In the Court of the Yellow King (16 page)

But I completed my task and when they charged into the room, I held up the blood-dripping, mangled offering to the King. I saw then that there were no secrets between us. They knew that I had tied the noose that David hanged himself with—dear God, he had
begged
me to after glimpsing the book—and they knew I brought Marcus to term only to offer him to the mighty King at summer solstice. “I have won and now I ascend to the throne! It is my right as concubine of Hastur! It is I who shall wear the crown and I who shall rule over darkest Carcosa!” As they approached me, I tossed the offering at them so the King would know that I was righteous and pure. Then carefully, calmly, and with exacting precision I showed them the knife I carried. How the face of the moon glimmered along its blade. Then, with the finesse of a surgeon, I slit along the outer edges of my mask and began to peel it free so they could see what I hid beneath, the face the world would soon worship and tremble before.

“The best way to get the better of temptation is just to yield to it.”

—Clementina Stirling Graham

“Just give in... in the end, you know it’s so much easier.”

Yeah... easier. It’s true. The easy way. The easy way out. Take it easy. Ease up, friend. Why resist? Why bother? Don’t you know that no one cares if you put a lot of effort into your work? Why do you struggle so? What a waste of time. Stop being so damn stupid and just relax—

Take it easy
—

“After all, a hundred years from now, who’s going to know the difference?”

It’s what the entire world has been saying to me my whole life. Well, no, not to me directly, no endless slacker choruses of hip know-it-alls, self-indulgents preaching a gospel of sloth outside my window as if I rated my own personal carolers of the Apocalypse... nothing so obvious, so easily spotted.

To tell the sad truth, that... that would have been something which I probably could have dealt with.

My name is Edgar Wilson. If you can believe that. I mean, who names their kid Edgar anymore? Thirty years ago was the rat’s ass tail-end of the twentieth century. What were they thinking? I mean, honestly, “Brad” I could have understood. “Clint,” or even “George,” dopey but okay, I get it. But... Edgar. God Almighty—

I guess when the doctors told them I was going to be born healthy without any birth defects they decided naming me thusly would help curb any sense of entitlement I might develop along the way. Well, if that was indeed their thinking, they were certainly correct about at least that one thing. Credit where credit’s due, and all—

“Really, why do you bother to resist?”

I had no good answer about my name, or to offer the eternal voice in the darkness whenever it questions me. I really do wonder myself. Why
do
I bother to resist? What
is
the point I’m trying to make? And, if I do have a point, if it even is
my
point, or just something someone else came up with first that I latched onto somewhere along the way—

“What does it get you?”

Another of the darkness’s unanswerable queries.

What was I thinking? Hell, really, if I wanted to approach the problem in any way objectively, instead of just resisting because it’s what someone, somewhere, once decided was supposed to be done in such situations, didn’t I need to have some idea what it was I was even resisting? Which is what led me finally to summon up the courage to ask the voice within my head—

Really, just what is it you think I’m resisting?

I mean, tell me... what is it you want me to give in to exactly? Just tell me—chances are I probably don’t give enough of a damn to keep it up. I mean, yeah, you’re probably right. Okay—I’m willing to admit it. I don’t know what I want, or why I do anything in this world. Most people don’t think, they only react, and damnit, I’m as much a part of “most people” as anyone. And, in a hundred years I suppose it’s not going to make any goddamned kind of difference.

And, I swore, knowing that for at least once in my life I was being honest with myself, I’m not trying to kid anybody because honestly I don’t know what difference anything makes any more.

“Your brain, it’s so cluttered, all those thoughts, ideas... so self-centered, self-absorbed... you know that’s not right. Not the way people should be. Not the way people are supposed to act.
Who
do you think you are?”

Of all the questions the nagging voices whispered in the back of my mind, they went right back to the one that remained the hardest to ignore. I mean, honestly, how can you? How can anyone? It is one of the essential things about oneself anyone needs to know if they’re going to advance at all.

Who do any of us think we are?

Children, of course, don’t have to worry about such things. They’re not supposed to. They’re not capable. Indeed, if you can answer that question, you’re not actually a child anymore. Maturity takes having reached the point where one is ready to assume responsibility for their actions. Children can’t do that. They’re too self-centered, which oddly enough, was what the voices kept saying of me.

And that’s such a large part of what I don’t get.

Me... self-absorbed. I know I’m not like that. I know it. Or, at least, I
believe
that.

And, maybe that’s the trouble. After all, isn’t that kind of denial exactly what a child would offer in the face of accusing authority—No, no... not me. I didn’t do it. I’m not like that. Their inability to accept blame is one of the most frustrating, infuriating things about them.

About all of us...

Those that mature, we’re (they’re?) not like that. They’ve matured. But, and I think this is equally valid, matured into whom? Into what?

When the moment comes, when the child’s eyes open, whatever tiresome, horrible, permanent shock finally comes along to rattle their endless, tiresome innocence into submission and release the growing suspicions of other realities, it’s always the same—

The baby learns to talk, and immediately assumes the role of the superior, not understanding those to whom it is speaking are not learning of the discovery of spoken communication through them.

“Sounds like a break-through....”

Is this where I’m at now? Just another of these early, formative points, merely another arrogant child’s well-there-certainly-can’t-be-anything-else-to-learn-ever-again-after-this moment self-deluding assumptions? Jumping jackasses, is that all life is, a never-ending series of lessons one can’t believe they didn’t already know, hadn’t already learned, but now that they have they’ll never have to do it again—

“Oh, yes... definitely break-through time....”

