climax. (Waves hand around.) And don't you admire the staging, the props, the background. (Points.) Absolutely authentic.

  “Michael!" Bang! Bang! “Please!” Bang!

  (Man turns gaze to window, newly aware, then turns away, newly, awfully aware. His features are aghast, his eyes wide and white with horror. EMPEROR turns his head towards window, calmly, then back to rest upon the reeling, cowering, kneeling, huffing, mind-blasted man.)

  —Hali...Hali....

  EMPEROR: Hmm. Well then. (Kneeling to retrieve book, then extending it towards the stricken, recumbent form) You know the page.

  EMPEROR: (Turninga way, continuing.) And so this melancholy hour approaches....

  (Audience: Laughter.)

  “What is all this shit anyways?” He jingled his keys. “Dragging me from Charley’s middle of a game and all will ya turn you lousy little—’’ He turned the key, and Jess slammed open the door the moment it clicked. The door banged against the wall. Jess pushed the hair from her eyes.

  The room was empty.

  “Dumb bitch—What’s I tell you! No one’s here! The next time you go off your freakin’ head, do it somewhere else, hah? Murders and jerk-offs....” The stout landlord, muttering, threw his cigar down and walked away, waving off the other tenants who goggled and peered down the hall.

  Jess entered the room slowly and stood at its center. She heaved a sigh of remorse. The room was empty. A dusty window gaped upon a brackish morning sky. The room was empty.

  Oh, Michael. She walked over and knelt beside a floorboard that was erect upon a hinge. The niche beneath it was vacant. Seventy-five miles too late, she thought. She shook her head, then paused. Her hand

  reached out towards the only other object within the room. She held up a faded, battered tarot card. She stared at the seated figure, a glassey-eyed king, and closed her eyes.

  Oh Michael.

  SCENE: A room. There is an open book. MICHAEL and EMPEROR stand, looking about, up, down, around. The clock is silent. All is still. (Beyond the window, the lake of Hali, newly vacant, is now still.} Their visages are locked in twin rictuses of terror. They are now themselves still. All is as quiet as dead space.)

  Audience:

  EMPEROR: Here it comes.

  (Enter the KING IN YELLOW.)

  ‘The King’, in: YELLOW

  Brian Keene

  The man stood rotting on the corner. Frayed rags hung from his skeletal frame and ulcerated sores covered his exposed flesh, weeping blood and pus. He stank. Sweat. Infection. Excrement. Despair.

  Finley considered going the long way around him, but Kathryn waved impatiently from across the street. He shouldered by; head down, eyes fixed on the pavement. Invisible.

  He can’t see me if I can’t see him.

  “Yo ’zup,” the rotting man mumbled over the traffic. “Kin you help a brutha’ out wit’ a quarta’?”

  Finley tried ignoring him, then relented. He didn’t have the heart to be so cold, although Kathryn’s yuppie friends (they were supposed to be his friends too, but he never thought of them that way) would have mocked him for it. He raised his head, actually looking at the bum, meeting his watery eyes. They shone. He glanced across the street. Kathryn was incredulous.

  “Sorry, man.” Finley held his hands out in a pretense of sympathy. “I’m taking my girl to dinner.” Feeling like an idiot, he pointed at Kathryn, proving what he was saying was true. “Need to stop at an ATM.”

  “S’cool,” the vagrant smiled. “Ya’ll kin hit me on da way back.”

  “Okay, we’ll do that.”

  He stepped off the curb. The man darted forward, grasping his shoulder. Dirty fingernails clawed at his suit jacket.

  “Hey!” Finley protested.

  “Have ya’ll seen Yellow?” the bum croaked.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Finley stammered, clueless.

  “Afta’ ya’ eat, take yo’ lady t’ see it.”

  Cackling, he shambled off toward the waterfront.

  Kathryn shook her head as Finley crossed the street. “So you met the Human Scab?”

  “Only in Baltimore,” he grinned.

  “Fucking wildlife,” she spat, taking his arm. “That’s why I take my smoke breaks in the parking garage. I don’t know what’s worse—the seagulls dive-bombing me, or the homeless dive-bombing me.”

  “The seagulls,” Finley replied. “How was your day?”

  “Don’t try to change the subject, Roger. Christ, you’ve become so liberal. What happened to the conservative I fell in love with?” She paused and let go of his arm, lighting a cigarette. In the early darkness, the flame lit her face, reminding Finley why he’d fallen in love with her. “But since you asked, it sucked. How was yours?”

  “Alright, I guess. Pet Search’s site crashed, so I had to un-fuck that. Fed-Ex dropped off my new back-up server. On Days of Our Lives, John is still trying to find Stefano and Bo found out about Hope�
�s baby.”

  “Wish I could work from home. But one of us has to make money.”

  “Well isn’t that why we’re going out to dinner? To celebrate your big bonus?”

  They crossed Albemarle Street in silence. Ahead, the bright lights of the Inner Harbor beckoned with its fancy restaurants and posh shops. The National Aquarium overlooked the water like an ancient monolith.

  Kathryn’s brow furrowed.

  “Beautiful night,” Finley commented, tugging his collar against the cold air blowing in across the water. “You can almost see the stars.”

  Kathryn said nothing.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She sighed, her breath forming mist in the air. “I feel—I don’t know—old. We used to do fun things all the time. Now it’s dinner on the couch and whatever’s on satellite. Maybe a game of Scrabble if we’re feeling energetic.”

  Finley stared out across the harbor. “I thought you liked coming home every evening with dinner made, and spending a quiet night around the house.”

  She took his hand.

  “I do, Roger. I’m sorry. It’s just—we’re both thirty now. When was the last time we did something really fun?”

  “When we were twenty-one and you puked on me during the Depeche Mode concert?”

  Kathryn finally laughed, and they walked on, approaching Victor’s.

  “So why did your day suck?”

  “Oh, the lender won’t approve the loan on the Spring Grove project because the inspector found black mold in some of the properties. Of course, Ned told him we were going to rip out the tiles during the remodeling phase, but he—”

  Finley tuned her out, still nodding and expressing acknowledgement where applicable. After ten years, he’d gotten good at it. When was the last time they’d really done something fun? He tried to remember. Didn’t this count? Going out to dinner? Probably not. He tried to pinpoint exactly when they’d settled into this comfortable zone of domestic familiarity. By mutual agreement, they didn’t go to the club anymore. Too many ghetto fabulous suburbanites barely out of college. They didn’t go to the movies because she hated the cramped seating and symphony of babies crying and cell phones ringing.