King

A man must consider his mind a sacred place, like a high tower guarded by knights in medieval times, where many things are trying to kill you. This man could be called the king of the high tower. He watches the kingdom and peasants from here. He feels mighty safe with one hundred feet of spiral steps separating him from the lowly human race below him.

He sleeps and recharges from the job of ruling the land and peasants. Some days, the steps inside the spiral staircase that lead to the top floor of the high tower can become a bore and a nuisance. It makes the king’s legs ache and his feet blister inside his leather-bound shoes with shiny brass buckles.

Days pass, and the king now must take a quarter of his day, after giving no quarter to his enemies, to climb all those stone-laid steps. Now that he spends longer on the spiral staircase, the king becomes cold from the wind penetrating through the structure’s cracks and open windows. It batters the stone walls and sways the high tower back and forth to its resonant frequency.

More days pass, and now the king spends most of the sunlight hours that peek through the thin window slits in the high tower’s spiral corridor, desperately trying to reach his room. Today was the first day the king was not able to reach it. He took off his crown and velvet robe in complete exhaustion, trying to cool off. Now he accepts the harsh, cool wind. He sits on a stone step only twenty feet away from the room, rubbing his feet and legs. He decides to lay out the velvet robe underneath him on the hard steps and make a bed for the night. The twenty feet just seemed too much. He settles in for a long, restless night.

The next morning, he is required to return to his duties eighty feet below in the main hall of his castle. The walk down is slow and agonizing. All day he makes mistakes; he is slow to answer questions, his mind isn’t all there. He did not get enough sleep. The peasants of the land notice and gossip outside the great hall walls in local taverns and brothels.

After the long, grueling day, the king tries his luck to climb the high tower stairs. He needs rest from his bed. It has mounds of soft furs killed by the local huntsmen. There are silk curtains to enclose the bed and frame and block drafts seeping in. He needs to regain his mental abilities to continue on. He already feels like he is losing his grip on the kingdom, even after only a day.

But the spiral staircase is too much for the old king to handle. With his pride too ingrained in ego to ask for help, he once again puts his crown to the side and lays the robe beneath him for his night bed. The king has a dream: a storm has crumbled the high tower with the king inside. Peasants find him the next day, crushed in the rubble.

He awakes the next morning with deep, sunken eyes—eyes of a man nearly at his limit. Back in the great hall, even the assistant to the king sees that he is clearly not himself. But alas, the king must complete his duties, and the assistants must string him along to get through meetings and kingly obligations.

Armies must be managed. The peasants’ farms must be harvested and stored in silos for the king to dictate how it is divided. Disease deaths must be logged and ignored. The king must read long scrolls of foreign policy agreements with allies, shake his head, and throw them into the fireplace. He must meet other kings and queens and try to sound coherent, not making a fool of himself. He must make his voice heard and send out pamphlets and propaganda to the masses. He must hold the church accountable for his success and hold the peasants accountable for their sins. Rumors must be squashed. Opposition must be silenced.

But the king is deteriorating. His mind is now gone. He doesn’t understand the way of the world. He exists only in the great hall, which becomes his sole reality, with assistants and minions sucking him dry until the day he no longer wakes up. The kingdom will be in ruins. The peasants will suffer and be responsible for picking up the pieces.

Night approaches. The king must climb the high tower stairs again. He looks pale and sickly. He smells foul and walks with a limp, his back hunched. He moans and groans in agony. His legs are so stiff, it is as if they have been cast in bronze.

The king takes slow steps. Even the rats scurry past quickly, looking up for a brief moment as if saying, “The time is now.” The king sees this and begins to worry that the rats have taken over his room and bedding. He stops near a torch lighting the spiral staircase and sits down on the steps. He is only halfway, but he has absolutely no more will or strength to continue.

He waits awhile. He looks up and sees the spiral staircase and light disappear around the bend. He looks down and sees the same. The torch fuel is running out, and the corridor is growing dark. Finally, the torch sputters and flickers out. Darkness and stillness win. The stone walls create a sinister prison ambiance. The king is surrounded. He feels terribly claustrophobic.

The king does not call for help. He does not scream. He stands and tries once more to face the stairs and gravity. The stairs laugh and mock his every step. The stairs are endless. The king is not.

In complete darkness, the king misplaces a footing and slips. He falls to his face, sticking out his arms and barely managing to keep from breaking all his teeth. When he fell, the velvet robe wrapped around him in an awkward way. He was now in a slick velvety cocoon. The velvet against the cold, damp stone steps provides no friction. Thus began the king’s slide down the stairs.

All the progress made that night was for nothing. It was lost in the darkness, tangled by fate.

The king slides past the main level and continues to the castle depths—the dungeons. Down he goes with great speed and momentum. The dungeon entrance door is slammed open by his body. He continues into an open cell down the prison walk. The king is put to rest by five bales of hay in the dungeon cell. The king, in his cocoon, does not move. He can barely breathe because of the pain. The velvet robe is now torn to shreds and looks like a peasant’s overcoat.

Dungeon guards only check the cells twice a night. One was approaching now toward the cell at the end of the prison walk. The guard did not hear the commotion; he was drunk on grog and slept deeply in the other prison hallway near the dungeon entrance.

The guard notices the last cell door is open, and inside lies a peasant. He must have forgotten to lock the door when they threw him in today, he thinks.

The guard takes a key from a big metal loop, shuts the door, and locks it. The king does not move. He moans as rats walk over the humps of his body. The assistants and minions pay no mind when the king does not appear.

The power vacuum commences.

They have to pick up the pieces.

-1/19/2026