“I Be King”

by Jason Colpitts

©Jason Colpitts

     I remember something.  Not sure.  I think.  I think that was a…

     George stared down the road, crazed eyes scattering his vision about.

     A group of people with dark beady sockets cautiously wandered out from their hiding areas to scavenge on scraps from overturned barrels.  Dozens upon dozens of times these same people came.  It was rare one of them would dig up a new morsel, a newly discovered can thrown off a brick wall to shatter, fight over, and eat.

     Creepy crawlies wandering the streets, George thought. There's no food left.  Nothing here.  I took it already.  The buzzards come digging.  Children.  Women with rags hung about their shoulders.  Staring.  Angry.  See the meat.  Follow me, Work for me, better for food.  I remember something, a green light.  I remember seeing it.  a green umbrella.  Not anymore.  No one uses them.  Rain comes down on everything.  Cold and soaking.  Why?  No one left who cares?

     The people spotted him.  It wasn't hard.  He stood in the middle of the street.

     Stupid!  They don't see it, too mad to smell the jerky.  Here come the bats.  Time to run.  Hide.  Frothing men and nail sticks.  Hate those.  Can't run fast enough.  Run.  Run.  Run!  Too fast.  Stop hitting me!  Whack whack.  No.  machine.  Don't you know me?  Red and white blanket softening blows.  need more.  Too many, too fast.  Not vengeance.  Territory.  Just territory, animals.  Please see the jerky!  View the crown!  Leave you wretched, Dead?  Don't know.  

     Tomorrow, try again tomorrow.

     Lying at the edge of town, his body, beaten and broken, was left for dead.  The animal-men struck him until all possibility of movement was gone.  He was a threat, a potential competitor over the remnants.  They couldn't tell if he lie totally broken or not; at least George’s breathing had stopped.

     Hours passed.  Dirty rain slowly saturated the ground muddying everything.  Suddenly, he took in a deep breath, his heart lurching as if back to life.  Coughing and spitting into the muck, he drew his blackened face out of the mire.  Every bone cried.  His skin was ripped and bleeding, but this was not the first time.  Sometimes the human scavengers won.  Sometimes they lost.  Food didn't always work.  George needed to change tactics.

     His blurry vision was obscured in the dark clouds.  Still clutching the strip of dried meat, he wondered why they hadn't sniffed it out, or even how it stayed in his hand as the big one dragged him away.

     Holding it up to the rain, he struggled to raise the soggy slice of beef and clean it off.  They might see it again if the others were around.  He had to do it though, needing energy, calories.  After a minute it was clear they were gone, hopefully not too far.  Humans were better than wolves.  Once he knew the meat had been washed off enough, he took a bite.  Salty hide and dirt granules ground between his teeth.

     Dirt.  I known the dirt.  Fell to the ground once in a apple field.  Laughing.  Friends.  Ha!  Friends.  I known the people.  Colleagues.  Work mates.  Cackling vultures and friends laughing when I tripped.  Dropped the basket of apples and ate a mouthful of dirt.  Hate it when they do that.  last time!  Everybody had a good chuckle at my.  Pay.  Make them pay.  Pushed up the glasses with the broken temple.  Need to tape.  Fix.  Foolish gross self.  Stupid, stupid friends, not so much anymore.  Real character and need to rule.  Need to break apart the men who laughed, a cold cold war.  Patience and wait.

     I remember the green light.  I was the underdog.  powerless Weak.  Rise from the machine ashes disgusting.  I recall the name, George.  They called me George, made fun of me.  Smart.  Real smart, like a doctor and remember the brain.  Growling.

     Growling!

     George paused.  Staring out into the woods alongside the town, he desperately searched.  Blue shimmer off moonlit fur and yellow eyes crouched in waiting.  They smelled the meat.  They smelled the blood.  George felt lucky to wake up.  It wasn't the first time he had been left for dead, though never this close to the wolves.  Spinning around, he studied the town.  There were still doors on the shops, but many wore broken windows, easy access for man or beast.  He had to get up.  They were nervous over the smell of men, but a grumbling stomach always won.

     Never regret the machine and the green umbrella.  Not me.

     Exhausted, he stood.  Muscles worn and aching didn't matter anymore.  Stumbling as quick as he could, George ran to the only shop which had a solid window.  Thankfully, the group of vagrants left at nightfall.  He would surely not survive another attack.

     George’s thick shoeless feet pounded through giant puddles.

     The four legged canine hunters sprinted as soon as George stood and began to move.  The Alfa Male took a chance that this human was alone.  Into the wooden den and across the broken cutting glass they would go.  Maybe he was alone.  Maybe his man-pack had abandoned the slow one.

     George desperately reached out for the handle.  The door opened.  Running inside he studied the abandoned building.  It was a dangerous trap.  Down a long hallway with adjoining doors was another entryway, a back door and a rear parking lot.  The problem was, the frame had no actual door.  Someone tore it off the hinges long ago.  Dry leaves covered the floor carried in by time, wind, and many, many storms.  The wolves knew this.  Half the pack circled around the back and were already darting across the parking lot.

