The little king-not-king
There once was a king. He was no real king, because in the country, he lived, they had killed the kings and emporers many years ago. But still, he was a king. A kind of a king. He had survived by eating rats. And people say, that you become, what you eat. So he sat on his little toilet-throne. And he pondered.
And he looked up on the wall and saw the pictures of the former kings. I mean: not kings. They had different names, meanings, but still, they had been kings, kind of kings. People had liked them. People had feared them. They had saved the country and they had closed the borders to other countries, because they had believed, that other countries were not good. Really bad. Is there a good country? I don’t think so.
So this king-not-king sat on his toilet-throne and stared at the pictures. And he said to himself: „What can I do to be not forgotten? What will happen to me?“
His friends from the temples, high ranking friends, hat told him, that their gods were real, but he had never believed it. On the other hand: who would judge him after his death? The ghosts of the former kings-not-kings?
He looked up and down the walls. He saw pictures of old kings, forgotten emporers – and he missed this kind of power, this magic called „history“. And he knew from all the lands on the maps, his was great, mighty, but he was the opposite of it. He felt different than most people. He still looked like a sad child. Not like the others before him in time. He felt, that he lacked something. There are people who would call it „a soul“. He stared in the mirror, in his own eyes, but there was nothing, not even nothing itself.
When he left the toilet-throne, people met him, their eyes down on the carpet. He liked it. He smiled. But their fear was not enough for him. He went to the window and looked out the palace into the endless void of the future and his mind trembled. His hands felt not even sweaty. His face was not his own. The void behind his skull grew more and more with every moment. There was a force looking up to the endless blue sky, but he was unable to see it. His heart paused, just for a moment. And he saw the armies he was leading, but not really leading. He commanded, they followed. They followed this hollow entity of a king-not-king. They would kill for him. They would die for him. But in the end it would have no meaning. He would be less than a king or an emporer, less than an artist or a worker, less than a commander, less than a scientiest. He would be the least of the least. And even less than that. His name would be scratched out of history. People would turn around and curse his existence. But this was the only thing, he cared about.