Part 1: Who Am I?

I am a vassal of emptiness, a wastoid of human wreckage, disconnected from all living things, my true self banished to hidden darknesses, never to see the light of day. I suffer the worst of the possible fates: I am unknown. My heart beats for no reason, no purpose, soundless to the world. I do not eat but rather ingest. I do not live but rather act in permanent charade. What is there for me? What can I be? Who can I be? Who am I?

I am the king.

I must live with the terror of living with men who blindly obey my commands. Men who would rebuke me if I were to rebuke my illusory command. I'm trapped in Hell's hopeless pretense, defined by "meeting expectations" set for me by a tyrannical populace. Sure, somewhere deep in their hearts, they know what fraudulence this be. It's only good to be king when you're not the king. If I were to proclaim this openly only one soul in a thousand would understand.

Love is the biggest issue. I fear it more than any other. Being without it only makes its importance more harrowingly clear. With each passing day the affairs of state seem more and more farcical and irrelevant. I am a joke, a waste of everyone's time. Even I speak behind my back. I feel helpless, as one stuck in an overpowering current, my decisions mean nothing as my circumstance outweighs my will. I simply pose to be making a difference.

My funeral will be attended by thousands but mourned by none. Oh, they may cry over the idea of who I am, but I was never really me. Take away my crown and I'd be the most unnoticed man in the room. I've tested the limits over the years, making insane decisions to see who - or if - anyone would fight back. None ever did. They claimed that would be betrayal. Those sad, stupid men. They think themselves clever and politic in mutual destruction knowing full well their obedience is my betrayal.

I am the most guarded man in the land. To what purpose? I see the toiling peasants and feel no better - if anything, the lesser, a man further from honesty. One feels one will wake up one morning with everyone deciding what a mad spectacle this is, taking my crown and putting me in the fields to work. What could be my argument against it? I've become addicted to this lifestyle in a conspiracy of despair unseen in all the ages. I was never our ruler. Only madness has ruled us.

I've been given the power of life and death. Why is that? Because of a supposed wisdom or morality to be claimed by me? I have neither. You cannot measure the sorrow I feel in a church performing pathetic rituals for a God I long ago abandoned. No, I am not the one you seek to guide you. But do I dare explain that? The power of life and death is the thrill of the political priests, insisting I must have this power so the blood will stain only my hands as they avow or disavow as is their pleasure. Killing spares its harm to no soul, no matter how sanctioned by a willing people.

Crooks cheer me when I'm crooked. Angels cheer me when I'm angelic. But will my soul be lessened its fate of the unloved by false cheers? Not a whit. God has no knowledge of this fiction we've created called royalty. Every soul is precious and must not be damaged. But they say the king's is less important, to be damaged to "keep us safe", of all the crazy ideas. How can damaging a soul help ensure the world?

The slide into self-deception hastened many, many years, deceiving myself into thinking I was doing "important matters". But only love matters, nothing else - no matter how much those around me insist otherwise. Are their lives so loveless they must fervently seek to make mine to be as well? But like a piece of rotted wood I can serve no real purpose (for how does rotted wood become whole again?) but to decompose and return to Nature. I must hide this horror from my mind just to make it through the day.

Rage boils within. I started a war once out of sheer frustration. Men died and women cried because of an angry whim. Is that why we created a king, because of so many directionless lives needing something to die for? I know the truth of my motives but the greater the lie of patriotism the greater they claim it. No one cares how illegitimate my decisions just so long as they don't have to make them. This tunnel has no exit.

In the end I only want what I can't have. If I can have that, I can have hope. I've wasted my life and there's nothing left of me. For a time and then a time more I forced myself to believe in the myth of a king, that the duties of a king made one's life important. Having been swallowed by the abyss, stripped of illusion, I see where I have truly landed. Can no one help?

They speak with envy of the king's power. Yet, power is a dead end. I jailed many men both innocent and guilty just to have others share my cruel lonely fate. They must curse me in the night but we are bonded in misery. In my weakness I could not resist this no matter how wrong I knew it to be. My evil minions, though, defend me as a champion of justice! No, the king has no power, I am the people's prisoner in bondage, voiceless and doomed by projected fantasy, sentenced for life to pretend happiness where there is none.