The Hanged Prince

Once, and never again, Death did not come. Everywhere was blackness. Faces blotted through the shadows like inky letters bleeding from one page to another, staining layers of the King’s miasmic manifesto who sat upon his throne surrounded by the darkness as if afloat a pond reflecting stars betwixt a forest shrouded in night, entranced with fear by the hellish play twinkling in the sky above that plagued his sleepless mind with paranoia. Every rasping breath bulged his milk-glass eyes wide in terror of what lies beyond the veil of light. He dared not to move, fearful that the star-stippled surface would shatter like glass, casting him into the unknown darkness below. The stillness whispered,

           It is coming,

           It is coming,

           It is coming.

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The Prince laid across his bed drenched in dappled sunlight, lazing the day by wont of One Hundred delicate fingers feeding his every pleasure in wait of wake for him to rule a million fingers more that would mould his tomorrow. On this day, like any other, where deliciousness has lost its meaning in monotony, this day would offer medicine and pride would name it poison, spreading its sickness to every soul until wellness has become a festering idol.

The Prince ventured from his palace and so crossed the threshold from paradise to not, his stare hardening to stone in the lowly place, casting indifference to the filthy mouths espousing pathetic pleas for little things. What a pity, he thought, to waste wishes on practically nothing. Suddenly, the Prince’s wrist was seized by a beggar, whose bright stare smoldered the prince’s stony gaze unto great obsidian mirrors, evoking within their reflections a pestilent demon there to drag the Prince to the fiery pits. The beggar spoke,

You do not have tomorrow, for you are already dead. Even this moment is beyond your grasp. So, what will you do now, when you have nothing left?

The royal guard pulled the beggar away and the Prince shouted in his trail,

Hang him!

Hang him!

Hang him!

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Strung by foot and hanged before the court, above royal flagstone and below the sunken eyes of the King’s throne, the beggar stared into the void of his damnation. Yet his smile never faded and instead the grave visage was crowned, shaking in horrific wait of their dark angelic guest who haunts the peripheries of his waking nightmares. No words were said at the beggar’s trial, but the King’s tremored hand signaled,

           On with it

And the hand of the executioner dragged his ceremonial blade across the beggar’s throat. The Prince at his father’s right could not stifle his mirth at the sight of what he created. The beggar’s life flooded over his face, raining upon the earth, and death flashed before his eyes.

At the King’s left stood a great sorceress. She watched the hanged man fade into that great, mortal slumber and in that moment saw the one who travels in between falling grains of sand, the one who gives meaning to the space between where things once were, the reaper of souls sown by the other one, and its name is Death. The beggar’s smile only stretched further, his hands struggling in knots tied behind his back as he yearned to take Death’s sweet kiss in full embrace, like a lover returned from war. And then- he was gone, all but his rapturous grin. The Sorceress flinched and all the wind left her lungs as Death turned and looked into her, only to disappear within the next instant. She looked down to the seated king, whose eyes remained peeled in trepidation. Only then did she notice the bubbles floating around his head. Lowering to her king’s ear, she whispered,

           My lord, I can help you.

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The next day, the Prince laid amongst his usual pleasures, sorely in need of celebrating his retribution. With the last bite of his mid-day feast, his two most loyal guards dragged him across the palace to a hidden cell well beneath the court. He was allowed to scream for help along the way.

The torch-lit cell cast monstrous features that writhed across the faces of the King, the Sorceress…

      …and the executioner.

           Father?

Asked the Prince. Silver chains were shackled into place around the Prince’s ankles and then everything was upside-down.

           Why?

Asked the Prince, and the King stared with a terrible intensity into the Prince’s panicking eyes. The Sorceress said something nearly inaudible over the Prince’s exasperating breath.

           No!

Squealed the Prince, as the executioner traced the Prince’s neck from ear to ear. His scream collapsed and gurgled until the short breath evaporated into a numbing warmth that spread across his throat. He watched the shadows flicker like unholy masks over the faces familiar to him since birth. His gaze followed the blood streaming from his head, dripping to the floor atop some newly painted glyphs and symbols that had begun to pulse brighter with every weakening pulse of his heart. He became aware of the Sorceress still speaking some babbling language that fell on his cold ears. Her thumb wiped blood from his eyes, and he watched her anoint the King’s vision with his death. The Prince felt the last beat of his heart and the tears that striped the red stains upon his face, but most of all, he felt fear as deeply dark as the forever night of which he hanged in wait. Below the Prince glowed a pool of black light, glittering along the cavernous walls like smoky reflections through rose tinted dew. Those anointed by blood given and blood taken froze upon the sudden appearance of the hooded one who stood before them. It observed the Prince with deep reverie and the Prince stared back into Death’s loving regard, unable to scream. The Sorceress drew a sharp breath and declared the King’s petition,

           Death! We offer you the most valuable life in the land,

           The Prince’s years for the King,

           To live and to rule,

           His royalty commands it.

