Moments In Time: A Collection of Short Fiction (60 page)

Their lips disconnect, he lowers his eyes to meet hers. There is a flash outside, a flickering of light, and for one tiny instant she sees a reflection of herself in Chole’s bottomless pits for eyes: a girl in a queen’s robe, a girl in love, a girl scared to death, a girl with a wish locked in her heart, a girl begging forgiveness, a girl laughing and running in the rain, a girl with dirt in her hair and pride in her eyes.

Then the girl is gone.

“Janlord,” she calls out, madness stirring her to action, whipping away from her boy and angrily thrashing open the chamber door. There, the panicked Marshal stands with two frightened guards at his side and the bodyguard Tauron brooding against the opposite wall. “Janlord, the Queen gives her commands. Find the Marshal of Order and tell him that the Queen—”

“The Marshal of Order is dead,” he says simply, voice trembling like a little boy.

Not even death stands in the way of a Queen and her orders. “Then you are Marshal of Order
and
Peace now, and I
command
you to send your best men,
all
your men to the base floors. You—bodyguard, Tauron—to my side!” The man-thing obeys, face thickened with the stuff of dark determination, and he saunters past her into her chambers, the man like a nest of black metal beasts. “And you, Janlord … Eradicate all the rebels, keep them from me, protect your Queen as is your duty.”

“Our guards, many of them have turned sides,” he whimpers. She has never heard him like this, acting a baby.
He’s going to cry before his guards!—I can’t believe this!—Why, Janlord? Why?
“They are letting the rebels through … Many are surrendering, my Queen, they’re joining them. It is lost … it is lost … the Lifted City is lost.”

“It is
not
lost! I will not—Excuse me—
Excuse me!”
she cries. The two guards at Janlord’s side have abandoned him, tearing down the hall with their weapons clattering at their hips.

“Help me,” Janlord breathes, a boy converted, eyes wetted with terror. “Help me see the truth in this, Attie … Please, my sweet Queen of Truths. Help me see.”

Queen Atricia’s eyes turn cold. “Help yourself.”

By her limp and careless hand, the chamber door shuts and locks with a disquieting finality not unlike a Queen’s sentencing. The bodyguard Tauron is stationed silently by the bed, his dark glare affixed to Chole.

“So be it,” she sings, sanity unraveling by the second. She can hear it in her own voice and does not care. “So be it that the dirty boys and girls stain themselves with their own blood. So be it that they eat their own fingers, for all their lust and greed, greed,
greed!”
She glares at the sunlight now cutting through her room, an unwelcome visitor.
Oh, if it could only be the moonlight to comfort me, my friend.
“When they’ve finished their meal of my throne, there will be nothing left.” Her voice turns sad. She can’t let them win, even if they do. She must be strong, but … “The Lifted City will fall,” she says and realizes at the same time.

“They come, my lady,” grunts the one called Tauron, an animal in the room, a pet.

Atricia just laughs. What else is there to do? “Let them come.” She moves toward her bedside to help herself to a final glass of brew, then suddenly finds herself stopped—the bodyguard has gripped her arm. She rolls her eyes onto him, a scowl finding her mouth. “You may defend my life, you ugly brute, but you will defend it when I’ve a glass in my hand.”

“I don’t mean to defend it,” he explains curtly. “I mean to take it.”

She stares at him, uncomprehending.

Then the whole word shudders and she drops to the floor in an instant. Her weight has increased a hundredfold, no warning or explanation, gravity pulling her to the hard and unrelenting tile. Her knees and thighs throb from the impact, head screaming worse, her left elbow—so many places hurt all at once, she doesn’t know what to pay attention to. Chole shouts out for her, but is silenced as quickly, collapsing to the floor with a grunt, some invisible power pressing him down. The Queen tries to shout, but even her lungs are heavy … For all the sudden strain on her body, she can’t even seem to lift her head.

But the bodyguard still stands, expressionless, unmoved.

