To be King

Subject: To be King Fri Mar 27, 2009 11:48 pm

As I sit here in this cold room I hear the rain pelt the thatched roof of our small home here, just a few miles from Riddik.

She lies in our bed, with our child in her womb. Our love is strong, so strong, we even gave into our passions before being wed.

Tomorrow we will marry. It will be the most glorious day of my life. However it does cause me to reflect on where my life has taken me up until this point. And it also makes me realize that if she knew the truth of who I am, and the horrible horrible things I've done, she would sooner call me monster than husband.

I am Erron Stairin...and this is the story of where I have been in my life until this point....until I lay in bed beside her, to wake in the morning on the day of our wedding.

Subject: Re: To be King Fri Mar 27, 2009 11:50 pm

My first memory was when I was only two years old. 30 years ago. I don't remember much of it. All I remember is my mother crying and being yelled at by a man. Perhaps this was only a dream, but it seems as if the man was a demon.

I do not know.

Subject: Re: To be King Fri Mar 27, 2009 11:57 pm

I am 7 years old. My step-father is an abusive drunken fool who forces himself on my mother nightly. I know this because he bloodied my nose one night when I accidentally walked in on them.

I hate him and wish my mother and I could just leave. But she refuses. She says he loves us and it isn't his fault. I'm left to question who's fault it is then. She tells me it also isn't my fault that he hits us. She tells me it isn't my fault when he rips a limb from a weeping willow tree and whips my back with it, leaving bloody stripes. She tells me it's never my fault when he squeezes my throat for so long until I pass out.

Is it her fault then?

No. I refuse to believe that.

Subject: Re: To be King Sat Mar 28, 2009 12:00 am

Mother says we are leaving Riddik and moving to Peregren. I correct her and tell her we leave outside of Riddik. My "father" (I am now forced to call this man who drinks and forces himself on my mother, "father") makes me eat dinner off of the dirt outside that night for having a "smart mouth".

They tell me the city of Riddik has no jobs for my "father". The truth is he owes too many people there money, from selling them watered down moonshine. I believe they want to kill him.

I wish they would.

Subject: Re: To be King Sat Mar 28, 2009 12:08 am

It takes two months on an elven corn grain ship to Port Io for us to reach the continent of Nerin Toth. My "father" met many elven woman on the ship. I know this because he brought them to our cabin nightly.

I was forced to sleep on the floor.

Apparently the husbands of these women were not appreciative of my "father" spending so much time (sometimes all night) with their wives. We were forced to flee the ship as soon as it docked.

Subject: Re: To be King Sat Mar 28, 2009 12:10 am

My "father" found work in Peregren. He's working at a mill, hauling lumber. His employer has offered to put us up in a boarding room.

Perhaps things will be better now.

Mother says the sky is the limit for us now.

I think we're going to be OK.

Subject: Re: To be King Sat Mar 28, 2009 12:25 am

Mother is dead. She hangs by her neck from a leather cord tied to a cross-beam in the ceiling of our boarding room. The room reeks of urine and death. The smell of her corpse on this hot summer day reminds me of a sweet meat smell. The kind of smell beef has when it has sat out in the sun for too long and rotted. The pool of urine below her swinging corpse has tinges of blood in it.

I am curious.

I lift her shirt up.

As I suspect her lower back is severely bruised. Kidney damage. I am 7 years old and I know what kidney damage is. No 7 year old should know that. I do. I've been hit in the kidneys myself.

I look at my my mother's swinging corpse. Her eyes stare lifelessly back at me. Her tongue sticks out of her mouth and dried vomit runs from it down her chin. Her face is purple and blood that is coagulating very quickly seeps from her ears.

My mother was beautiful.

Tonight I will kill my "father".

Subject: Re: To be King Sat Mar 28, 2009 12:29 am

I found "father" in the upstairs room of a brothel. The roof was easy enough to climb up to. When i look in the window there are men beating him, talking about disrespecting their hard working women. I see a few of his teeth fly out of his mouth as they hit him.

I smile.

They dump him in an alley behind their building. He is drunk and has soiled himself. I don't believe he's even noticed.

I hit him in the head with the handle of a rake as hard as I can. Blood splatters my face. The back of his head bleeds.

It takes a long time dragging him by his hair back to the boarding house.

Subject: Re: To be King Sat Mar 28, 2009 12:03 pm

The back of "father's" kidneys bruise as they hit the rim of each step as I drag him upstairs by his hair to our boarding room.

His hair is wrapped around my fists. It takes several hours to drag him to the boarding room. His hair cuts into my fingers as its entwined in them, like hot metal.

The trail of the blood streak from his head wound will stain these steps forever.

I drag him into our boarding room.

Mother is there waiting. I drop his head with a thud onto the floor and slowly walk up to her swinging corpse and hug her urine soaked legs.

I whisper to her that it will all be better now.

Her lifeless eyes stare at me.

It turn to deal with "father".

He has woken up.

Subject: Re: To be King Sat Mar 28, 2009 1:16 pm

"Father" stumbles toward me. I am not sure if it is from the whiskey he has drank this night, or from the lack of blood from the head wound I gave him.

My foot shoots out and I hear his kneecap snap from the blow. He howls in pain loudly. He screams and rolls on the floor.

I wonder if mother screamed.

He screams and tries to stand. I see his shin bone burst through flesh as it forces its way up and out of where his knee cap should be.

He won't stop screaming. I walk to the bedside table. There is a metal urn there with tobacco spit. I grab it.

