Posts Tagged ‘2009’

Once upon a time in a glittering kingdom by the sea there lived a dark man. He had dark eyes and dark hair, dark clothes and dark thoughts, and he lived by himself in a great dark castle up on a hill. This was strange, because the kingdom was warm and sunny, with warm sunny people, but the dark man saw none of them, and none of them saw him.

One day a little boy came to the glittering kingdom. His eyes shone and he wanted very much to be a part of that beautiful place, though in his heart of hearts he knew he did not belong there because he was made of the same stuff as that dark man on the hill. So he paid the man a visit, and dark met dark, and they enveloped each other like a black crayon in a puddle of oil in a cave at the bottom of the sea. Blacker than black.

They stayed together for many years and shared many things, their dreams and their thoughts, parts of their lives they’d never told anyone else, because no one would have understood them. They smiled sharp smiles and laughed sharp laughs and reveled in the darkness that was theirs because finally they’d each found something they’d needed all along. Life was good. They were suddenly, strangely happy.

One day the boy was exploring the dark castle and he found a room he hadn’t seen before. It was filled with giant cases and closets stuffed full of books and clothes and all kinds of things. The boy was curious, and he took the clothes out of their boxes and tried them on, one at a time. They were dark clothes, of course, but very finely made and they fit him perfectly. He was thrilled to have made such a find, though he was nervous that the room had been hidden because the dark man didn’t want anyone to see it. Even the little boy.

So he turned to leave the room. But on his way out he tripped over a heavy, beautifully ornate box carved all over with strange symbols. He opened the box and inside was a crown. It was the first thing he had seen in the house that was not dark, for this crown was blood red, glowing like Hellfire and brighter than all the bright things in that shining city. It spoke to his fingers of the tremendous power it contained and the boy couldn’t resist placing it on his head, if only for a moment, just to see how it felt. After all, the dark man was practically his father, and no harm would ever come to him in their dark home.

For a moment it stayed snugly atop his head and the boy felt a warmth pouring over him, bringing with it a terrible rush of strength and the awareness that the owner of this crown was far more than what he seemed. He had just enough time to wonder about the true identity of the dark man when the crown grew in size, big enough to slip down off his head, over his nose to land heavily on both shoulders.

This not being proper crown behavior at all, the boy raised a hand to lift the crown back to its proper place but it reverted back to crown-size before he could move it. In fact, it began to shrink even smaller, drawing tight around his neck and then tighter still, until the sound of the boy’s struggle for breath was cut off by the pounding of the blood in his ears. As his breath left him, his vision began to flicker out, first dimming to red, then brown, and finally to black. Blacker than black.

The dark man found him later that night, after an hour of walking through the dark castle, calling his name. By then the crown was crown-sized again, laying benignly next to the crumpled body with the hands still curled from trying to claw it away. The man stared for a long time before he scooped the crown from the floor, placing it on his own head. It fit perfectly, as it had for centuries, ever obedient. Shaking his head, the king gathered the body of the boy from the floor and took it away to yet another hidden dark room in the dark house, where it would lie with his other mistakes until a time when the dark outnumbered the light, and the glittering kingdom would be bright no more.