     How many?  How many?  Ten, maybe more.   Black animals.  Take the stairs up.  The roof will be safe.  Safe.  Jacket jostling.  Old fabric.  I can hear it tearing, so heavy.  Stupid to bring the book.  I a fool.  Need to leave it.  Get it later, tossed on the stairs and covered in the muddy wolves paws.  Get it later, even symbols can't read anymore.  Doesn't matter.  I'm be a King now and rule the world!  Never regret the green umbrella!

***

    George sat out on the roof all the way to morning.  By the time the sun rose, dried his clothes, and warmed the wooden roof, he knew it was safe to go.  The wolf and human packs were too afraid of each other to chance an encounter.  For a couple hours both man and wolf would surely avoid the center of town.

     Across the horizon at the edge of the far forest, George could see his home, his castle under construction.  It was too distant to see the workers, the other men who followed the smell of meat and canned vegetables.  Nor was he close enough to make out the ones standing on high with whips and chains in their hands.  They were naturally more resistant to the machine and could still formulate singular words, like “work”, “pull”, and “move”.  To these ones he promised a greater reward and knew they often forgot the agreement.  Who rules over the mindless?

     George strained his eyes.  Seeing was difficult without his glasses.  They used to be a curse.  Now he wished for them, but feared they would only get lost again.  It was hard to think, to see through the haze of mental fog.  He could at least see the castle walls, boulders wrought from the surrounding hills and dragged to position by the slavery of men.  

     He could also see the massive antenna, rusting away.  It no longer ran, casting its frequency, the invisible green umbrella across the world, but then, the damage had already been done.

     I remember.  The book.  I wrote the book.  Need to get it.  machine machine Sweet music.  The mind frequency which numbed the whole world.  Now everybody creeps.  I named them all, the bullies, my big workers.  funny.  I call the head one something, a country, a third world, a vicious one.  The other bully is named for another place across the ocean and across the sea.  Can't remember. 

     George opened the hatch leading back down to street level.  As predicted, papers lay all over the stairs, some with teeth marks in them and covered in the stink of saliva.  Pieces of his diary were shredded.  Some pages were covered in nothing but personal thoughts.  Others bore technical specs and computer notes.  A couple even had drawings of the towering antenna.

     But one page in particular caught George's eye.  He remembered it.  No longer could he make sense of the symbols as writing in English was long lost to mankind.

     "Day 383 - I will make them pay, everybody who made a joke, who poked fun at me, the girls at the lab who wouldn't look my way, every person who sneered at my research, and who laughed at the company apple-picking outing when I fell.  They all laughed at me like they always have!  I'll show them my brilliance!  They'll learn the meaning of intelligence when I rule.  My neurological frequencies will change the whole world!  Neuropathy can be controlled.  All I need is the right wavelength.  The modulating frequency should bounce off the ionosphere for miles.  With the other arrays, I'll get the entire population to cease forming proper neuron bonds."

     "Day 387 - I'm getting close.  It's time to consider the first test."

     "Day 390 - Test commencing on a localized population.  It was wonderful to see the frequency fan out on my monitor.  It looks like a green umbrella.  It's amazing to see what's happening downtown through the telescope.  The people in the center are standing around confused.  Their cell phones keep ringing and no one seems to know how to use it, or even what it is.  This is fascinating!  One subject just dropped his phone and stomped on it like the noise itself was annoying.  

     "Day 391 Two men fighting over a sandwich.  One woman tried stealing a baby in plain sight and the other woman did nothing.  Have to watch.  Wondering now how the array is functioning.  I'm.

     "Day.  Think the shield didn't.  Array stronger than I thought.  didn't protect me.  Can't remember how to shut. need need.  Not like the others. Stupid not as bad.  Not animal, but still affected. Didn't shield right. so many buttons array world..."

     He couldn't read the papers.  He didn't have to.  Chunks of the memory hung on.  His wide eyes stared into his past, a silent war monger, a selfish dictator too blind by revenge and rage to see what his invention could do.  

     George could vaguely remember he wanted so desperately to rule over others, to get revenge on them, that he created a machine with a vile frequency turned against all other people.  It short-circuited human intellect and plunged mankind into the Stone-Age.  But he drastically underestimated the signal's strength, and George himself spiraled down with them all into the depths of stupidity.

     Something moved at the bottom of the stairwell.  George didn't know what it was.  He always felt trapped between the wants of men and the natural environment.  He hugged the red and white blanket close and returned to the roof, so far from his castle, so far from what he tried to accomplish.  He could hear the whips on the far side of the woods.

     I be King.  King over what?  over nothing.  Over everything.  They build my castle, they believe the food and the lure.  Need more workers.  Come back tomorrow.  My plan worked.  Never regret the green umbrella, the frequency numb.

     Light breezes moved his hair about under a half-rusted hand-cut crown.

     “I be King,” he shouted to an empty world. “I be King!!!”

     In a world of the mindless, the foolish man rules.