"Father" screams.

I hit him in the mouth with the metal urn.

He screams more.

I hit him in the mouth again.

I don't know when he stops screaming. I just keep bashing him in the mouth with the metal urn. When I am done, the majority of his face from his nose down is gone. I can literally see his spine through the grime and blood.

He doesn't scream. But he still breathes.

I had prepared the bedsheets earlier. Cutting them into six inch strips and braiding them together.

They make a fine noose.

The makeshift bed sheet rope goes around father's throat. I toss the other end over the cross beam.

The leverage easily allows my small frame to hoist the grown man's body into the air.

He hangs next to mother.

His body wiggles. I will always remember this site. Mother's eyes with no life in them, staring at me. her purplish-blue face looking my direction. Her blue tongue wagging out with dried vomit on her chin. Her urine pooled on the floor two feet below her. "Father" is next to her, convulsing. Vomit pours out of the hole where the majority of his neck used to be. The smell of feces fills the room as he soils himself.

And then the head snaps away from the body. His headless corpse falls on me.

I am covered in feces, vomit, urine and blood. A headless dead body lies on top of me.

A part of me is ashamed for wondering if mother viewed him like this as he layed on top of her.

I hear the screams. The men rush into the room. An older woman who looks like some ghoulish creature brought back from the dead claims she heard screaming. The men toss "father's" headless corpse to the side and grab me.

I am 7 years old.

I hear the word 'execution'.

Subject: Re: To be King Sat Mar 28, 2009 1:28 pm

I sit in this prison cell with grown men. I have been here for three weeks. They have done things to me.

....Terrible things.

I can not lie. A small part of me wanted them to.

....I deserve worse for the atrocities I have committed.

There is a young girl here. A few years older than me. Possibly 13 or 14 years old. She holds me at night when we sleep. The feeling of her arms around me, reminds me of mother.

I hate this place. She is my only solace in this hell.

....

She tells me she is here to see sentencing. She says she is a thief and those who judge in the city of Peregren have deemed that she is to have her hands chopped off tomorrow morning. The same morning I am to be beheaded.

I ask her name.

She asks if I want to escape with her this night.

I say yes.

She says her name is Sabal.

My life will never be the same after this night.

Subject: Re: To be King Sat Mar 28, 2009 2:41 pm

We are led into the town square. A grown woman is in line in front of us. It is stated that she is a known murderer.

Her head tumbles from the chopping block like apiece of raw liver shoved off of a kitchen table.

Sabal is next. It is explained that she is a thief. She is taken out of the line to a different chopping block. They plan to cut off this 13 year old girl's hands.

I am next. A large burly man shoves me down to my knees. I don't struggle.

I deserve this.

My head is forced down onto the wet, bloody, smiley, chopping block.

I am coming mother.

Subject: Re: To be King Wed Apr 01, 2009 10:54 am

The death dealer raises the axe far above me prepared to bring it down severing my head from my body. This is what I deserve.

However my judgment must wait until another time and place.

The darkling girl, Sabal, leaps onto the back of a guard wrapping the chains on her wrists around his throat. The man about to end my life looks toward Sabal.

She screams at me to run.

The majority of the guards are concerned with her. I am ignored.

They are too big and slow for the small darkling girl. She flips, doges, shifts, and spins her way past all of them and follows me.

I don't know where I'm running to.

I don't know how long I run.

I am so very tired.

When I wake, I am lying in a field of wheat outside of Peregren near a grove of maple trees. Sable is no where to be found.

Subject: Re: To be King Wed Apr 01, 2009 10:58 am

It took time, a few months, but eventually I traveled back to my homeland of South Krest.

My "father" had failed myself and my mother here. I would show her, as I knew she looked down on me from the heavens, that I would succeed where my "father" would not.

I was a young boy. Only 8 years old at this point. i had no money. But I had a plan to make my way in the world of Aeon, and bring glory to my mother's memory.

I was an 8 year old boy.

I chose to join the Army of Riddik.

Subject: Re: To be King Thu Apr 02, 2009 10:51 am

I am 15 years old and running for my life. I joined the Army of Riddik not long ago. They realized my parents were dead. As far as they knew brigands had slain my parents outside of Peregren when I was 7 years old, just turning 8. The Kingdom too me in as a ward and placed me as a messenger for the army.

For the past 7 years I have been a messenger, and one day hopefully I will become a soldier.

I am running for my life.

We are currently in battle.

Subject: Re: To be King Sun Apr 05, 2009 11:54 am

At the age of 24 I am a Sergeant-At-Arms in the Army of Riddik. I have killed hundreds of men...women....I have even killed children.

My commanding officers inform me that they wish to speak with me tonight.

The evening arrives sooner than usual and I am taken to one of several palaces in Riddik. In the basement there are men who wear robes and are casting magic.

I don't know anything of magic. I don't trust it. The feeling of cold hard steel in my hand, as I slice an artery of an opponent is all I need.

The explain to me, that the necromancers are casting a ritual to use past fallen soldiers again.

They plan to raise their dead comrades to use in battle so that their forces are larger and virtually unstoppable.

I pay close attention. This is an abomination of life.

Subject: Re: To be King Sun Apr 05, 2009 11:56 am

I am 29 years old. I have met the most amazing woman and I plan to ask her to dinner with me at the House of Ostrich this evening in the park district of Riddik.

The woman is amazing.

I could easily envision myself having a family with her one day.

Creating life with her.

One day.

~fin~