But when does it end? Does it ever end? It certainly looks like its ends for everyone else. Everywhere I look, slack-jawed morons enjoying life, typing away on their phones, flitting from one fascination-of-the-moment to another, stuffing their faces with food they can’t taste, listening to music they don’t understand, discussing movies they’re too dimwitted to realize are simply remakes of things they’ve already seen, pawing the controls to their televisions and game monitors like apes, thinking themselves masters of the universe as the world they actually inhabit shrinks to the size of something smaller than a standard prison cell—

Why don’t I get any of that? When do I get to join in? Where’s my ignorant bliss? When do I get to feel excitement watching millionaire thugs play children’s ball games?

“Oh, he has to be at a breaking point now.”

There are no answers, of course. Well, not for most. For the many. It’s not possible. I almost want to add the qualifier, “anymore” but would that even be accurate? Was there ever a time there were answers, whenever anyone could figure things out, how they work, how they
really
work... I mean, answers they could see and understand and relate to others? A moment when all clarity is revealed once and for all?

Was there ever anything like that for anyone? I mean, before the play? Oh, man... I mean, all I can say is, thank God for the play. If there is anything that has brought even the slightest bit of peace and understanding to my life, that’s it. Thank God for
The Ki
ng in Yellow
.

“Tell us about it.”

I don’t even remember when I saw it. That’s funny, right? Well, I don’t mean “when,” I mean where. Where I saw it. What a night, what a freeing, cleansing, perfect night. Whoever it was that I saw it with, that went with me... it’s like they just didn’t get it. In a way, it seemed like the whole damn theater didn’t get it. But me, little Edgar Wilson, son of Mark and Patty Wilson, little Eddie got it. In spades.

It’s kind of funny actually, I mean, the fact I can’t really remember when I saw it, or where, or with whom, or even why I went. But, it’s not. That kind of stuff is important to those who haven’t got things figured out yet. I mean, there’s nothing important about who I saw the play with. Nothing at all. Especially if they didn’t get it, when they didn’t understand what they were watching. No—watching isn’t the word. Not with
The Kin
g in Yellow
.

“What would the word be?”

You don’t watch the play, that play, you... I kind of want to say “experience” it, but that’s still not enough. Too shallow, too imprecise. The kind of word some college freshman would use to make themselves sound smart... no... it’s close, a shade of pale just one removed from the final coat—

You “live” it. That’s what you do when you see
The King
... you just goddamn live it. You’re not removed from the action, not by any fourth wall, not by the edge of the stage... nothing separates you from the action. You don’t hear the lines, you speak the lines, and I don’t mean simultaneously, no one else is speaking—

“You mean, no one is saying your part at the same time that you are?”

No, no—there is no part, there are no lines, there are no actors... it’s just you, living your role, being in the moment the way we were always intended—

“Intended by whom?”

And that was when it hit me. They didn’t know. Whoever they were, whatever they were, the voices in my head, in the darkness, the probers, the yammering noise, the outside grabs...
they didn’t know
. All my life I thought they had some kind of authority, or insight, or... or something. But they didn’t know anything. They were just smart enough to keep me off balance, to learn from my mistakes, to observe and comment without acting, without offering solutions—

The King
had taught me so much, without even trying. No wonder people called it madness. Said it created madness. This was the kind of truth that the world can’t handle. The kind that makes mediocre knowledge so useless, so worthless. I get it now. When I saw it, where, why, with whom, for what reason, the usual push-pin limits trying to uncurl the edges of a notice they honestly believe they want to show the world, but which they’re trying to pin on a placard posted in the dark, I moved past all that.

The King In
Yellow
is a release. Not from social conventions. I can remember the important facts, the thing that everyone was all in whispers that seeing the play made people go mad. All these nonsense stories about every time the play was presented the audiences would be left gibbering and drooling, running through the streets, wild-eyed, murderous, suicidal... blood everywhere.... God, what rubbish—it was nothing like that.

Nothing at all.

No one was left in their seats staring off into space, spittle dribbling down their cheeks, or scrambling to the lobby in search of a fire axe or some other object of destruction—compelled. Irrational. That kind of mundane fourth act was something only the laziest of hacks could believe would follow such a glorious moment. No, it was ever so much, much more.

I remember clearly—everyone was moved. Everyone was quiet. There was no mandatory standing ovation, no applauds at all. Just silence. Both human and electronic. No cell phones chattered, no cameras recorded—the trivial reality pretending to exist in the ether receded, illuminated as both foolish and unnecessary in a moment.

And, instead their remained the overwhelming roar of an intense silence, a penetrating, necessary quiet, one which the actors not only understood, but appreciated. Expected. Did more than their fair share to create. The silence only complimented their achievement, and you could see it in their smiles as they took their bows. They
knew
—

“What did they know?”

What we all knew. What the play had taught them the first time they read it, what it taught all of us when we became a part of it, what it has sitting there within its essence, waiting for all brave enough to face that part of themselves to which the play called out in the first place. You know....

Don’t you?

That was when I realized that they did not know. The voices that had hounded me for all those years, questioning, guiding, scolding, second-guessing me from the darkness, the carping, annoying, pestering building blocks of conscience and fear, bullying me into accepting whatever the latest norm was for socially acceptable behavior. The dispensers of each week’s guidelines—not followed at one’s social peril.