Micro Monday #7: “The Unnamed Kings” by Ian Brunner

I.

You’re walking down a semi-congested road a few days after the year has rolled over. It’s not cold but bracing as the wind hits your face, slowing you down and causing your eyes to water. The light is that kind of deceptive winter white that, from inside, seems warm but does nothing to touch the soul. Your destination is just ahead, but before you can enter the corner pharmacy, a man catches your eye.

He’s sitting in the crevice of a gargantuan snowbank from the storm last week and drawing spirals in the powder. His hands are ungloved and brutally chapped from the cold air. He looks up and you notice the dark marks around his temple, but then he catches your eye and guilt hurries you inside. In line, you notice a rack of cheap mittens and impulsively buy a pair. When you try to give the man
the gloves, he stares at you with stunning green eyes—almost daring you to ask about his situation—before reaching out and accepting the gift. You can’t help but notice that he’s young, maybe five years older than you.

“If you want to know,” he says, looking at you. “And I’m not sure you do. Buy me a Labatt Tallboy and I’ll tell you.”

You hesitate as he pulls a pocket knife from somewhere within his coat, ignoring your flinch, and cuts the mittens from their packaging. After he pulls them on and you begin to back away, he frowns, shakes his head, then returns to drawing spirals.

You almost leave but something stops you. Some curiosity deep in your soul.

He doesn’t seem insane, you think.

Your friends—who you’re supposed to be on your way to meet—would call you crazy. They’d never stop to notice a homeless person, let alone buy them a beer. And maybe it’s that idea that spurs you on. You’ve never accepted the mold that everyone else fits into.

When you hand him the Labatt; his eyes widen. “Thank you,” he says. “And I’m sorry. This story is going to seem like nonsense. I keep telling it to anyone who will listen—hoping that someone, anyone, will be able to help me. That’s the thing
though, nobody ever will be able to and if they knew what I knew. . .” he trails off.

Brushing the snow out from under you so there’s a level place to sit, you sit, covering a few of his spirals. He gives you a look but then shrugs and once you’re settled, the man cracks open the can, smiles, raises it, and begins to speak.

II.

“I used to be the kind of person,” he says, “who’d say Yes just to get an interesting story out of the ensuing adventure. I guess I was unconsciously pushing back against what I’d call the clocks in our bones. Even back then, when I was twenty-one, I could feel it. Time keeps going no matter what. The problem is,” he pauses and draws another spiral, “that we don’t. I was always a runner and maybe I was
trying to run from the end even then, but when you’re running from something you’re also running toward something.”

Pausing, he looks up towards the sky. Following his gaze, all you see is the crystalline blue of a season that hasn’t yet felt the year’s warmth.

“We can’t avoid our mortality,” he smiles. “Just ask my knees. It’s the body's way of saying, Hey, you’re not healing as fast as you used to. Take it easy on me.”

“And you, of course, never did,” you interject.

He nods. His foot begins to tap violently, shaking his whole body. It’s a wonder that the Labatt can even make it into his mouth, but after a long swig, he calms himself with a deep breath and continues his story.

“At that age, the future is simultaneously the scariest and most exciting thing.”

“You’re not that much older than me...” you begin, but he waves you off. His eyes are far away and you realize he’s not telling the story for your sake. He’s telling it to make himself feel better. Not, you think, that people like him ever feel better. The world is just too hard for some. Time is too much.

“You won’t believe me, but after hearing my story, you’ll find it hard to believe that out of everything, time is what bothers me the most. It’s the not-knowing how much or little I have. It’s even worse than the things out there and they are worse—much worse—than the long, cold, lonely embrace of perpetual sleep. It all started about a decade ago. I was twenty-one, like I said, and going out with my friends.
Like all young people, we were a bit reckless and that’s what got me into this mess. If I had just gone home. . .It’s like Ted says on How I Met Your Mother, ‘Nothing good happens after 2 AM.’ You remember that one?”

When you don’t answer, he shrugs and continues.

“It’s funny how clearly some images stick in your mind. That afternoon, I drove into the city, and I remember how slippery the pavement was in the early November gloom. We went to our favorite bar to watch the game. After that, we caught a cab to another bar—a weird place. The entire floor was a shuffleboard court. Thinking back on it, the strangeness of that space seems like a precursor to the evil that next week brought into my life. Take my advice,” he says, looking piercingly into your eyes. “Don’t ever do something that’ll ruin your peace. Enjoy the moment. It’s more valuable than you know.