“You,” he mutters in such a deep and twisted tone it isn’t human, “are Queen no longer. For slum rats, they sure pay handsomely.” He grins, his teeth a ghostly white, his eyes like murky pools. “They paid me to off the Queen and ready the throne for their arrival, dust it off, a swat here, a brush-brush there. I’m good with a blade, yes, built as a gargoyle, but you never had question of my Legacy. My Legacy is in gravity, as I can make a person heavy as I wish. So poetic, isn’t it? The Queen, made cumbersome with her own weight. The Ego Queen, fat with her own self-flattery, her vanity, her diamonds … And the boy she beds, the slum plaything, so heavy with his own evils that my Legacy hardly stretches a finger to pull him to the floor.” He runs a finger down the Queen’s neck, lets it slip over her breast, lets it run to her navel. “Where does a knife live, when not in its sheath?”

“S-S-S-Stop,” she manages to say, even the weight of her own lungs too agonizing a burden to bear. “S-S-S-Stop this.”

The man-thing plunges his long knife deep into her abdomen, his smile vanished. She feels nothing but a pinch, the crushing weight of gravity robbing her even of the feel of a blade in her belly … One might almost call it mercy, how the weapon makes no screams of her.

“And once your eyes rock back,” he explains, his voice the slickness of the running blood down her side, “this same knife will meet the throat of your slum plaything over there. He put his mouth all over you, Lust Queen, I know all your misbehaviors of last night. He betrays his own kind, his brethren storming up the stairs of the Tower right now. They will know him for the fraud he is, and
I
will be their hero … Killed the both of you, I have, you and your slum plaything lover. Maybe I will be King …”

Atricia’s hand, flattened against the floor, it is but inches away from Chole’s. She cannot reach it, and neither can he reach her … Both of them held to the ground by otherworldly weight, prisoners to an unseeable force.

“King Of Brutes,” he sings, the song sounding a perversion in his twisted voice. “The Retribution King … That has quite the ring, doesn’t it?”

“Y-Y-You won’t be K-King,” she breathes, an unexpected calmness finding her. The words are but whispers, yet heard perfectly. “B-B-Because the wind … the wind outside m-m-my balcony … it sings to you a q-q-question.” She focuses. The world is turning a blur, but she focuses until she’s sure her eyes are bursting, until she’s near to rupturing every vein in her expiring body, popping herself to pieces like the glass on her floor. “Answer, Brute K-King … Answer the wind.”

The man-thing appears confused, even with the smoke of murder still playing on his face. Then with no commitment at all, with the voice of a sleepy child, he mumbles, “Yes, yes … Don’t think I’m … Don’t think I’m through with you, Lust Queen.” Suddenly she is free … gravity’s heavy hands gone. Letting go the hilt of his kill-toy—still plunged in her belly—he crosses to the balcony. The Queen twists her head, watches as her bodyguard heeds her order this one last time, facing the music of morning gales. Lifting himself to the rail of the balcony, the wind singing, singing, he answers its call with a leap of faith.

She doesn’t hear him land.

The face of Chole appears, blurring in and out. “Atricia … Atricia, stay with me. Please, please …” The world blinks, blinks, in and out.

“Chole, listen to … listen to me.” She realizes she’s holding the handle of the blade. She feels nothing … from the stab, from the blood, from slamming against the floor, nothing …

A crash of thunder. Arrived, the rebels are trying to break through the chamber door, trying to break into the room. Another crash, another.

“
Chole,
” she begs, whimpers, reeling her eyes, searching for him in the mad haze that’s become her world … searching for his beautiful face. “Tell them you’ve done it … T-Tell them y-you’ve succeeded and—and—and you’ll be theirs. Chole …”

“Succeeded? Succeeded in what??” He’s shaking, a boy who’s lost his courage.
Please, please, don’t make this count for nothing. Let me this one thing, please, let me this one good thing before I—

“K-Killing me.”

