The King in Yellow

I watched as they fed a seemingly endless stream of pages into the fire, emptying box after box full of books and loose manuscripts until the air was black with ash. And then I heard it: a hooting, screaming, cackling noise, and I saw the crowd carrying in something that might have been a person or might have been a scarecrow, but which in either case foamed and gibbered and struggled as six people bore it along. I imagined what it must have been like for this creature who, after weeks of crawling in the gutter and running across rooftops and reciting "The King in Yellow" until it forgot how to feed itself, was now too tired and too sick and too hungry and too insane to resist the hands that held it up and pushed it forward. I knew what was going to happen before it did, so when they threw the struggling stick figure into the fire, and when the madman laughed and leaped and cavorted in the flames, I only nodded, and wondered if he was the Big Bad Wolf.

And then they brought in the next one.

This went on until dawn, and when the flames began to die someone threw gas onto the fire and the crowd cheered. A blazing plume shot into the sky and the center of that burning mass glowed bright yellow, and in the swirling dance of the flames I thought I saw, and could still see imprinted on my vision even after the explosion faded away, a shape with three points, a symbol entirely alien but which nevertheless communicated to me thoughts and words and ideas so beautiful that I wept.

And I knew that it was the Yellow Sign, and that I had found it at last.

And I also knew that despite the mob's efforts, the play would not be destroyed, that I would not run down to them and throw the last (and first) copy of it into that fire, and that even if I did it wouldn't matter, because the essence of it had spread through those flames and shown itself to me. The Yellow Sign taught me that the play more than just paper and words. It had been destroyed before; it would live again.

I realized that I was no longer alone. My door was still locked, barricaded in fact, but even so a figure in a tattered robe and a white mask stood next to me, pointing an accusing finger. I reached out and touched the fabric of its coarse, billowing gown. It was real. The Phantom of Truth had come for me. And that meant that I should unmask.

The truth is, I didn't discover "The King in Yellow": I wrote it.

All of my research turned up nothing interesting enough to approach Melissa with, so I took matters into my own hands. Lots of people over the years had tried recreating the lost play. So why couldn't I do the same?

But not all of it, you see: I only wrote the first Act. Just enough to have something to show her. The second Act that Melissa brought to my room that night, and that Chambers and Tessa and the Thetas and all the others had read? Well, at first I assumed that she had written it herself. But now, as I looked into the Pallid Mask, I realized that wasn't true. Perhaps the second Act was written through her, just as the first had been written through me, but the words belonged to neither of us. They were the words that had been whispered into our ears by the invisible messengers: Camilla, Cassilda, the Stranger, and even the King in Yellow himself. The play was their doorway into the world and we were their key, just as others had been before us.

The Truth hounded me still. It pointed at the place where the manuscript was hidden. I took out the play, arranged it into the proper order, and then I read it. I read it from beginning to end, and when I came to the revelation of the Yellow Sign I laughed. I laughed and laughed and laughed until I was sick, and for all I know I'm laughing still.

When I was finished, I looked up and said: "Shouldn't you unmask too?" So the Phantom of Truth took off the Pallid mask, and I saw blue eyes and a full smile and hair the color of asphodels. And when we kissed I thought how lucky we were, that on our one night together we had compounded such a child as this, we each contributing one half that somehow became a greater whole. And I felt very proud.

When the mob came to my room they found what they thought was me hanging from the curtain rod. And they clucked their tongues and said what a shame it was. If any of them had read the play, they would know that I am not dead, any more than Melissa is, and that by leaving our bodies behind we've freed ourselves from that prison of flesh.

They did not find the play either. We took it with us. And although this one town has evicted us, we have a whole wide world to find a new home in. "The King in Yellow" will live again, and you, who have read this confession, will be among the first to seek it out. The Pallid Mask sees you, and the accusing finger of the Phantom of Truth now points in your direction, even if you cannot yet see it.

But tell me friend: Have you found the Yellow Sign?