The dripping from the Prince’s throat ceased to pitter against the stone floor and out rang a steady trickle through the silence as the King shuddered in incontinence by primal terror, for there stood the star of his shadowy obsession. But, the King of all specters would not face the King of the living, and Death did not take the Prince away. Bubbles filled the cell from beyond Death’s hood, bursting as quickly as they appeared, and with them, Death was gone. Once again, the Prince had begun to breathe raggedly through his mouth and sputtering throat.

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Death did not stop the King and the Sorceress. Every day, the tortures descended deeper into hellish visions lived by a prince who Death refused; and every day, the Prince cursed the King through bloodshot eyes charred with hate and doused with sadness, meeting the faded gaze bared wide in desperate horror and madness. His fingers, gnarled to the bone from clawing at his ankles to relieve the silver manacles grasp, would trace the scar that smiled across his throat as a nightly parting gesture, releasing his father from his cell as the bubbles would once again appear like hundreds of orbs of divinatory damnation. Perhaps, Hell can only exist without the promise of Death’s kiss. After countless nights of anguish, the ghost of the beggar appeared to the hanged prince.

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The King sat in grief, watching his hands crumble to dust with the world he shaped sinking through his grasp, growing heavier and heavier, all around him nothingness. He thought of the Prince, a pulp of a man whose cause was lost the moment life persisted. There was nothing left to do but free his son; and so, the King decided to free the Prince¾ after one year of fasting, lest the Prince seek revenge, his strength would be given back by the father.

What to do about Death? Surely, it would not refuse a kingdom. What happened next would start with those whose life is most pure, the ones with the most potential. And if they are not given to the King, the sea will wash away any trace of stubborn bloodline stains, for the mighty will not be refused.

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A specter, given form by the Prince’s last wish, like the birth of some Djinn cursed to exist by curse for curses sake, haunted the hanged man who breathed his fate and wasted away in silver chains, linked like devil’s tongues, locking the gate to paradisal gardens and licking one’s feet with blood drawing laps in every step to the place beyond salvation’s rainbow. The Specter spoke,

           What will you do now?

           Knowing tomorrow is dead, as is yesterday, and indeed so are you

           now?

           What will you do, knowing life is also there, that the kingdom is

           laid within you?

The Prince held the image of the ghost as it faded into surrounding darkness, his evaporation punctuated with a smile.

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Chariots arrived at the King’s gate. Adorned in jewels atop silk cushions were served babbling babes, their milky breath cooing and stirring the pretty bubbles that always seemed to float throughout the palace.

The executioner’s blade would never dull by so tender the flesh. Still, he sharpens while his body shakes.

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A family with nothing held fast to one another as they walked into the thunderous twilight sea, its great maw foaming, without ever a scream.

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In the shadows beyond the bars of his cell, the Prince could feel the form of something watching him.

           Father

He said, slipping into unconsciousness…

He was a boy. The halls of the palace seemed larger than ever, as if he knew there were rooms he had never been before but must go to now. Yes, that’s right, he needed to recite vows of servitude to an awaiting ceremony crowded with all the royal family and with father’s allies so that one day he may receive the crown without tumult. But he could not recall a single verse, nor whenever was the last he practiced. Without this speech, he could never become king. Wait, someone was following him. The Prince ran down hall after hall, this mysterious man, no, men, in quick pursuit. There was a secret passage within a storage closet that opened to rooms behind rooms. The Prince desperately crawled through the hidden entrances, only known to him for as long as he could remember. But he made too much noise, no matter how quietly he tried to move, and once again they were right at his feet as he crawled through chute-like tunnels that snaked their way from floor to floor, up and up, from platform to platform, men barely more than an arm’s length away, crawling as fast as possible, arms and legs burning with exhaustion. Finally, he reached the top of some spire with nowhere else to run and nothing else to do but fight. As the men piled out of the miniature service tunnel onto the small spire balcony, the prince pummeled them with heavy fists that died on impact, landing seemingly without any effect. The men towered over him, surrounding the Prince with statuesque expressions of horrible apathy. He cowered before them and put on a mask of peace, bargaining to placate the awful strangers.

Forgive me, all is fine.

