King
BY BILL CHENG
His name is George but tonight he will call himself Devlin. His luck has always been better as ‘Devlin’ or ‘Paolo’ or ‘J.J.’ He is 23, 24. For his kind, he is not unattractive—medium-length hair, tattoos abstracted along the length of one arm, a gaunt yet solid build with a face framed in strong clean lines. He is well-dressed. His shirt: a pearlescent short-sleeved button-up, the neck loosely gathered, hinting at the auburn matte across his chest.
It is Friday night, happy hour—and the bar is gridlocked with males. Here, the air is tanged in sweat, bad beer, body spray. You know the place; we don’t have to name names. It’s small, cramped, unventilated—the accumulated heat of human bodies laying over the clientele like a wet rag.
Across the room is Maxine. She is short, petite, her hair set in platinum spikes. Tonight, she is celebrating her twenty-fifth birthday. For the occasion, she has crownedcoronated herself with a homemade tiara, and pancaked herself in Blue Angel brand cosmetic glitter. Her friends take turns stunning her constitution with shots of mid-shelf tequila. When she is drunk, as she is now, those harder aspects of her personality— the wit, the sarcasm, the self-possessed snark—soften until she is pulpy with sentiment and misplaced affection.
It is in this state, that George finds Maxine, abandoned by her friends, propped against the ATM machine. One of her shoes, George notices, is missing. He makes his way over, and leans into her ear. He says something though not much is understood over the tidal drone of depressing techno. Instead, there is only the invisible play of pheromones; the flush of the skin, the subtle dilation of their pupils. Maxine throws her head back and laughs, though at what neither of them are sure.
They speak for a time, until, in spite of the no-smoking ban, George lights a cigarette. Maxine grins, her eyes half-lowered. She cants towards him, leaning her hand against his chest. She is close now, so close. The plucky swell in his dockers brushes against her. She stretches up on her toes and in one movement, stubs out the ember with her tongue.
George leads Maxine into the men’s room. It is small—a single—lit by a solitary red bulb. George locks the door and they find each others’ mouths, and arms and legs, pawing at the wild heat beneath their clothes.
Maxine whistles off George’s belt. In turn George squishes a breast in his palm. Slowly, her hand cruises down his taut stomach, smoothing his sternum, gliding silently, down, down, like a manta ray, down, down over the navel to slipping beneath the sticky peel of underwear.
George edges down his waistband, not wanting to touch his clothes to any of the surfaces in the room. Even with just the two of them, it is a tight fit. He flips down the toilet seat, and leans her against the tank. But as George prepares to dock into Maxine, let us look now, to a different scene. For deep in the swamplands of a hypogastrium jungle, bounded along the ridge of the anterior pubis, hidden in the great knots of George’s pubes, the great King awakens.
***
He is King.
No mother, no father.
Only King.
A hulking three millimeters diameter with legs and arms that erupt into great knuckled hooks.
King—father of nations.
First to emerge from his protein shell.
First to sup from the thrumming blood beneath the world.
He is King and this is his kingdom.
***
The earth beneath him groans and shudders. He rises up and scales the stalks of George’s hair. He is beautiful, graceful— his magnificent claws opening and closing— pulling himself higher and higher, up through the pubic canopies from where he may survey his realm.
King gazes out at the sudden sky.
The land is bathed in blood light. Above, in the distance, is the great tumescence—sticky and swollen— its domed crown rearing above the jungle lands. In the dark tangles beneath, he hears his children—the click click chatter of chitin on chitin. All at once the Heavens rush, and the Earth closes in against the sky.
Fluid pits in his thorax as a shockwave tears through the land, thrashing the trees, throwing spumes of salty rain. With all his might he holds himself in place, the plates of his armor chattering. Overhead, a great mass looms beyond the horizon. He sees its high earthen walls, sees it pulse and quiver, smells the sweet loamy air, feels its dew against his carapace.
It is Ragnarok. The end of the World.
And he must lead his people to Asgard.
When the first attack of violence passes, King descends to the forest floor. He gathers his frightened children. They watch as he sinks his mouth partsmouthparts into his dying world; drawing a draught of clayey blood into his gut. The blood is rich. He feels its warmth close around him one last time, and he swallows deeply. In turn his children follow suit. And with their bellies full, King begins again to climb.
Where King goes, the others follow, silent and anxious, writhing through the fetid tangle of George’s pubic hair. From strand to strand King dances his weight. Even atin his age, he is virile, powerful. He hoists himself up millimeter by millimeter and sees below:
The unhatched nits.
The gray husks of long-gone molts.
There, was the grove where his first queen had birthed their clutch.
And there, the vein of sweet blood from which he and his children lapped.
This land had brought forth great scores of life. And now it has fallen to ruin.
The Living Earth shakes and claps. With every thrust of George’s hips, another of King’s children is thrown into the senseless void. But King climbs on—his heart hardened, his legs straining. And as they approach the pubic canopies, the air is chill. A raging hunger howls emptily within his shell.
He is close now—so close! Through the shivering tips of George’s hairs, he can see it above him. Fertile jungles and ivory walls. It beckons him. All he need to do is make one final leap…
But there is another tremor, and the force dazes him. He cannot tighten his grip and in an instant the world vanishes beneath him. For a moment there is Nothing. Darkness, ice. Then the fall of air, as all at once, Earth rushes into Sky.
Maxine rolls her head back just as George plunges himself into her—a deep gouging motion as if he was burying the entire force of his ejaculate into her. As he cums, George roars— not words but some primal, self-satisfied noise. When he finishes, Maxine, with a polite hand, pushes him away. George slips his dwindling penis from her vagina and she is suddenly thankful for the cool porcelain beneath her.
Behind her, George re-loops his belt and buttons up his pants. Then he washes his hands in the sink. He mumbles something. When Maxine does not answer, he unlocks the door and closes it behind him. It is when Maxine is finally alone that she peels herself from the toilet tank. Slowly, she cinches back up her underwear, her skirt. She gathers her tiara from the floor.
In the mirror, she looks at herself. At this moment we cannot know what Maxine is thinking. If even indeed, the half-formed ideas that swirl in the alcohol fog of her mind can even be called thoughts. But we can trace the path of her eyes in her reflection. From her nose, to her cheeks, to her mouth, then down the outline of her whole body. And we can imagine, I suppose, a better place for Maxine. A better place for ourselves. A place where we are a better version of ourselves for those who need us. A place, where the conditions of life and living have not been so stingily negotiated.
