The Royal Diadem of Maggot Hall

And the first time I came here to see him, in his clayey filthy cell with rotting food and the smell of vermin and his own droppings, on the floor and on the charred and splitting cracked walls, he said to me this sentence, "They have me now. The creeping things. They are feeding on me now. It's far too late. Whoever I would have been. Back then." And each time I saw him in these fifteen and thirty minute visits, he sank back into himself further and further, as though his body were a feed bag of horse food that was emptying more and more each month, each day and minute, and he of himself.

Whatever he was now, was falling back into the base of that bag, which was his bed and he was becoming smaller and bonier than ever before, his eyes were sick with a black blue purple pulse, his hair was almost gone and he had had such a fine shock of golden long thick hair before all of this. He sat with his bony arms around his bony legs pulled up to his bare and almost skinless chest. He used to be so handsome, so fine to talk to, had a jolly sense of humor, and a fine mind so very well read, so astute.

How in those old golden days, I loved to take long walks with him in the fall country side with the air nipping at us and the autumn smelling like beautiful apples tangy to the touch of our senses of smell. And as boys to dally with him and he with me. Our naked baths in the cold stream. Our giggly scuffles. Our sex play. Our exploring each other and examining each other in that quiet curious serious way boys have. Nothing in the world but the two of us.

Our drying each other off in the cooling sun. His hands on me and mine on him. His fine member rising to me and I kneeling down to encompass it's straining strength with my mouth. Brothers we were. And more than brothers. How we gloried in who could shoot our spunk first. And how we especially gloried in being able to come at the same time. Our spunk meeting in the air, mid-way, joining, forming a bridge of white milk and rainbows from our very own hot lusting bodies.

All of this long ago. Before the madness started. Before the morning after one fine night when the "things" got him. But different creatures than this, than the ones who were devouring him here, who were splitting him from himself one small bone, one small tendon and joint at a time.

And the words he said the first visit, were the words he said the third and fifth and all the visits. And the only words he said. And each time I sat on the cot next to him and tried to hold him, tried to comfort him, he pulled away from me into the corner like a cornered rat and I swear his eyes blazed like those of a mad rat, and that was how it became, those words to me when the turnkey, what else would he be called?, unlocked the prison cell of Kim, what crime had he committed?, I was the criminal in bringing him in my stupidity and arrogance here, lock me up instead, though I never had the courage to say what always guilt bowed me to the ground, for there are many kinds of prisoners and many kinds of prisons in this, God's world, and most sadly I knew this so well these many months.

And I would sit on the cot as far away from Kim as I could, and I would stare at the hard floor and watch the shadows scurry or beetle crawl across it in the darkness of his day, my hands together, my head bowed, let me be with you Kim, let me be with you fifteen or thirty minutes every month, let the monsters take me in your stead, and if that is not possible, let them take me at the same time they take you.

He was being disassembled, my Kim. He had been for some time before all of this, only I hadn't thought of it in that way. He was being taken apart as though he had been a wooden building to tear down piecemeal, in the name of HELPING him, they were deconstructing him. They were taking the wood boards that was him and that was his mind and heart and viewpoint and being and soul if you will and they were tossing it outside on the pile of all the other human lumber in the back of the building where once a week they sat the piles ablaze and the ashes rushed to heaven, and the messengers, for that is now how I see the mad, were made to stand, kneel, tremble on and on in little squares of tinier and tinier blocks. The boy who introduced me to delights of the body. The boy who had been the smile of the day and my sun. The boy who had pressed his lovely curved buttocks against me as he leaned his head back and kissed my on the lips so passionately, so unashamedly. That boy was gone forever more.

Taking one life giving breath away at a time, making the persons turn in tighter and curl up closer to themselves. He died by increments right in front of my eyes.