Said the prince, backing away from the convocation of dangerous men. It seemed to be working, and the men only stood, appeased by his submissiveness. He spied a broken section of the balconies guard rail and positioned himself opposite to it, allowing one of the men to stand between himself and the impossibly high drop. The prince pushed him with all his might, yet the man was like a wall and all that fell was the Prince’s mask. He stood inflamed with dread upon his bare self, shame and fear fuming from his burning soul exposed to the audience who saw his core. He ran for the passageway, pulling himself from their grips, and crawled like a rabid fox between cavernous rocks, clawing deeper and deeper, exasperated breath, into a hopeless pit of pain and insanity, to be devoured in the grips of beasts or entombed within forgotten walls.

… The Prince awoke breathless and searched for the scream that burned within. Silver cuffs around his ankles prickled with the numbing reminder of Hell lost. A voice was at his ear.

           When was your last meal?

Asked the ghost.

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No matter how much blood the King spilled day after day, he withered more and more to the persistent spell of time. All he was left with in his bargaining with Death were iridescent bubbles, unobtainable spheres of existence that reflected his failure and reminded him of the mass grave of expended youth, a choking sea, and the ever-present last breath of the ensuing black angel’s departing gift.

He sat atop his throne, trembling over a silent kingdom of ghosts, his mind a boiling pot of cries burrowing through his skull that strangled his throat and heart. The King did not realize the Sorceress had entered the court until she was right before him, and in her hands was a basket with a loose hanging cover with something quietly mumbling beneath. The Sorceress drew the blanket aside, revealing the newly born prince of a neighboring kingdom.

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Four seasons had come to pass. What remained behind nothingness was madness and a king whose reign washed away the innocence that could have stayed. All that is young has gone, drowned in a flood as red as the anger that flowed through the man who lost what he had taken. The world did not crumble, but the hands that held it so tightly have become a ruined wonder atop a cathedra.

Armies from every neighboring kingdom surrounded the decrepit King’s palace, pounding upon his door for revenge of a generation lost, like the heart of wrath in the heat of battle. The King’s guards carried him to the Prince’s cell amid the blazing pandemonium to deliver him into freedom on the anniversary of imprisonment. Laid atop the carved sigil, the Prince looked as if he were some preserved ancient corpse, skin and bones, but with rasping breath cursed never to cease. In the year of emaciation, the Prince’s skeletal feet had slipped through the silver cuffs. He was heaped in a pile like a severed marionette beneath the chains that had become home. Pain was a transient thing¾ the sole of his existence, for in its venomous hiss was the song of bliss, a fire crackling to birth and to raze. The King looked over the Prince and fell to his knees.

           Why are you killing me?

The King cried to the Prince. He continued.

We are a dynasty of blood and dust. I leave it to you, for I am afraid I must be going now.

With his last bit of strength, the Prince stroked his father’s cheek, then his arm collapsed to the stone floor. Tears ran down the King’s gaunt cheekbones as he was carried from the cell. The gate was left open. All that was left for the Prince to do was stare at the portal to his impossible freedom and listen to the fall of his kingdom.

The King’s guards placed him atop his throne as the palace doors splintered with every huff and puff of the peoples’ fury. His bones quaked in the deafening cacophony of the fallens’ trumpet blares, crying revolution without salvation. The Sorceress stood before the door, chanting incantations of protection, her words mute against their coming perdition. Bubbles floated from the dark corona of the King’s crown, his eyes were fog suffocated torches bulging red and white. His mouth hung open like a puddle quivering in a storm. Every nerve was exploding with terror for the demons were here for him and they carried torches anointed with the fires of Hell. And then, the door was felled in a final release of carnal rage, flattening the Sorceress as if she were a grape. Hordes of villagers and soldiers rushed the throne.

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Unable to move, the Prince could not pull his eyes from the open doorway. He listened as the people stormed the palace, their shouting and crashing knotted together. It sounded like the world was being born. There was a scream that drowned out all other noise and then the finale of applause and cheers. In the delirium of revolution, the Prince watched as bubbles floated in from the hall.

           What will you do now?

The Prince heard. He took his last breath, completely and utterly in love with the beauty of the dancing light flashing so delicately before him in those bubbles, and all that was left of him was a smile.

In Death’s kiss so too is there God’s breath of life. Air filled the once-prince’s lungs and strength surged through his body. The sudden wind shocked him into a gasping awareness of newly born eyes and his flesh electrified in every brush he experienced for the first time again. He re-learned how to stand and took his first step across the threshold of his prison, emerging from a cave into ruins. The halls stretched on seemingly forever and he loved every step before stopping at the throne room’s entrance, seeing the remaining carnage of an idolized kingdom. He saw the royal crown laid mangled near the charred remains of the throne and the headless man who occupied its seat. The once-prince left the palace for the last time and chose an old road he had never traveled, picking figs along the way, and smiling as the juice ran so sweetly from his lips.

The End