“By the time we left that bar, the sun was already set and we were bored. I noted that we could see our breath. We chose a bar at random and entered, mostly just looking for a place to get warm and finish the night out. This place was industrial. The floors were concrete, the walls graffitied, and the pipes exposed. I honestly can’t remember the name of the place and I’ve never been able to find it again. Before you think,” he pauses, “that I’m just some drunk, the friends that were there with me remember the place too so I know I wasn’t hallucinating. That’s what makes this so scary. I know it happened and sometimes...not knowing is better.

“Inside the bar, the night started to taper out. Eventually, it came down to me and a guy named Matt. We were kind of friends as we both had a lot of mutual acquaintances, but other than that we never really spoke. So there we stood at 2 AM not really knowing what to say, listening to bass music thump from somewhere deeper inside.

‘Do you know where the bathroom is?’ Matt asked me.”

You can’t help but note that the man seems to have been swallowed into himself. He’s not telling you the story so much as he has been swallowed into it.

“That simple phrase,” he continues, “is what started it all. The search took us deeper into the bar and around a small bend. We passed a private room, which we discovered was the source of the bass. On the way back, a woman peeked her head out of the private room and smiled at us. She propped herself up against the wall and asked in slightly slurred speech, ‘Are you here for the party?’

This would have been my opportunity to leave. I should have taken it, but before I could say a thing, Matt looked at me, grinned, and said, ‘Yeah!’”

III.

“It was your typical bachelorette party, though I must admit I felt a bit bad for sneaking in. I can’t help but worry about things like that. There were copious amounts of alcohol, cigarette smoke—definitely illegal but whatever—and balloons shaped like dicks. On a table was a cake made to look like a naked Ben Affleck.”

You laugh at this.

“To each their own,” the man responds. “I spent about an hour sipping whiskey and doing shots that were passed around before realizing I was far too drunk to drive home, so I set my glass down and turned to watch the party. That was when I met her. She was short, about five foot four, with purple highlights, and wireframe glasses. I remember looking at her face and just feeling comfortable. There was something there that made me want to talk to her. That made me feel like she and I had been friends for our entire lives.

‘Doing alright?’ she asked with a grin.

I shrugged at this but I remember that the party seemed quiet at that moment. Like we were in our own special place and the party was only stage dressing—that’s all anything is–stage dressing.

‘I’m Alessia. What’re you up to?

After this, the night flew by. I have vague memories of her handing me glass after glass of whisky as we talked about anything and everything. At some point, we began to talk about the real stuff. Not just our jobs or things we did for fun, but what we thought about life, the universe, and why we were really here.

‘Well,’ she said to me as she placed a hand on my arm. ‘I’m actually a practicing witch.’

I laughed at this. It sounded as absurd in that moment as this story must sound to you.

‘No really,’ she smiled, moving her hand to my shoulder and looking into my eyes. ‘I’ve even had some real results.’

This is the only moment I remember having a sense of doubt. There was something off about those eyes. They seemed to be appraising me even as she smiled.

‘I can prove it to you. Want to come back to my place? I’ll show you my altar where I do my work.’

‘Is that an innuendo? I’ve never had someone try to bring me home quite like that.’

‘It might be,’ she replied, smirking. ‘You in?’

IV.

“Her place wasn’t far. It was a small, unassuming home on the outskirts of the city. Inside was exactly what one would expect from a twenty-something-year-old woman’s place—although sparsely furnished. Leading me through the house, she stopped and asked if I wanted coffee or water, which I refused and then she showed me the bedroom.

‘A waterbed?’ I laughed looking at her.

‘It’s comfy,’ she shrugged. ‘The real exciting stuff happens here,’ she said and pointed at a door on the right side of the bedroom where a black curtain had been hung in the doorway. Pulling it back revealed a closet that contained a small wooden nightstand. On top of this was a small pedestal. All around the pedestal lay bundles of herbs, new-age-looking crystals, and a few small objects that looked eerily like animal bones.

“Now, I know what you’re thinking,” he says, looking up and catching you ready to interject, “but she had a semi-plausible explanation. I won’t say it wasn’t weird, but she didn’t have serial killer vibes.”

‘They’re animal bones,’ she said. ‘But don’t think I’m some kind of crazy person who kills animals. I found these in the woods. It’s part of my practice. I try to use anything I can from nature. So if I find something when I’m out walking in the woods I try to use it on my altar. Its spirit gives energy to this place and my meditation and prayers.’

‘Prayer interests me,’ I said, stepping back. ‘Prayer, to me, is the same thing as meditation. It’s thinking and directing your energy in a specific way. Doing that helps you actually create the reality you want. Now, I’m not really sure how that works with everyone else trying to create a reality that they want—but you know—it’s a work in progress.’