With all that emptiness circling and carpentered about them, till they were suspended over the universe of eternity on one foot of tile, or not quite foot long stretch of promise and then stealing it from them, and the victims want the all of it to be stolen from them so they might finally fall into death, might finally be rid of the nightmare that they were supposed to love so much, god help any of them, I later found out, when they answered yes, oh god, yes, to a doktor's question, "Have you ever contemplated suicide?" The doktors being against this, because if any of the "clients" did, and one or two did make it every so often, usually shortly after the relatives died or the money ran out, but if paying customers slashed their throats, well, then, it's the killing of the expensive udders of the cash cow that can no longer be milked dry, and that is something to guard against at all costs.

I think of it now, before this window, looking out into the rain. I think of the ashen young old man with the sleep of death on him, lying on the gilded couch of this room because he has to be with someone, he has to be with even me, if it's all that is around, I, the Judas who brought him to this point, the Judas he no longer remembers and I think that is lucky or unlucky for me because if he ever does remember me, I fully expect him to murder me, and I fully expect me to let him.

I think of Doktor McGraw in front of that fire place in that chilly office but not half as chilly as his stone heart, that thing that keeps the real criminals going, that keeps all the stupid evil doer Doktor McGraws of the world going, and I think I was drawn to placing Kim there because I, like the good doktor, and all the good people of this kingdom love to see someone broken and despined, love to see someone hurt and knocked about and celled and jailed and beaten in there, (I have seen the deep black and red marks on Kim's back when I was him, and on his legs, and more of them visible to me now when I bathe and dress and undress him, his bird like chest, his almost vanished member, his balls that have been shriveled up back into his cavity, his lusterless eyes, the arms that move only if I move them, the legs moving only as I move them), they, we, love to have scapegoats, so they, dammit, so I too, will escape their fate.

The Doctor turning to me, his little piggy eyes, his little pink squealing piggy eyes, and his feminine whir of a voice saying "I will fight you on this, for his sake."

" For who's sake, Doktor?"

I asked.

"For his."

" His name, doktor? He has a name. Do you know what it is?"

"Your--brother's sake, you impetuous young man" (said so contemptuously, so degradingly, so meanly the infection spat out like an infection out of his highly cultured and most superior mouth, the same way the words "friend and compassion and doing what's right," came squealing, lying, loathing, and evil and disgusting and petulant from out of his mouth between the two overripe cherry colored lips nestled in the white patchy whitish beard) sake. "

His name, doktor? Come now. You care so damned much. Surely you must know the heart of many that beat in your cultured chest. I mean, kind sir, you wish to help him so much, surely you remember either his first or last name?"

And the doktor looked at the papers on his desk, at which point, I stood from the square back chair and rushed to his desk and knocked those crib sheets asunder.

"You must trust doktors," he said, fear in his eyes and the little strangle of words in his throat.

"--- doktors. Damn them and you and your swine brethren to hell forever."

He backed away. No one had dared talk to him like this before. Not this little tinhorn god almighty.

He said, moving further back from me, "I will see you in court, sir. I will fight your taking him from here from his ministrations from our tender care."

" Do that, doktor, I said, do that, doktor whatever the ---- your name happens to be. I suppose you have one. Don't you?"

And I stormed out, proud of myself. Proud of myself, can I even begin to believe what I was then, and what I hope to Almighty God I will never be again.

And herr doktor did what he swore he would do. The courts became involved. I paid another fortune for solicitors. The courts ground slowly. There were legal tactics. It took a grand total of two years to have Kim brought to me in that carriage at sunset four months ago, and tossed like so much garbage at my door step, at my family estate which is now devoid of most of the furniture, and all of the paintings and niceties that I had to sell, as I am having to sell the estate itself. And I waited at the window every day after the justices' decision, for which I had to pay the largest sum yet, for when they came in their dray drawn carriage and they picked the straw man body of my Kim up from the back of the carriage, is he dead?, have they murdered him out of revenge?, for his own good?, will they bring a corpse to my door?, and they literally dropped him at my door step. Brushed their hands of him, and went back to their carriage, got on and drove away.

