King Henry Short Pack One (The King Henry Tapes)

by Richard Raley

  “All right. I’m going to go back inside and tell everyone to give you space. But you have to make a deal with me, okay? Every day I’m going to ask you how you’re doing and you’re going to tell me the truth. I’ll leave you alone after that, but you got to be honest for one answer a day. That fair?”

  “Yeah, sounds fair.”

  “All right, dude, stay strong.”

  A pat on the shoulder and then Pocket went inside.

  What the fuck did I ever do to deserve a friend like that?

  *

  King Henry sat by himself at the end of a Cafeteria table, methodically eating hash browns and scrambled eggs, both covered in pepper. Conversations seemed more muted than usual among the class and yeah, he got some concerned looks and some Pity Looks, but at least no one was stupid enough to walk up and start talking to him.

  I take that back.

  One douchebag was stupid enough to walk up to me and start talking.

  One colossal douchebag cumwad jerkoff shithead.

  A pompous jackass who just couldn’t leave well enough alone.

  He didn’t mean to be a fucktard, he just somehow always ended up one.

  Heinrich.

  Fucking.

  Von.

  Fucking.

  Welf.

  He wasn’t even being mean. He was being nice. Polite. Showing manners.

  This was why King Henry hated manners.

  To the fucking mannered among us, being correct and proper and doing things how they’re suppose to be done from grammar to posture to etiquette to decorum, correct is more important than the other person’s feelings in the matter. Just push that shit aside, we have to do this . . . because.

  Pocket told Welf to leave King Henry be. Hope’s alarmed face told Welf to leave King Henry be. King Henry immediately pooling anima the second Welf started walking towards him told Welf to leave King Henry be.

  But . . . fucking manners, man! It’s important!

  Because!

  Civilization and shit! Rome never would have risen without manners . . . or orgies . . . but mostly manners . . . . . . and slave labor.

  “How I was raised,” Welf began—by the way, no phrase in the English language is a bigger sign of oncoming douchebaggery than ‘how I was raised’ . . . unless you’re writing an essay about your first boner or something, “Dictates that I pass along my condolences over your loss at the first available moment. If there’s anything I can do to lessen your pain or help you honor your mother, then please tell me, and I’ll give the best of my ability in providing it.”

  I think the Nazi Asshole practiced saying that in front of the mirror, some deeply detached part of King Henry thought.

  The rest of him, the emotional core that made up King Henry Price, felt a rage unlike anything he’d ever felt before. He set down his fork before geo-anima dripped through his skin and melted the metal into his food, that’s how concentrated his rage felt.

  “Heinrich,” was heard from down the table, “leave him alone, please.”

  Valentine.

  Wonder how much easier this would be if we were still together . . . if I hadn’t fucked it up.

  Not that King Henry understood why making out like they’d been had become a problem but . . . nah, his fault. Always my fault. Always the one who breaks things. Never builds things. Runs in the family. Even my Mom broke things . . .

  Broke herself . . .

  Half the students on the Cafeteria’s second floor were staring—Tri now, his class had upgraded. Pretty much the same as the first floor, just better behaved. You also saw the occasional grad student or teacher picking up a meal.

  Technically it should have been less likely for what happened to have happened on the second floor than on the first floor . . . but . . . he was King Henry Price.

  I break things.

  If Welf had been smirking or digging it in . . . King Henry could have handled that. Told him to fuck off. No problem. But the earnestness of it all. This idea that Welf’s fucking propriety mattered more than what King Henry wanted.

  “All you had to do was nothing,” he said. “That’s it. Nothing.”

  “How I was raised—”

  “Fucking nothing!” King Henry screamed, standing up at the same time.

  He wasn’t the only one.

  All the Cafeteria’s second floor did.

  Even having put on some inches, Welf towered over King Henry by Tri. Welf wasn’t quite his full six-and-a-half-feet, but close enough. Tall motherfucker. Should have been born in the 18th century, been sitting on some horse as a general, garish uniform with ‘douchebag’ stenciled across the back.