She closed the curtain and flopped onto the bed. ‘Everything is. Come here and sit down,’ she patted the bed. ‘Do you know what I’m trying to manifest?’

I looked up, my eyes lingering for a moment on her hand that she had placed on my thigh, and met her gaze. Her lip was curled slightly in a half-grin and as she gazed unblinking.”

“There was something wrong about her eyes,” the man says, looking at you like a sad puppy. “But by that time it was too late. They seemed to be both near and very far away at the same time. As if she were looking at me through a veil. Then, she leaned in and kissed me on the neck, dragging her hand up my legs.

Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was just the hormones, but I fell into her like a black hole. I have very little memory of that time, but I do remember that at some point she scratched my back. It was a deep, hard line, and when I cried out, she apologized. When I awoke, Alessia was gone. I had no sense of what time it was and after waiting a while I let myself out after leaving a note thanking her for
the night and conversation and signing it with my number.

I wasn’t quite hungover, but my head did throb a little and the sunlight provided no warmth. My phone battery was dead and one of the problems with this city—I’m sure you know—is the public transportation. As I walked, I noticed that aside from the sound of my steps and my breath there was no sound. Normally, some cars would pass, and you would at least hear people talking or laughing from behind their doors, but this morning the world seemed to be empty of everyone.

I started to get the sense that something was wrong. Almost as if I were hearing an echo of my footsteps. The hair on the back of my neck rose and suddenly warmed like someone was breathing down my back, but when I turned, no one was there.

However, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, and listening closely, I could hear someone walking behind me. As if they were
trying to time their steps with mine and were only slightly off.

V.

“A few days passed and Alessia hadn’t called me back which I found disappointing, but shrugged off. The scratches she left on my back healed slowly, scabbing over, but still cracking whenever I stretched or moved in the wrong way—reminding me of that night. Then the nightmares started. I was floating high above the Earth, and all of the planet stretched out before me. I saw day turn to night again and again. Eventually, the sky darkened and the world took on a deep red hue.

Then, faster than blinking, I was at ground level. It felt like the world rotated ninety degrees and I was dropped into a dense wood that was thicker and more wild than anything I had ever seen before. Here, I woke up. Sweaty and tired and vividly aware of the dream I had just had.

I had this dream over and over. That alone was strange enough, but then the dream started to go further. At first, it was just simple things—I would find myself standing in the forest and all was still, but slowly, almost imperceptibly, the wind would start to blow. It brought with it the scent of smoke, then the sound of rushing air. I could tell I was no longer alone in these woods. Something was
watching me and it was getting closer.

I knew through some sixth sense that it was coming from very far away. From a place so distant that I couldn’t even fathom. Then, I would wake and the next time I fell asleep the thing—whatever it was—would be slightly closer. I knew, somehow, that this force was malevolent. Not just to me, but to everything. It was something other. Let me tell you, there’s nothing worse than feeling an impending doom coming and not being able to do a thing about it. I couldn’t sleep at night and couldn’t function during the day.

Finally, after about a week of this, the entity reached me. The world tilted again, but this time I didn’t fall. Instead, the being rose like the sun over the horizon...” The story trails off as the man looks at you.

“I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. I don’t even know why you’re listening.”

“I don’t know either,” you shrug. “I guess, it’s a pretty good value for the price of a Labatt. I want to know what happens.”

“No, you don’t,” he replies but then continues and you can tell that he couldn’t stop even if he wanted to. “I can only describe the entity by what it was not. It was not like the air around it. It was not the same color as the things nearby. It made me feel full and like I had entered a vacuum all at once. The air in the space took on a blood-orange hue flecked with white and this color stretched and elongated until it took on the visage of a stretched and smiling face staring down at me which flickered in and out of existence so quickly my eyes failed to keep up. By the time I realized it was gone, it had returned.

For a long moment, the space where its eyes would be looked straight ahead, and then, slowly, I felt it rest its gaze on me. The being’s attention felt like a weight on my shoulders and I fell to my knees and found that I could barely lift my head. After many moments of struggle, with my hair matted to my face from sweat, I looked up at the entity’s mouth which stretched into a cruel half-grin.

“MINE” a voice—or however this being communicated—reverberated, shaking the trees and ground around me.

Floating in closer, the face inspected me. It felt like my head was going to explode and as I gritted my teeth I awoke to find that in my sleep I had been scratching at my temples.

