The Boy and the Other.

Unknown.

The King raised him like a son and loved him the same. Yet here the boy stood, immune to his pleading and covered in the blood of his Queen and their children. The offense responsible for the boy’s wrath was unknown to the King as were the depths of the depravity from which the boy drew upon to conceive such vile punishment. He didn’t care, not anymore. His fate was sealed and he longed for death.

With his eyelids cut away and his wrists and thighs nailed to the throne, he had watched the boy he loved so dearly slaughter his family. His children, the youngest not yet a year in this world, lay butchered and scattered around the throne room. His wife, flayed with excruciating care before being disemboweled and dismembered with none, sat in a pile by the fire.

“Please,” the King begged, hoarse from days of endless screaming.

The boy’s thin lips crawled from his bloodied teeth and into a wicked grin.

“Tell me!” the King cried, testing the spikes holding him in place while managing only to reignite the agony of the wounds they'd created, coaxing blood to flow once again.

The boy’s wicked grin grew wider.

The last tear the King would ever shed bulged in the corner of one eye, held then followed the path of all those before it. “Son…” he began asking the only question he needed answered before he died.

“I am nobody’s son,” the boy growled.

The King frowned. The boy waited, but not for long. His need for more grew stronger.

“If for nothing else then as payment for all I have given you over these past years, answer me, I beg you?”

The boy considered it. By his thinking he was under no obligation to indulge him. The King had indeed taken him in and provided a home and a life worth living, but time had proven his kindness as no more than a ploy. As young as he was when the King found him cowering in the dung and muck outside the palace wall, he had thought it an odd thing, such generosity. Having pegged the King as a fool and despite his best efforts to resist the draw, the boy had grown to love him. He knew now that he was the fool. Like all those who had imprisoned and enslaved him, the King was no more than a leech. His adoration veiled his truth, but the boy had at last seen through the insidious weave of his trickery and lies.

The King wanted what only the boy could offer, what only his power could provide. He wanted what they all wanted. He would not have it. Not the way he wanted it.

“Please?” the King asked again.

The boy slowly climbed the steps toward the throne. Prayer proved incapable of stopping the boy thus far, but the King began praying again nonetheless.

“It will do you no good,” the boy promised.

“What have I done?” the King cried as the boy rose to stand beside him. “Tell me.”

“I will do more than that, my King,” the boy sneered and clasped the King’s head in both hands. “I will show you.”

The boy closed his eyes and unleashed his mind. Leaving his body, he crossed the gap between them, slithered through the King’s eyes and into his mind. The boy who was more than a boy showed the King the offense he deemed worthy of the atrocities he crafted in retaliation. The King found many flaws in the boy’s judgement and sentencing, but was unable to voice them. His mind was no longer his own.

The boy showed the King a great deal more. Every horrific nightmare and foul memory, every foul fear and sadistic sorrow, every heinous assault and hideous murder, those that belonged to him and those imposed upon him, the boy forced the King to relive them all-first as the victim and then as the perpetrator.

Madness took the King long before his heart finally failed. The boy withdrew into himself as life faded from the King’s eyes. He watched until it was no more, drew his blade and claimed his trophy.