  “What I want you to do, Welf,” King Henry told him, fists just itching at his sides, “is to—”

  Jason Jackson, Welf’s huge corpusmancer best friend, slid up next to Welf.

  Welf seemed confused. “What’s the matter?”

  Jason sighed. “King Henry’s about to take a swing at you . . . then I’m gonna stomp him.”

  Welf seemed even more confused. “Why would—”

  “Don’t got a problem with you, Jackson,” King Henry warned.

  “I hear ya, Foul Mouth, but dead momma or not, ain’t backing down while you pooling anima.”

  Welf seemed to realize this as well and finally stepped back away from King Henry. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Shut the fuck up, you complete asshole!” King Henry screamed again.

  But he didn’t take a swing at Welf.

  He took a swing at Jason Jackson.

  King Henry was mad enough, angry enough that it wasn’t about punching Welf, it was just about punching. Just about venting. He had a few morals about venting on the innocent, but if some guy a foot taller than King Henry and a hundred pounds heavier than King Henry was just going to offer himself up as a meat shield like that for such a douchebag . . .

  Well, who was King Henry to let opportunity pass him by?

  He took a swing at Jason Jackson.

  Not a roundhouse. Just a jab. Jason was huge for a sixteen-year-old but he was also quick. King Henry would rightly step away from the medal and say Jason was the scariest guy in the class. There was just so much more of Jason.

  But King Henry figured he was the best puncher in the class. Had iron fist to back him up. Jason was corpusmancer perfection of the human form . . . but he couldn’t load his punches with geo-anima like King Henry could. An iron fist didn’t need to be a roundhouse swing for the fences to knock you out. It just needed to be well struck. It just needed to expend the added umph in flesh, not air.

  That’s why King Henry jabbed instead of going for a hook or a cross. Just a nice stiff jab into Jason Jackson’s chest, being as how the bastard was too tall for King Henry to reach the guy’s jaw without getting a running start.

  A nice stiff jab into Jason Jackson’s chest.

  A blast of geo-anima.

  Jason Jackson tumbled backward off his feet, crashing into the table and two or three of King Henry’s classmates. Naomi was already whining about eggs on her skirt.

  Welf’s jaw dropped open at the sight of his giant friend being thrown around. King Henry grinned at him, that feral animal grin he did so well when he was feeling hurt and alone and at odds with the whole world. “All you had to do was shut up, Welf.”

  “I’m trying to be nice to you!” Welf sputtered.

  “But I didn’t want you to be anything to me, you fucktard, I just wanted to be left alone!” King Henry screamed some more. He pooled some more anima. It was easy when he was mad. Easy to feel defiant against the face of creation. Easy to gnash his teeth and rend the garments, some Old Testament worthy grief.

  King Henry swung another punch. This time it was an all out hook to put all his punching weight into Welf’s jaw.

  Jason Jackson dove in from the side, still on his feet.

  You gotta be shitting me, King Henry thought, that would’ve knocked out a fucking horse!

  Jason slugged downwards,
big black fist engulfing King Henry’s face just before it connected.

  The world gained a few more stars, tilting sideways.

  “Fucking stay down, damn it! Heinrich, get out of here before he’s back on his feet. Landry, control your boy!”

  Pocket’s hands found King Henry’s shoulder, helped him up from his knees.

  “Let go of me,” King Henry growled. “Or else I’m gonna break your fucking hand.”

  “It’s me, dude!” Pocket reminded him.

  “I know, that’s why I’m gonna stop at breaking the hand.”

  “Foul Mouth, don’t be fucking stupid!” Jason yelled. Welf was running across the Cafeteria, probably to find a teacher.

  “Ain’t stupid to fight when the other man smells of fear,” King Henry laughed in a guttural call.

  “Last chance, Foul Mouth, then I pound you into the ground,” Jason warned, but he was holding his arm funny, like King Henry’s first punch had broken something.

