In the Court of the Yellow King

by Tim Curran

  “The best way to get the better of temptation is just to yield to it.”

  —Clementina Stirling Graham

  “Just give in... in the end, you know it’s so much easier.”

  Yeah... easier. It’s true. The easy way. The easy way out. Take it easy. Ease up, friend. Why resist? Why bother? Don’t you know that no one cares if you put a lot of effort into your work? Why do you struggle so? What a waste of time. Stop being so damn stupid and just relax—

  Take it easy—

  “After all, a hundred years from now, who’s going to know the difference?”

  It’s what the entire world has been saying to me my whole life. Well, no, not to me directly, no endless slacker choruses of hip know-it-alls, self-indulgents preaching a gospel of sloth outside my window as if I rated my own personal carolers of the Apocalypse... nothing so obvious, so easily spotted.

  To tell the sad truth, that... that would have been something which I probably could have dealt with.

  My name is Edgar Wilson. If you can believe that. I mean, who names their kid Edgar anymore? Thirty years ago was the rat’s ass tail-end of the twentieth century. What were they thinking? I mean, honestly, “Brad” I could have understood. “Clint,” or even “George,” dopey but okay, I get it. But... Edgar. God Almighty—

  I guess when the doctors told them I was going to be born healthy without any birth defects they decided naming me thusly would help curb any sense of entitlement I might develop along the way. Well, if that was indeed their thinking, they were certainly correct about at least that one thing. Credit where credit’s due, and all—

  “Really, why do you bother to resist?”

  I had no good answer about my name, or to offer the eternal voice in the darkness whenever it questions me. I really do wonder myself. Why do I bother to resist? What is the point I’m trying to make? And, if I do have a point, if it even is my point, or just something someone else came up with first that I latched onto somewhere along the way—

  “What does it get you?”

  Another of the darkness’s unanswerable queries.

  What was I thinking? Hell, really, if I wanted to approach the problem in any way objectively, instead of just resisting because it’s what someone, somewhere, once decided was supposed to be done in such situations, didn’t I need to have some idea what it was I was even resisting? Which is what led me finally to summon up the courage to ask the voice within my head—

  Really, just what is it you think I’m resisting?

  I mean, tell me... what is it you want me to give in to exactly? Just tell me—chances are I probably don’t give enough of a damn to keep it up. I mean, yeah, you’re probably right. Okay—I’m willing to admit it. I don’t know what I want, or why I do anything in this world. Most people don’t think, they only react, and damnit, I’m as much a part of “most people” as anyone. And, in a hundred years I suppose it’s not going to make any goddamned kind of difference.

  And, I swore, knowing that for at least once in my life I was being honest with myself, I’m not trying to kid anybody because honestly I don’t know what difference anything makes any more.

  “Your brain, it’s so cluttered, all those thoughts, ideas... so self-centered, self-absorbed... you know that’s not right. Not the way people should be. Not the way people are supposed to act. Who do you think you are?”

  Of all the questions the nagging voices whispered in the back of my mind, they went right back to the one that remained the hardest to ignore. I mean, honestly, how can you? How can anyone? It is one of the essential things about oneself anyone needs to know if they’re going to advance at all.

  Who do any of us think we are?

  Children, of course, don’t have to worry about such things. They’re not supposed to. They’re not capable. Indeed, if you can answer that question, you’re not actually a child anymore. Maturity takes having reached the point where one is ready to assume responsibility for their actions. Children can’t do that. They’re too self-centered, which oddly enough, was what the voices kept saying of me.

  And that’s such a large part of what I don’t get.

  Me... self-absorbed. I know I’m not like that. I know it. Or, at least, I believe that.

  And, maybe that’s the trouble. After all, isn’t that kind of denial exactly what a child would offer in the face of accusing authority—No, no... not me. I didn’t do it. I’m not like that. Their inability to accept blame is one of the most frustrating, infuriating things about them.

  About all of us...

  Those that mature, we’re (they’re?) not like that. They’ve matured. But, and I think this is equally valid, matured into whom? Into what?

  When the moment comes, when the child’s eyes open, whatever tiresome, horrible, permanent shock finally comes along to rattle their endless, tiresome innocence into submission and release the growing suspicions of other realities, it’s always the same—

  The baby learns to talk, and immediately assumes the role of the superior, not understanding those to whom it is speaking are not learning of the discovery of spoken communication through them.

  “Sounds like a break-through....”

  Is this where I’m at now? Just another of these early, formative points, merely another arrogant child’s well-there-certainly-can’t-be-anything-else-to-learn-ever-again-after-this moment self-deluding assumptions? Jumping jackasses, is that all life is, a never-ending series of lessons one can’t believe they didn’t already know, hadn’t already learned, but now that they have they’ll never have to do it again—

  “Oh, yes... definitely break-through time....”