I decided to find Alessia. She was the only thing that had changed over the past week. The problem was that I didn’t exactly remember where Alessia’s house was. Starting at my favorite bar, I hailed a cab and just asked them to drive in the direction I knew we had gone on that night. Along the way, I asked the driver if they knew anything about the bar where I had met Alessia, but they had never
heard of it. Closing my eyes, I sighed and slumped in the seat. When I opened them again, the driver had turned around and was looking at me with understandable concern. I was a sleep-deprived, sweaty mess, who was mumbling to himself.”

VI.

“We don’t think about it a lot, but Bradbury was right when he wrote ‘Sleep is a patch of death.’ Obviously, our bodies need that time to heal, but the benefits of dreamless sleep are unappreciated. Even if you wake into a bad situation, the mental reset helps you deal with the horror of the world.

I got out of the cab as the sun peeked out from behind the clouds and felt a sudden stab of dread. The feeling of malevolence I felt in my dream returned, but this time I was certain I was awake. In my dream, I always felt powerless to do anything, but being awake, I had a different response. Knowing there was no way to fight whatever it was this thing was, I chose to flee and ran blindly down the street.

Eventually, I tripped, tumbling into a snowbank in a small yard, and lay there gasping and praying silently that whatever it was that manifested that feeling of dread had been left behind. Then I closed my eyes and reopened them in the wooded landscape of my dream. The face was there, smiling down at me.

“COMING” it said.

I awoke in a snowbank on the side of the road. The late morning had crept into afternoon and my cheek was numb from being pushed against the snow. My limbs ached as I started my walk back to the city, but when I turned a corner, and realized that I had—completely by accident—ended up on Alessia’s street. About halfway down, the pale yellow house sat. It was at this moment that I realized
there were no accidents. There was no way that I had ended up here by pure chance after running from whatever it was that had been haunting my dreams.

Over the past week, too much had happened that all seemed to point here.

Approaching the house, I felt the eyes of the entity upon me. The dread was not an aura so much as it was the realization that I was in over my head. The door creaked open, revealing that the house had been stripped bare. All of Alessia’s furniture was gone. The floor was covered in a thin layer of dust and despite my trepidation, I made my way through to the bedroom. Oddly enough, the bed was left behind, but the rest of the room was empty.

The curtain in front of the closet was also missing. Inside, the altar was gone. However, the smell of herbs lingered. In the darkness, for a moment, I thought the space was completely empty, but when I stepped forward something crunched underfoot, and startled by the sound, I knocked my knee into the stand. As it rattled, something fell in the dark.

Turning on my phone’s flashlight, I saw that what had crumbled underfoot was a small animal skull. Next to it was a vial containing a viscous red substance. Turning the light around, I found a small piece of paper on the stand.

‘If you’re reading this, you must be wondering what is happening to you. To keep this short and sweet, I was telling you the truth when I told you I was a witch. Well, up to a point, I’m more of an acolyte for something you could never imagine. I’m sure by now that you’ve started having the dreams. I wish I could be around to see the look in your eyes when your mind expands. It’s always so interesting to see how people take it. All you need to know is that I’ve marked you as I’ve marked many before. There is more out there than you can ever know. Well, I say ‘you’ but soon you’ll be a vessel for something much greater. I used your blood which I obtained while you slept from the scratch I made on you. It’s a part of the ritual to mark you as a vessel, and It is coming for you. I’m sure you’ve had some experiences with It already. They come from very far away, but mark my words, they are coming. The unnamed kings that we’ve forgotten.’”

VII.

“And that’s the story. That’s all I know,” the man says, finally meeting your gaze again. “I told you it wouldn’t make any sense.”

When you don’t answer, he stands to leave muttering about time, space, and the distance between all things.

“Even now, every time I fall asleep I wind up staring at that face. It never speaks but it shows me things. It has shown me what will happen to the Earth in the far distant eons of time. It has shown me how small and insignificant we really are. It has shown me what it plans to do with my body once it is in possession of me. What is even worse is knowing that it doesn’t matter. There is no Heaven or Hell. Just the abyss and time. None of it matters. The world will burn or freeze. The stars will die and everything will be dark, and these unnamed kings will still be there.”

He shambles off leaving the Labatt wedged into the snow. Next to it are footprints that you aren’t sure were there before.

Ian Brunner is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist from Buffalo, NY. His writing has appeared in Riggwelter Press, Ghost City Press, and The Comics Cabinet among other places. He holds a Master's in English Education and has two published chapbooks. He is also the short-fiction editor for Variety Pack Magazine.