  Amazing that the big bastard is even standing. But I’ll be rectifying that soon enough, won’t I?

  King Henry faked coming in with another jab, like maybe he’d already charged up another iron fist.

  He hadn’t.

  Even a personal conjuration was still more than half a minute from his grasp.

  But Jason didn’t know that.

  Fights are weird like that. Time accelerates and decelerates on you. All them punches only took twenty seconds? Really? We was standing there jawing back and forth for three minutes? Really?

  Jason would feel the pooling. However corpusmancers felt pooling. King Henry wasn’t sure. He didn’t feel anything from his own feet, being as corpusmancers don’t pool in the moment, they build their body beforehand.

  As far as Jason was concerned . . . King Henry could have another iron fist. Another punch that could break one of his bones even though it’s thrown by a guy half his size. Jason feared it, so he accepted the reality of the punch.

  It was only a jab.

  But it was an iron fist too.

  So Jason raised his fists to block the punch.

  Only it wasn’t a punch.

  It was a feint.

  Instead, King Henry did what he always did when fighting someone twice his size.

  He kicked Jason Jackson in the balls.

  Damn near broke my foot.

  Jason Jackson groaned, keeling on over to the floor.

  “Next time . . . stay down . . . or just let Welf taste some fist . . .” King Henry told him. He glanced up to see he was the center of attention for the whole floor of the Cafeteria. “And all of you leave me the fuck alone or you’ll get same.”

  *

  King Henry still couldn’t shake it.

  King Henry still couldn’t . . . unsee it.

  Even after the fight . . . he’d hoped a fight would end it.

  Dreams all right. Nightmares. He’d been seriously wrong about sleep. It wasn’t a refuge at all. More like a place he dreaded to go. He couldn’t be angry in his sleep. All those emotions he built up to control himself during the day went away. He had to face himself.

  Have to face what happened to Mom . . .

  King Henry developed a pattern. Wake up early, take a shower, let it all out and cry like a little bitch where no one could hear him, then wander around the Asylum hiding from the people looking to find him.

  No class. No twenty-nine kids plus a teacher up his ass.

  The third day of the year—the second since the funeral—he found his backpack filled with school supplies and textbooks, so he took it with him and read through everything on his own.

  It passed the time. Focusing on academics. People handle grief in weird ways they said, he guessed becoming the perfect student was weird enough for King Henry Price. He asked Pocket for the assignments when Pocket stopped in for the morning checkup. Pocket was surprised, but gave them. So King Henry did his homework too, handed the whole week’s worth over the next day.

  It was lonely and he liked it. When kids were in classes, he’d take over his foremost, absolutely the best, his favorite bench in the whole Asylum, situated right on the side of Mound where you could see all of the Field and beyond. When class was out, he’d hide in a storage closet in the Library that everyone but the spiders and mice seemed to have forgotten about.

  Meals were the only time he showed himself.

  He ate in silence, finished his food, and then would disappear.

  The other kids would look askance of Pocket, but a shake of the head was all it took to keep them away.

  The worst moment for King Henry came thanks to routine. He pulled out a piece of paper and a pen to write his usual monthly letter to his mom, wrote ‘Dear Mom’ before realizing . . . oh yeah. The paper became marked with tears, but not with another word of ink. An unfinished letter says about everything that needs to be said about grief.

  The day after the letter, King Henry finished the cover to cover inhalation of his textbooks and with nothing to keep him company over the days, he decided he should at least go to class and sit in the back. Along with the textbooks, being mad about the same thing for weeks is pretty hard—he needed more ammo . . . and Ultra Class ’09 specialized in supplying conflict.

  His appearance also seemed to convince the class that King Henry might not be his normal opinionated, pugnacious self yet, but it would be okay for them to talk with him in private as long as Pocket never found out about it.

  You know, it’s weird . . . I never knew they cared about me so much. I always thought I was tolerated at best and now . . . I feel like I’ve been missed . . .

  *

  Valentine was first to break the bubble.

