Short Stories
A King and His Skin by Natalie Robles
His soft hymn bounced from beam to beam, a quiet song that always seemed to comfort him now scratching through dry, broken lips. Dancing to some long forgotten tune, he slowly pranced around the stone structure, a tower made of the sweat and pain of thousands of citizens, all drafted to build this tower of selfish conceit. His hands glided over his battered face, feeling, prodding. He hissed as he found yet another open wound. Stones cracked underneath his feet, creating fissures that began to reach deep into the earth.
His mortal skin was ruined, utterly and truly broken and shattered.
She had left him to rot, thrown him from her glorified prison of gold at the top of this tower to fall prey to the plague that threatened to take their beauty. She had taken his beauty, had let the fall take from him what they all valued most. His kingdom’s queen in name had abandoned him, had betrayed her king. He dropped his hands, letting them instead rove over the rocks that made up the base of the structure. Bells clanged somewhere far off.
His paradise was lost.
Wailing screams howled throughout his broken kingdom.
He had fallen from true grace.
If he was damned to lavish in his broken skin then he could think of no better end to the women’s reign than tearing down her palace of solitude, of mirrors and vanity.
Crowing a last warning call, the world bowed as coils of shadow and greed lashed from their perches of stone. Gargoyles snapped forward, crashing to the ground to flank the tower. His pets had grown starved of this world of gleaming sun, light warming their cracked flesh. The sun rose as fire licked up his city of wood and ash. Serpents of flame broke through his palace, great beasts tasting the stench of rot as they bounded through his kingdom that ever so quickly went up in flames. His people were screaming around him, fighting the monsters that broke through the barriers that had long guarded his mortal city, ones that had failed to guard them of the sickness that now rose from the earth, that spread through poisoned mist. Ever so quietly, his kingdom of vanity would be erased from the records of history; he would make sure of that.
Hadley hummed as a crown of hawthorn twisted around his head, a cape of frost now brushing against his back. He let his limbs stretch out of his human skin, let his body shift to accommodate his too-long limbs and began to climb the tower. His skin blackened, long since charred by the years of festering rot beneath the earth. The metal beams that supported the tower fell as one by one he plucked them from the earth.
He sang as the world razed around him. Glistening fangs popped out of his jaw, nails sharpening to claws. The screaming had quieted to mere whispers as he rose above the clouds, the tower waving from his weight and the force of the wind the air carried. He didn't give the queen a chance to scream as he took her beauty from her just as she, too, had ruined his mortal skin, his mask that had let him run rampant among human ilk, freed from his imprisonment in the bowels of the earth. He didn't kill her though, even as he wished to drench his nails in crimson, he would keep her with him, dragging her back to his home. She too would lavish in his home of monsters and gore, become queen of their lot of damned souls.
If she so wished to reign over beauty then she must also reign over the horrors their world tried in vain to stifle. It was his last thought as the gods burned brightly at his back, as they at last tore him from his realm of silver and copper, of riches and dragged him back into the slumbering dark. He did not let the woman go, holding her tightly as the gods pulled them both into oblivion.
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fighting the monsters that broke through the barriers that had long guarded his mortal city, ones that had failed to guard them of the sickness that now rose from the earth, that spread through poisoned mist. Ever so quietly, his kingdom of vanity would be erased from the records of history; he would make sure of that.
Hadley hummed as a crown of hawthorn twisted around his head, a cape of frost now brushing against his back. He let his limbs stretch out of his human skin, let his body shift to accommodate his too-long limbs and began to climb the tower. His skin blackened, long since charred by the years of festering rot beneath the earth. The metal beams that supported the tower fell as one by one he plucked them from the earth.
He sang as the world razed around him. Glistening fangs popped out of his jaw, nails sharpening to claws. The screaming had quieted to mere whispers as he rose above the clouds, the tower waving from his weight and the force of the wind the air carried. He didn't give the queen a chance to scream as he took her beauty from her just as she, too, had ruined his mortal skin, his mask that had let him run rampant among human ilk, freed from his imprisonment in the bowels of the earth. He didn't kill her though, even as he wished to drench his nails in crimson, he would keep her with him, dragging her back to his home. She too would lavish in his home of monsters and gore, become queen of their lot of damned souls.
If she so wished to reign over beauty then she must also reign over the horrors their world tried in vain to stifle. It was his last thought as the gods burned brightly at his back, as they at last tore him from his realm of silver and copper, of riches and dragged him back into the slumbering dark. He did not let the woman go, holding her tightly as the gods pulled them both into oblivion.