The Old King

High on the hilltop the old king sits as he rants about the disasters and backstabbers that befell him.  Once upon a time, he was coherent, and maybe even could have convinced one of his innocence.

Now, though, his speech is staggered, his arguments reduced to the repetition of his favourite phrases from within them.  Before long it would turn to nothing but grunts, hand gestures to which only he would know the meaning and piercing looks that were meant to convey his anger at never having realised the greatest of his ideas that had fallen by the wayside.

Upon a plateau only accessible from below the old king sits above his former castle dreaming of the days he lived below and his predecessor rotted up here with only sheep to hear him speak.

Fed by the butcher, who each day leaves him a basket and takes one of the former king’s companions back down the shaft, he has long since stopped trying to converse with his only human contact.  Leaving the old king to grow madder as he grows closer to death.

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Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from both the written and picture prompts:

High on the Hill Top the Old King sits - William Allingham, From 'The Fairies'

 

Image from Wiki Commons, taken by Janko Luin and used under the Creative Commons Agreement

100 Words: While away from my body

While away from my body, I wondered about the mess this would make in the street and how it would affect the street sweepers who came every Tuesday, rudely waking me up on my lazier mornings.

While away from my body, I watched the smoke blooming out of the house and marvelled at the shapes it created as it slowly grew further before blurring out of shape and into a formless nothingness.  

While I away from my body it slowly drifted to sleep forever as I daydreamed right to the end, avoiding the question of why I’d been so careless.  

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt:

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot

An InLinkz Link-up

100 Words: We misbehaved then and we misbehave now

I have always loved to misbehave with you, doing all those bad things we used to do- like stealing the best of the chicken stew or playing knock-down ginger along the mews.

Why did we have to grow, such ambition went low, mischief I would no longer sow, for years behind you I did not tow.

Yet eventually we found each other again, grown in ways we didn’t know about then, and became friends in a whole different way, and with one another we now very diff'rently play.

Allowing us every day to misbehave in our own private indoor raves.

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #421 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Misbehave.

100 Words: Anticipation and Hope...

Having fully indulged his hunger and his greed, he visibly bulged as he sat (as did the chair he sat upon).

My siblings and cousins watched him quietly, the quietest we’d been all day.  We sensed it, the air was thick with our hopeful anticipation. 

In all our feverish young minds we heard the chair creaking through the conversational hubbub, so certain we were of the future.  He had eaten so much!  Even for him it seemed a lot.

Surely… surely…

Alas, though, no.  Our hopes for schadenfreude, not that we knew the word then, were dashed by fate’s inactivity.

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #420 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Indulge.

100 Words: A future

Mere survival is the first step.  In this dirty, human-’fested hellhole disease spreads swiftly; for many it is their greatest hope.  The Space Exodus Project is a dead religion in comparison.

We’ve all a shelf-life of twenty-one years to fill a niche or be killed to make room: to establish ourselves into an approved career or get married to someone who has.  

I was never going to make those grades, too meek to not be destroyed by this unnatural selection.  I instead spent my time waiting for the pulping machine that tomorrow will fill my last view of the world.  

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #419 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Shelf.