I rushed to the door and opened it and found finally, since I had not been allowed even a glimpse of him during the trial phase, for legal reasons I didn't understand, and I knelt to him and I held him. He was alive. But barely so. He had been barely alive for such a long time, long before I admitted it. And I held him to me and I said "you will not die, Kim, " and I wept into his neck and his arms were slightly convulsive and it seemed as though he were rubbing at the side of my pants' leg, telling me that it was all right, that he forgave me, and I still and all after all of this, after the agony of the courts, after the debilitating trial that dragged on and on.

That dragged poor Kim and me through the mud, that made us more than laughing stocks, that made us pariahs, that made us evil witches of the dark faces of the moon, thanks to the doktors cared so very much about Kim, and would have made him sit in the court room to listen to all the dirt and mud, but I found a doctor (I spell his appellation as he deserves, being a real one, a kind compassionate man for I could not pay him, the solicitors having taken the last bit of money I had) who got court orders to visit Kim and who convinced the judges, along with more money from me, that he could not stand the strain. The mercy of human kindness, your Hypocratic -------Oath, doktors? And the tabloids, the "press", what a field day they had with this, the two sons of the Marquis. But, forgive me, I shall not go into that ever again.

And Kim now, a still, silent, asleep form in the winter rain that is like cheese cloth in tatters running down his face in reflection from this large window that, like all the other windows in this place, is not ashamed of what goes on here, but how can life continue here? How can anything at all go on here any longer ashamed or unashamed? I go to him, my Kim, and I kneel down of my becoming pained knees, and I am dressed as well as I can these days, for we are shadows of what we once were, because I'm going into town this morning to talk to my solicitor about selling the old homestead for funds to get away from this accursed country, which I have read in one book called, The Kingdom of the Dead, and o 'tis true, 'tis true.

They went away from Kim. They went away from him without a word. His friends. His loves. He gave them up so unwillingly. He knew they would return. Everyone loses friends and lovers. But all of them? All his life long? He said he hated them and would not remember them. None of them. Ever. But every time he looked at me, he was looking at someone else. The terror of trying again. Of putting his neck in the noose once more. People became adversaries, enemies to him. He waited for them to hurt him. He was not to be disappointed. He believed as long as he could. He was so strong. I can't imagine how strong he was.

Though he thought one would not do so. Just one. The final boy. J. But he hurt Kim most of all. I blame this boy as much as I blame myself for what we did to Kim. What I did because of the centrifuge of cruelty that Kim felt for that last time from that final boy who took him for all he was worth, then dropped him dead, who beat my brother in to the ground and walked away as coldly as there have ever been cold winters.

Kim did his best to keep the last one from leaving. This beautiful golden haired boy, this brother, Kim, who thought he was so much less. For reasons I've never understood. They took pieces of his life, they took his love that was not worthy of them, they took little moments of time from him and they made any memories of good days cordoned off to him, because one or more of the traitors was in them in one way or another. They made him unable to remember anything at all, they made him unable to read, because he would come across one of their names, a first or last name, as a character in the novel, they made him afraid to read the newspapers for fear the actual name of one or more of them might be in the print hiding like a cobra ready to reach out to him and cut its fangs into his face.

He was afraid to think, for his thoughts were about them, were the echoes of their voices and their words and their inflections and their laughter which back then they shared with him, and promises, god, all those empty promises of theirs. "You're too serious, Kim, everything is sad and wrong and dangerous in your mind, in your happiness there is such sadness, and we cannot abide that, for the sadness is the fount of the joy of you. Do not ask that of us." Had they been bright enough to be able to say it. Had they been courteous enough to say anything at all. And not to just seemingly drop off the face of the earth.

He tried so hard to change their minds, tried to be what they wanted, light and gay from the direction they believed to be the right, and he thought he succeeded. Till they decided he couldn't be that either. That, he, being Kim, was not allowed. The last boy who ran away was the final straw.

The melancholia of Kim's must have been unbearable. Is he free of that now? Is he? Unmeant accidental good thing? Or is it down so deeply in him that he cannot even scream up a million miles through his throat to let me know? Would there be any comfort in his being able to scream? Or does one finally get to a point, that even that would do no good. Would be a puny yawn compared to what he has to deal with every moment of his life?