  But when does it end? Does it ever end? It certainly looks like its ends for everyone else. Everywhere I look, slack-jawed morons enjoying life, typing away on their phones, flitting from one fascination-of-the-moment to another, stuffing their faces with food they can’t taste, listening to music they don’t understand, discussing movies they’re too dimwitted to realize are simply remakes of things they’ve already seen, pawing the controls to their televisions and game monitors like apes, thinking themselves masters of the universe as the world they actually inhabit shrinks to the size of something smaller than a standard prison cell—

  Why don’t I get any of that? When do I get to join in? Where’s my ignorant bliss? When do I get to feel excitement watching millionaire thugs play children’s ball games?

  “Oh, he has to be at a breaking point now.”

  There are no answers, of course. Well, not for most. For the many. It’s not possible. I almost want to add the qualifier, “anymore” but would that even be accurate? Was there ever a time there were answers, whenever anyone could figure things out, how they work, how they really work... I mean, answers they could see and understand and relate to others? A moment when all clarity is revealed once and for all?

  Was there ever anything like that for anyone? I mean, before the play? Oh, man... I mean, all I can say is, thank God for the play. If there is anything that has brought even the slightest bit of peace and understanding to my life, that’s it. Thank God for The King in Yellow.

  “Tell us about it.”

  I don’t even remember when I saw it. That’s funny, right? Well, I don’t mean “when,” I mean where. Where I saw it. What a night, what a freeing, cleansing, perfect night. Whoever it was that I saw it with, that went with me... it’s like they just didn’t get it. In a way, it seemed like the whole damn theater didn’t get it. But me, little Edgar Wilson, son of Mark and Patty Wilson, little Eddie got it. In spades.

  It’s kind of funny actually, I mean, the fact I can’t really remember when I saw it, or where, or with whom, or even why I went. But, it’s not. That kind of stuff is important to those who haven’t got things figured out yet. I mean, there’s nothing important about who I saw the play with. Nothing at all. Especially if they didn’t get i
t, when they didn’t understand what they were watching. No—watching isn’t the word. Not with The King in Yellow.

  “What would the word be?”

  You don’t watch the play, that play, you... I kind of want to say “experience” it, but that’s still not enough. Too shallow, too imprecise. The kind of word some college freshman would use to make themselves sound smart... no... it’s close, a shade of pale just one removed from the final coat—

  You “live” it. That’s what you do when you see The King... you just goddamn live it. You’re not removed from the action, not by any fourth wall, not by the edge of the stage... nothing separates you from the action. You don’t hear the lines, you speak the lines, and I don’t mean simultaneously, no one else is speaking—

  “You mean, no one is saying your part at the same time that you are?”

  No, no—there is no part, there are no lines, there are no actors... it’s just you, living your role, being in the moment the way we were always intended—

  “Intended by whom?”

  And that was when it hit me. They didn’t know. Whoever they were, whatever they were, the voices in my head, in the darkness, the probers, the yammering noise, the outside grabs... they didn’t know. All my life I thought they had some kind of authority, or insight, or... or something. But they didn’t know anything. They were just smart enough to keep me off balance, to learn from my mistakes, to observe and comment without acting, without offering solutions—

  The King had taught me so much, without even trying. No wonder people called it madness. Said it created madness. This was the kind of truth that the world can’t handle. The kind that makes mediocre knowledge so useless, so worthless. I get it now. When I saw it, where, why, with whom, for what reason, the usual push-pin limits trying to uncurl the edges of a notice they honestly believe they want to show the world, but which they’re trying to pin on a placard posted in the dark, I moved past all that.

  The King In Yellow is a release. Not from social conventions. I can remember the important facts, the thing that everyone was all in whispers that seeing the play made people go mad. All these nonsense stories about every time the play was presented the audiences would be left gibbering and drooling, running through the streets, wild-eyed, murderous, suicidal... blood everywhere.... God, what rubbish—it was nothing like that.

  Nothing at all.

  No one was left in their seats staring off into space, spittle dribbling down their cheeks, or scrambling to the lobby in search of a fire axe or some other object of destruction—compelled. Irrational. That kind of mundane fourth act was something only the laziest of hacks could believe would follow such a glorious moment. No, it was ever so much, much more.

  I remember clearly—everyone was moved. Everyone was quiet. There was no mandatory standing ovation, no applauds at all. Just silence. Both human and electronic. No cell phones chattered, no cameras recorded—the trivial reality pretending to exist in the ether receded, illuminated as both foolish and unnecessary in a moment.

  And, instead their remained the overwhelming roar of an intense silence, a penetrating, necessary quiet, one which the actors not only understood, but appreciated. Expected. Did more than their fair share to create. The silence only complimented their achievement, and you could see it in their smiles as they took their bows. They knew—

  “What did they know?”

