Challenge Submission The Whiskey Sodden King

[The Notorious A]

The Whiskey Sodden King​

Life was always meant to be more simple than this.

But we human beings have a knack for finding a way to complicate things for ourselves and those around us. So, as we grow and develop over a lifetime we slowly learn that we're not here for anyone else and often enough we show it in these important little moments that define us. Moments reserved to each and every one of us uniquely from the rest. They are moments that impact our character and show the world the reality within which we live as we struggle with our most hideous urges and unsightly tendencies. These moments in which we falter, time and time again. Little fragments of perspective that betray how self righteous, indignant and arrogant we are, all while we think that the world is being played against us at every turn. Ever drowning in our own shallow, self-centered view of life, but never growing beyond that snowglobe prison we build up around us. We show one another that we're not here for them, nor are we here for anyone else beyond them, and we most certainly do not exist to preserve the greater good in the world. We're here, in this life, for ourselves. And so we will forever be flawed and endlessly alone.


Each time that your mind allows you to sink into that depressing pit of revelation, however, do give yourself a moment of reprieve and be reminded that we're not being anything more or less than what we were always designed to be. You, in all of your grand and extraordinary shortcomings, are merely a product of paramount disappointment. You are the greatest failure of something far more profound that you could never possibly hope to comprehend.


You are the product of free will...

---​

Love…


It is a curious thing that I am afraid we humans will never truly understand. Both awe-inspiring and confounding, which carries with it the ability to free us from our own solitudes and give us something precious and pristine to replace the silence. Yet, in the same breath, it can completely destroy us and leave a shattered and broken shell in its wake for the world to continue abusing until fate allows us to rest forever. It isn't always kind, thought it can be, and more often than not it is a welcomed and sought after feeling, but when things are at their worst, they're utterly unbearable. Something that we seem to always forget, even though we're all well aware that at the beginning it's perfect, and at the end it's always rather dreadful in it's nature, typically ending just as abruptly as it began.


With that in mind, understand that I am not thrilled to reveal to you that my story is just now coming to an end as I have this odd little revelation about "love". Lucky for you, your story is just now beginning, all while I take my final breath and recant every step I took that lead me to this very spot in which I am kneeling and trembling. All while I watch the world growing dark all around me in lieu of something greater than I could have ever hoped to become in the first place. So, with that in mind, try not to feel sorry for me when you realize that this was always going to happen, and that there was no other way for my story to end. It was a necessary self destruction in a moment of clarity in order to set things right. A way for me to right a few wrongs, or set things in their proper places again by simply letting go. To let go is not to go quietly, however.

You should remember that.


To fully understand you'll need to come back with me quite a ways to a place where things don't make much sense just yet, though with enough patience they will, soon enough. A place that's already quite dark and ripe with despair as it is, but one that is necessary in regards to context. I've got one last breath to experience it all one last time, and that should be more than enough to bring you with me through it all again.

Kingdom of York - New York City
Year 2237 - 1:17 AM



"There was a weakness in you that she had never known. She might have even chosen someone stronger than you could ever hope to become. Hers was the mistake, however, for thinking you were able to protect her rather than allowing her to slip away in silent suffering..."



The words of a torn man echoed through his burdened mind as his most recent sip of alcohol burned down his throat only to splash among the stewing remnants of a previous meal. It warmed his belly, but made him feel only a modicum of solace, especially on nights like those when his memories were ripping him back to a time long since passed. A time when days were ripe with long and necessary slumbers and nights were full of blood ridden chaos upon the streets of a city so vast that there genuinely was no end. A place that was only separated by lines and districts. A place where everything that wasn't water stricken was covered by steel and concrete. A jungle of the modern, human menace that was ever rising towards the clouds as the virus that was mankind choked out everything else that the planet Earth had once had to offer.


Where there were once rolling landscapes and flourishing, wild creatures there were now streets running along and crossing one another to form a grid, and upon that grid there were towers, vistas and skyscraping constructs that weighed down the crust of the planet once shared by many species. Those species were all but extinct now, however, and the rare creatures of the wilds were merely sights to be seen in zoos and small reserves that were meant to house and retain those poor creations of God. They were nothing but spectacles doomed to live quiet, boring lives staring out of thick panes of glass at eager little faces belonging to the bastard's who'd caged them to begin with. The offspring of a worm was still a worm, but in the grand scheme of things, human beings were somehow lower than that. Lower for their greed and lower for their need to take and to steal. Lower for their thirsty conditions that forced them to drink away everything that their lives had to offer without a moment's hesitation.


