The King in Red

by Ava Hall

“Well, when you read it, let me know if it’s any good. Perhaps we could do it for a play next year. You know, this semester I think there’s a production of She Kills Monsters coming up, that will be fun.

The only vague thing was the time period. I got the sense it wasn't modern, but there was no indication of it being set in a certain year.

Maybe I would just read a few pages before calling Emma. Because something about that word… Something about that word just seemed to make everything more exciting, like maybe we would finally get to some action or intrigue in all these damn pages.

STRANGER. You can try… But we both know that sleep is a blessing. And you’re far from blessed, aren’t you, Clara?

I swung my feet over the side of the bed and paused facing the window.

I took another step closer to him. Even when I wasn’t moving, the distance between us started to shrink.

I dreamt of the castle and the King in Red.

I was so frustrated that I went ahead and skipped the coffee shop that morning. I went straight back to my room, opened up my laptop, and started adding things to my PowerPoint. There should be a word for that: rage-studying or rage-projecting. Or just generally succeeding based on spite alone.

“I don’t have an answer that will sate you.” He said that almost conversationally, which only made it seem more condescending. “So ask another question.”

“I don’t know. I’ve just always been this way. If there’s something I don’t know, I want to learn it. Things are… fascinating, is the best way to put it, I guess. I want to know the origin of a math equation or the etymology behind a unique word. Or learn why dogs are so different from cats even though they’re both domesticated animals.”

“Loneliness is a feeling unlike any other,” he said after a moment. “It’s like an amplifier. It makes the bad things worse. It drives you to the end of your wits and kills anything hopeful inside of you…”

His words on loneliness hit me like a ton of bricks.

But in my world, these days, it’s so easy to just say something with no proof and people that don’t know any better will almost always believe you.

I think people make up romantic stories because they make people emotional.”

After that, he sang me another song, then another, all about different things. Then I asked him to sing the first song again, the one about the lovers. At some point, I lost track of time. When I realized how late it was, I’d been listening to him sing for a few hours.

So you don’t know how to garden?” “Not at all.” He shook his head. “Whatever grows here does it in spite of me.”

I felt the King’s hand in mine and smiled, looking over at him as he spoke. “No matter where you go in the world, I will be watching you, little one. I will never leave you, no matter how far apart we feel. I promise.”

And it was in this dream, with the beautiful, intelligent, sweet, fiery woman that the King realized how consuming love is. It eats your old self away until it doesn’t exist anymore. In its place is left only a partial thing, a thing that can’t survive on its own anymore. No matter how solitary, how alone, how isolated you were before, you can never fully go back there again, not without feeling like the world is crashing down around you.

“I should never dare to dream that you could love me too, So I could never keep you as my captive. But know, my dream, the life that has been set apart for you Is one that I am proud to get to act in.”

After a minute, I got up and went to the bathroom to wipe my face. I wasn’t going to sit here and keep crying. That wasn’t going to do jack shit. I was going to calm down, get a drink of water, and I was going to find a way to get back to him.

“Take off the mask if you want to come home.”