  She didn’t say anything deep or poignant, just that night after class King Henry got a hug, a kiss on the forehead, and a ‘sleep tight’.

  It shouldn’t have mattered as much as it did.

  There were other signs after that. A group thumbs-up from Curt Chambers and his Slacker clique. A barely heard, mumbling something from soft-spoken Malaya. A ‘stay strong, El Rey’ from Jesus. Miranda handed him a list of books about dealing with grief.

  It went outside the class. Ultra Class ’08 sent King Henry a letter, signed by all of them, that was a friendly ribbing about how he needed to get his head straight before Winter War or they were going to crush him into little bits. Vicky Welf baked him a plate of chocolate chip cookies—she’s in the Cooking Club. From what King Henry could tell this was a vast sin for a Welf, who should never do something as mundane as servant work. Given the way her brother snarled at the cookies every time he walked by while King Henry was eating them, they tasted fantastic.

  Fucking fantastic.

  *

  Raj went even further in breaking the rules by finding King Henry at his bench on the Mound.

  “I am so sorry, but I have major lady troubles!”

  King Henry didn’t even look up from the book he was reading. “What’d Miranda do now, make you matching friendship bracelets?”

  “Miranda?” Raj sputtered.

  The book was more interesting than the usual Miranda and Raj not-so-drama. “Your one true love, who has you in the friend zone so hard you’re not seeing her ginger landing strip even if you’re the last man on the planet? Probably a good thing, can you imagine what those children would look like? Better for the human race to die off than to become nothing but caramel-skinned gingers.”

  “You know I gave up on Miranda months ago!” Raj complained, “. . . for exactly that precise reason! And our children would be beautiful! Like little strawberry treats!”

  “So you wouldn’t mind if I took a shot?” King Henry asked, still not glancing up and somehow managing to keep a straight face. It felt good to tease Raj and hell, King Henry might even curse some. One big problem with silent brooding: it doesn’t give enough opportunities for dropping f-bombs.

  Raj looked horrified by the thought of King Henry and Miranda together—he ain’t the only one—then he realized it
was a joke. “Be nice, King Henry.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Be nice,” he growled, “be good, be professional, etcetera, so forth. Know what being professional means, Raj? Means not daring to put up an umbrella to block all the shit people are throwing at you.”

  “Women trouble!” Raj reminded him. “Not pessimistic philosophy!”

  “Go to Pocket, he always has a hot girlfriend on his arm.”

  “Only because Pocket looks like Pocket. You manage to seduce women despite the fact they find you completely repulsive.”

  “This is a fair point . . . hurtful, but fair . . .”

  There was a bit of silence as Raj tried to work up the courage to tell King Henry about his situation and King Henry continued to not really give a shit.

  He flipped a page.

  “I’m sorry about your mother, King Henry,” Raj said, his manners getting the best of him just like Welf’s had. Raj didn’t put feelings below manners, but he thought that by being ‘nice’ it would make King Henry feel better.

  It didn’t.

  He almost ripped the book in half with his bare hands.

  “That makes one of us,” King Henry mumbled. Was he sorry Mom was dead? Not really. Think that makes it worse on me. She was in pain, lost in madness for so long. He couldn’t feel sorry about her breaking the grip—even if it took death to do it, even if it meant she left him behind.

  Just like Susan and JoJo had.

  Alone. Without a reason to exist. The entirety of his hopes and dreams crushed and left in the dust.

  He wasn’t sorry his mom was gone.

  He understood why she did what she did.

  But . . .

  Why couldn’t she just last a few more years? A few more years and King Henry might have been able to save her.

  He wasn’t sorry she was gone.

  He was angry that she’d surrendered not just for herself but for him as well. He hadn’t been ready to surrender.

  I’m never ready to surrender.

  Guess that’s earth for you.

  Defiance . . .

  “Um, King Henry, are you pooling?”

  Slowly, King Henry shut the book and put it down on the bench. Then he pushed the geo-anima building inside of him through his feet and into the Mound. “My bad,” he said when it was gone.