They did not, the doktors, stick knives in his brain, but there are other ways of doing such things. Kim knew that before the asylum. I loved him. Love him. He turned from me because I could not be who he loved. Is it always this way? And I angered him. I was jealous of him. And of the persons he loved, because they were not me and never would be. How I ached to leave with them. I did. God help me.

He was afraid to dream because his dreams were about one or more or all of them. Corners had developed in his formerly wild moors and deep mysterious sea eyes which saw to the very bottom, to the silt, and were of melancholy happiness because of that. A sad world, one that dealt with reality truly, which others, including me, the doktors especially, could not handle--a lonely and singular world, yes, but one he had come to live with. Till there were too many of them. The knives of betrayal cut open his brain. Leaving nothing to him at all. All of these things. Including music, which he used to hum along and sing-he once had a lovely tranquil tenor voice-- no more, for all of everything reminds him of himself and the "lovers" he walked with in the night time, as I watched them from a distance, from my window or from following them--as they lay with each other and made love. As he thought they were of his world. But no, and he closed up his ears to music as well, for it all in one way or another reminded him of this long gone friend or another. The fear of each season, for each had a special place in his heart for certain ones of those who would not return. Especially the final one.

He could go nowhere in the house or grounds or fields or the village, for he always half saw his chimeras there and his heart sank like a stone. So desperately sad and lonely, he. Molecules of air disturbed him, the lightest patter of one of our dogs' padding across the parlor set him into spasms.

Until one fine lightning storm night, he simply gave up. He could not take it anymore, the letters he wrote that would be returned with "address unknown," written on the envelope, in, he told me, THEIR own handwriting, would they be so cruel?, he lived in fear that one envelope, to J. who he had put all his remaining sanity on, would be returned to him, and written on it, "Deceased," and he would recognize the handwriting and how could he take that?, or he would not receive a response at all. Did the letter get to him? Did it not? Would it then, tomorrow? Or the next day? Next week? No, it is better to not know. No, it is better to know. Christ!

The fear of the morning mail. And nothing in it. And then the afternoon mail. And nothing in it. And then the desire to get to the next morning and then the plaintiff prayers to make the night last forever, so he didn't have to look at the rug behind the front door when the mail was delivered.

How he worried and fretted and stumbled a bit at a time, a little longer at a time, and then one Fall in that violent cold rain storm, he stripped off his clothes and ran out into the night and he screamed at the top of his broken once lilting voice, "What did I do to you? Give me the pieces of me back. You don't want them. You've, all of you, become me, the me you don't remember at all or care about at all, leave me a corner to stand on, for God's sake, why can't I get you the mother----out of my mind and heart? OHJESUSHELPME!"

And I heard him and I in my nightshirt rushed out to him and I held him and he wept on my shoulder as he wept when I took him to the insane asylum, as he has never wept sense in my presence, as I fully believe he has wept not at all in all these years. For when he cried, he wished he were one of them, how he would have loved to leave himself too, leaving every molecule of him behind, with their name tagged on each one, and Kim the holder of them.

That night in the rain, silver daggers from the sky, I lay with him. I took his member in the slashing rain, his flaccid small member, and I put it in my mouth and I sucked at it for a long time as I lay with him in the rain and mud and he wept, as I suckled him, then presented my own to be suckled by him as we lay against each other. Neither of us sexual beings. Not ever again. This was not love or closeness or pain or desperation. This was salvation leaving the both of us for good and all. We sucked each other's deflated members as if we were sucking or trying to suck the pain out of each other. For his pain had always been mine. But how can such pain ever be done away with? I stroked his naked body. His willowy gentle shivering as with ague body that was now cold, not warm as it used to be. I kissed his blonde pubic hair. I nestled my mouth against his balls so small then. And I wept into his stomach. As he put his hands on my head and held me like I was the ill one and not he. Oh god, Kim.