  What we all knew. What the play had taught them the first time they read it, what it taught all of us when we became a part of it, what it has sitting there within its essence, waiting for all brave enough to face that part of themselves to which the play called out in the first place. You know....

  Don’t you?

  That was when I realized that they did not know. The voices that had hounded me for all those years, questioning, guiding, scolding, second-guessing me from the darkness, the carping, annoying, pestering building blocks of conscience and fear, bullying me into accepting whatever the latest norm was for socially acceptable behavior. The dispensers of each week’s guidelines—not followed at one’s social peril.

  Those shallow sad little souls—they didn’t know anything. They certainly didn’t understand that there was no absolute truth toward which anyone could be guided. The very concept was a shell shuffle with an infinite number of shells and no pea under any of them.

  The game of civilization was rigged, not from the top down as if the rich and powerful were standing on the necks of the rest, but from the bottom upward. Every possession was a buckling strap, every dollar, each pot and pan, every trinket yet another weight welding one in place. But The King, seeing The King, having its own peculiar truth presented so one could pull their own understanding from within it, The King revealed all.

  The King, one of the three primaries, so vast and multi-colored, so wrapped around everything, his power and influence in every yellow hue—how could it not be obvious? How could anyone not see him when he reveals himself everywhere? Of course, the answer was that he was known. In the same way the sky was known. Is known. So obvious is the sky, so always present, it is not noticed. One only notices the sky—filled with our atmosphere—when it is gone.

  So too, once one sees The King, it becomes obvious that he too is everywhere, his hand on every shoulder, his breath within all lungs, unseen only because he is so large he can not be comprehended by such mundane senses as sight and touch.

  In the beginning, when thoughts first solidified in reproducible form—stone tablets, crushed reeds, animal skins, whatever—in every corner of the world the first play written was always his. Men called them bibles or commandments or other lesser titles to encourage familiarity, if not understanding, but it mattered not. It was all his truth, and it has crawled forward toward mankind over thousands of years—

  Waiting for humanity to become conscious enough to grasp its presence.

  The King In Yellow is nothing more than the core truth revealed. The universe making witness—giving testimony to the fact that it has secrets, and that they are easily understood.

  Madness... to call the clearing of one’s eyes to all that is irrelevant in life insanity is so very tiny. And, to not understand the place of all that is tiny, is so very sad.

  Sadness and all its terrible siblings will disappear, though—it is foretold. To say that such will be soon would most likely be misleading. The King but showed the barest of interest in the Earth and the paltry few planets around it but a moment ago to his own reckoning. Think of it as if you had taken note of something in the morning paper. While at work, you allowed the notion to inhabit the back of your mind. Arriving at lunch, the nagging little thought returns to where you finally consider it. That is the history of The King and mankind.

  Some ten thousand years ago, his attention flickered past our random little globe. Millennia later, he has actually begun to exert some small desires concerning our small reality off in the corner of existence as it is.

  A distraction is all we are to The King.

  “Just give in... in the end, you know it’s so much easier.”

  Yeah... easier. It really is true. The easy way. The easy way out. Take it easy. Ease up, friend. Why resist? Why bother? Don’t you know that no one cares if you put a lot of effort into your work, into your life? Into anything—

  Why do you struggle so? What a waste of time. Stop being so damn stupid and just relax—

  Take it easy—

  “After all, a hundred years from now, who’s going to know the difference?”

  It’s what the entire world has been saying to me my whole life. In so many ways, a part of me wants to struggle, to fight onward. But to what purpose? When is the lesson finally learned?

  If you want to know the day I learned I had been wrong so very long, to believe in humanity, in the nobility of the grunting apes to every side of me, just read the date on my ticket stub. The play is the thing, they say.
>
  They’re right.

  het’s posture was entirely that of a man trying to relax. He sat in the corner of the sofa, self-consciously leaned back against its yielding floral-print pillows, hands in his lap, then off to the sides—cushion and arm—then back, but folded instead of resting on his thighs.

  “So,” he said.

  Connie, the therapist, smiled reassuringly.

  “What shall we talk about?” she asked.

  He laughed, nervously. “Um... I don’t know. I mean, things are OK. They’re all right. My... wife, my children it’s all... fine.”

  “Kids getting good grades?”

  “Brett kind of struggles with motivation.”

  “Hm. No work troubles?”

  He shrugged. “If a job was fun, they wouldn’t have to pay you to do it. My dad used to say that.” He looked away.

  “Is that my cue to say ‘tell me about your father?’”

  She chuckled. He smiled back in reply.

  “What did your dad do? For a living, I mean,” she asked.

  “Oh! Well, he put together washing machines in a factory.”

  “That does not sound like a fun job.”

  “He did his share of complaining about it.”