Page 2 of Wicked Vile King
Life, death, and the incessant creep of boredom.
For as long as I can remember, I've been staving off the monotony of life.
When I was six years old at my parents' estate in northern Connecticut, a bird flew into the dining room window. I stood, abandoning my breakfast on the table, and barefoot, I walked outside into the cold heart of winter. The snow tickled my toes and inched up my ankles toward my calves before I found the bird on the ground, its feathers stark black against the white snow.
I remember kneeling and examining it, studying and watching as the frail, tiny thing tried to remember how to breathe, its feathers rising with each slow inhale. I watched until my toes went numb and the chill tunneled into my lungs and sliced me open from the inside out. I watched until its breaths slowed and then ceased entirely.
It was the first time in my life I can remember not being consumed by boredom. But it was soon ruined when the nanny found me, her brown-eyed gaze wide and panicked, and ushered me back into the warmth.
I bit her for ruining my fun.
She deserved worse.
Soon after, I was sent away to my first boarding school, where I was swept across the continent like a secret to be kept. On my first day, an older boy slammed my face into a locker on the way to class, and when I fell, he crunched my fingers beneath the heel of his polished loafer, grinding them into the unforgiving tile floor. Pain detonated in my hand—I'd later learn that the fucker broke four of my fingers—but I smiled at him. I smiled and I laughed as he backed away, the pussy.
Fucking psycho, he had said, and I laughed even harder, tasting the zap of blood trickling from my broken nose into my mouth.
He didn't get it. Once again, I wasn't waiting for an end to the monotony.
On reflex, I clench my fingers in my right hand at the memory, feeling the knuckles pop and realign as I do. The bones settle into place as I do it again. It still hurts like a bitch when a punch lands the wrong way. But then I remember what happened and start to laugh again.
The fights kept the boredom at bay for a while. The pour of warm blood across my knuckles and the giving crunch of bone splitting beneath my fingers made me feel alive. Even after it got me expelled from eight boarding schools in seven years, and my parents threatened me with institutionalization, I didn't care. I used to love it when the fuckers pissed themselves, the air tasting like ammonia. I'd watch the yellow leak across the floor and corkscrew through the cracks in the concrete.
It was nice while it lasted, until the fights got . . . tiresome.
Sex was an escape for a while. For a few years, I spent every day getting my dick wet in whatever hole I could find. Girls, guys, it didn't matter. But now I can't even muster a hard-on, even when pussy falls at my feet and begs for it.
It's all become so monotonous, so fuckingboring.
The girls who see a pretty face and a bad boy they want to fix.
The teachers who don't give a shit about any of us.
The badasses who want to pick a fight to prove they're tough.
Nothing helps.
Not the mandatory group therapy where everyone is required to share their trauma and pretend to care.
Not the meds designed to numb and repel our most unholy instincts.
Nothing.
Not anymore.
Jesus, maybe jumping isn't such a bad idea. At least I wouldn't spend the ass crack of dawn contemplating my own goddamned boredom.
My parents would probably be relieved if I died, though they'd definitely use it to their advantage, painting the picture of a grieving mother and father and all that neurotypical shit. No one would question them. They are upstanding members of society after all, old money and political connections and enough pull to make sure no one batted an eye if I disappeared at the place they sent me to be contained.
The doctors here would be pissed. It would probably lead to another state inquiry they'd have to pay to get rid of. Too many deaths in too many years and all that repetitive bullshit. There would be no scandal, though. Everyone would make sure of that. My parents wouldn't allow it. Hell, none of the parents who send their spawn here would. The Asylum isn't some inpatient, holistic treatment program. This is a prison for those that cannot be controlled.
When I leave this place, I will be a walking success story, a normalized psychopath, sent to Chryseum's sister school in Massachusetts, Prodigum University. Shit, they might even say they cured me, and my parents might make a big donation, anonymously, of course. But they don't realize that it's not hard to pretend to be what you aren't. It's second nature—give them what they want and get what I want in return. The whole world is one big transaction after all.
I smile at the right moments.
I laugh when it's expected of me.
I even cry if it helps me get my way.
