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Suddenly, all he felt was anything and everything. Air was escaping his lungs painfully and sporadically as if he’d gained puncture wounds between each rib. Broken and battered, he lay on that cold, hard ground. Bound to a fate he was far from ready for. How did he get here anyway? He could have said no. he could have looked the other way and driven off. But he didn’t.
Instead, he stayed. For what exactly, it was hard to know in this moment between labored breaths. As if to prove to everyone that he was worth having around. As if he were worth wanting. To prove to himself that he wasn’t who they thought he was. He was more than that. A deep desire burning in him constantly to simply be known. Truly known. But every time he spoke, he seemed to be turning a profit in a business of losing others' interest.
Most didn’t care about him. Not really. They simply cared about what he could offer. Protection, a place to stay, a distraction, a laugh. Always the punchline of the joke. A dumb thing to laugh at. He was simply there to push off from his own pain and move sideways around it. The roadblocks it created were scattered along the map of his life. Forgetting how he felt in the first place, to maintain any resemblance to the king he once seemed to be.
He was anything but a king. Quickly forgotten by his own parents as soon as he was able to dial a phone and make an egg. They haunted his home, moving from room to room. Seen but not touched. Seen but not spoken to. Days spent forced to watch as they cared more for each other than the one thing their supposed love had created. If Russian guards and hard punches didn’t kill him, these memories just might.
Everything he ever wanted simply crumbled before him when that curly-haired kid climbed into his Beemer. How different life would be if he had kicked him out of his car. Left the kid to his own devices. His 4th spent with some girl wrapped around him instead of pools of blood on concrete floors. Looking forward to moving to college, not just moving his limbs.
A voice rang out around him. Over and over. In and out, calling his name as his eyes fluttered shut. Surely his time was up, yet the only thing he could think about was what everyone else needed. They needed him to be okay more than he did. Everything in his life revolved around others' needs. Never his own. And maybe that's his problem, he thinks of other people way too much. Or when he thinks he’s just not thinking hard enough. Now he’d never know the answer.
All of the punches he had endured came nowhere near this pain. All of these feelings he had kept at bay for years. The dam holding them back was cracking, and he was no match for the force it held. He wished he could be loved. Wholly and deeply. A gift he had never known. Anything close was merely fool’s gold. Drawing him in and playing the part. The girls he gave himself to night after night could win Oscars for their roles.
He wished he could be loved. Fully and unconditionally. A prize withheld by his parents. Really, his parents were a root for the majority of his pain. He’d deny it to anyone who asked. He liked the empty house. The sense of freedom he once dreamed of, but this freedom came with the price of grief anchoring him in place. Grieving the living, he found out, was harder than grieving the dead. Just close enough, but so far out of reach.
Breaths now fewer and farther between. Pain shooting through his being with every gasp. Ankles dragging and scraping the floor beneath him. He was being taken to his end as far as he was concerned, but quickly, coldness was felt under his legs. Eyes stitched shut, arms cuffed behind him, shaky inhale after shaky inhale, this was it. All that was left of a king was a blood-stained work uniform.
What could have been is all he’ll be known for. Knotches in his bedpost, a poem for love, he tried to receive only to be left emptier than before. Giving himself away time and time again, only for nothing to be given in return.
Trophies and awards that meant nothing soon to return to dust. His memory, sure to be a tall glass of water lost in the kitchen. Days and weeks sucking up what was once there, leaving nothing but an emptiness behind. No one to mourn someone not worthy of tears. He was a vapor in the wind.
His head fell forward and rolled till it met his shoulder. The movement felt foreign. His first in over an hour. All his might went into rolling it behind him, where a voice called out his name. The voice was warm and soft. Eyes still closed, a warmth grew there too. Muted light surrounding him. He knew what this was. Death was here knocking at his door. The angelic voice was calling him deeper and deeper.
“Dingus!” the voice said. He hadn’t remembered much from his few church visits as a kid, but that didn’t sound like something God would say.
Eyelids heavy and worn, broke open to be blinded by a light never yet seen. His name still flooding the room, he was being called somewhere. A head now resting on his shoulder, and everything filled in around him. Head slumped back forward, his lips parted, breaking the bloody seal that held them together.
“Hey! Would ya stop yelling…” was all he could muster as every thought he ever had vanished to nothingness.
The dam that had broken was rebuilt in no time. Joke after joke, turning into brick after brick. No one could ever know that King Steve had true feelings.