The words fall from her mouth so easy, one would think she’d planned it from the beginning.

“No,” he scoffs, dismissive, nearly laughing out the word through his nose than his mouth. He’s gone mad, mad as her, mad as the fuzzy world. “No, no, I won’t say that, I didn’t kill you. Please …”

“I c-c-could make you do it.” She grabs his hands—a wonder she is able to find them through the haze. She thinks she sees his black eyes bleeding. He’s trying to pull his hand away, overcome and emotional by her train of logic, but she won’t let go. She might leave a bruise; at least something of love will be left behind other than the ruin of a city she’s made. “You know I c-c-can do it … I can make you tell them you k-killed me, make you their hero. You deserve it.”

“I’m no hero.”

“Chole,” she rasps, her voice nothing pretty, “The Dust K-King … Has a r-r-ring to it.”

She may never know whether it is her Legacy that convinces him, or if on his own accord he finds rightness in her words. Even with a fog of numbness settling inside her, she wonders if, for the first time, she indeed invoked a person to see the Truth.

I see the dust queen you made me.

The door bursts open—she hears it, her world too far a blur to make anything but colors and shapes—and the rebels pour in. There is shouting and anger in one moment, then the silence of winds the next.
Such a gentle breeze …
Atricia wonders, considering how peaceful it is. She did not expect to find peace when the rebels came upon her.

“Chole … heir to the throne.” Even now, she can’t be sure if these are words she thinks, or words she speaks. “Chole … King Of Ashes.”

And for the first time in her little life, she herself sees the Queen’s Truth. Chole and his victory … the rebels won over by his duty. Chole and the throne, the people protecting his honor the way a mother protects a child, pure and true.
Oh, the cheers, the celebration … I see it.
Janlord, kind and wise, he’s surrendered and spared his necessary life, his wisdom taken with due importance and weight, revered as it ought to be.
You were always good and kind … Too kind. That kindness will be Chole’s weakness too. Please, protect him if you can …
Chole will work to unite the cities of sky and earth, Lifted and slum, a good and proud King, but for how long will a hard city hold against a soft heart?

“I’ve done it,” says a voice so far away, a voice like home.

Oh, she still grips his arm … his heat still close enough to be felt. Or has she let go? They are asking questions now, she hears it … Chole speaking, his voice a song, an innocence, just as she always remembered.

And in a world where no one sleeps, Queen Atricia closes her eyes and never again opens them.

The dwelling in a fourth ward slum of her memory washes forth to take her home. It is a memory she thought was gone, a day in the slums kissed by sunlight, her friend again. Cool summer winds playing in her hair, there is a boy in her yard, a boy with hair of night. His eyes catch hers, he smiles with big proud lips and says: “See the dust queen I made you? See how she dances?”

Little Atricia laughs, reaches out to claim the queen and take her dance. She reaches and reaches, forever reaching.

About the Author

Daryl Banner is a writer,
composer, and performer who graduated from the University of Houston with a degree in Theater and Psychology. He does not write in any single genre, as his stories tend to span several. He is most inspired by the smart and unlikely hero, but urges you (the reader) not to fall in love with them; they may deceive you with their innocence. He is thrilled by putting his characters in terrible situations where they must face choices and challenges that seem impossible to overcome.

Daryl may be found on social media at:

Facebook:
Daryl Banner Writer

YouTube:
Daryl Banner

Website:
www.darylbanner.com

Books by Daryl Banner include:

The Outlier Series

Outlier: Book 1
(coming Summer 2014)

Other Books

The Beautiful Dead

Super Psycho Future Killers

Psychology Of Want

An Undertow short story

by Amber Lynn Natusch

Edited by Jennifer Ryan

After years on the run from her abusive ex, Cristina seeks refuge in an unlikely place—Alaska. When a handsome fisherman enters her life, can she stop looking over her shoulder long enough to give him a chance, or will her past continue to dictate her future . . . a future full of solitude and regret?