If there was more to be had, they would have it, and only violence could stop them. It was a pity that, along with being the most vicious of God's creatures, they were also by far the most intelligent. They were ambitious and full of desire wrought by the thought that if they didn't continued to take what they could they might end up with none. They were vile in every sense of the word, and their kind had not only set Earth to it's weakened and decaying state, but they were also responsible for the colonization of neighboring planets like Mars and Venus. The civilizations on these planets were new, of course, but if history proved anything, it was that Human beings were restless and, one way or another, they would bend those planets to their will and eventually take them for all that they were worth. They would grey them all out, just like they had imprisoned earth in a cage of steel and concrete long ago.


For all of their many faults, however, human beings were also capable of great and wonderful things. Things that made you feel and things that made you think. Things that filled you full with glee and other things that made you hurt. Things that reminded you, along with everyone else confined to the very same skin of the blaspheming mankind, that you were not the architect. None of them were the creators of their own worlds, which was something that only their endless hungering for context could remind them of. They were far too selfish and ignorant to show any interest in creating anything worthwhile or lasting. All they had was their money, their material possessions, and most destructive of all, their Vices.


-


"One more, Jarrek.", said a solemn looking man sitting alone at the bar far removed from a group of youngers at the other side of it. Four in all, and none of them paying any form of attention to what was going on in that room on that night of a certain great and violent awakening.


"Sure thing, Kai. One honey whiskey, dry as it's ever been." said a middle aged man who appeared less than pleased to be in that place on that night, though he hadn't the slightest idea that he would be far less pleased within a few minutes. It was his job to pour the drinks of others, however, for he owned the bar, and if he wasn't helping serve the drinks that he'd highered his lazy bartenders to serve then he'd never make any money. They were good for keeping patrons entertained by conversation and marketing his bar on social media outlets that practically ruled the internet, however, so he allowed them to keep their jobs while being next to useless otherwise.


Once the drink was poured and slid across the table to the man who'd requested it, however, the older bartender reached down and braced himself against the worn, wooden top as his tired, old and dark eyes sized up the one he'd called "Kaiser". As he did, the gruff man lifted the glass and sampled himself a sip while the beady old eyes shuffled down the form he was beholding to take in everything that he could while his mysterious, repeat customer was distracted. There, on a barstool that looked like it could sparsely hold the massive chunk of man, sat a mortal man who'd been known by many names in his young past. He was thirty-six years of age by that point, though he'd have sworn to anyone that old age had already been upon him only a couple of years past thirty. He was above average height standing just over six feet, broad of shoulders and thick chested, which was a bit of an understatement.


His forearms were bigger than most men's thighs, and his head was large, thick and he possessed a square jaw coupled with thin, pink lips and a sharp nose. Perhaps the most distinguishing features about him, though, was his bright, copper colored hair that hung down long to the shoulders in a mess and a pair of piercing sapphire orbs that somehow appeared to both be full of a married sorrow and hatred. They were big, though they didn't seem so large on such a large head, and despite their beauty they seemed to never get the deserved attention for the rest of his distracting facade. His hulking, obelisk of a form was always the first thing noticed when eyes were set upon him, and when eyes adjusted to smaller details it was the grimace he often wore, the scrapes and cuts on his face and the oppressive way that he carried himself that took precedence above all other minor details. His eyes never had the chance to impress anyone who might have noticed and appreciated their glorious and striking way of gleaming because they belonged to a monster in man's flesh. A literal and physical representation of the very last man on Earth that you would ever think to cross who held no outright beauty apart from those eyes. They were a waste, in fact, and more than once he'd caught himself staring into a cracked mirror covered in smudges wishing he could rip them out of his skull and discard them if the act wouldn't be excruciating and render him sightless.


They had only ever been a reminder, after all. A reminder of the one person who saw past all of his barriers and shattered his steel fortress that was housing a black heart made of glass. There had only been one to reach through him like a ghost passing through a wall and make him feel something that he had always convinced himself he'd never wanted to feel in the first place. One who was greater than the devil himself some called "Steeljaw" and others called "Ironspine". He was a hateful, restless, drunken thing who had only had one love in his entire life, and even then, as he took his second sip of fearsome whiskey that stung him just the right way, he wished to God himself that alcohol had been his one and only mistress. He'd have been a liar, however, and in fact he'd lied to himself time and time again, over and over as he sank away and found solace in the backwashed little pool of firewater at the bottom of every bottle he'd ever consumed.


His was the grandest and most extensive of lies to have ever been conjured, at least in his own mind which half believed that the world around him was one long, sick picture show ripe with depression, rage, addiction and the smallest spot of love that didn't rear its head until the end, and before he was ready to fully embrace it, it was already gone again. As quickly as his heart had chosen to leap it had struck a wall and was crushed when the love he'd felt for another was obliterated by that hateful bastard who was ever doomed to ferry the damned across the River Styx. He'd stolen away the only thing that Kaiser had ever loved long before she was ready to go, and for that he could never forgive him. For that he could never forgive mankind. And so he'd decided that it was his punishment to trudge through life one step at a time, one day at a time, destroying everything that she herself would never have stood for. For she was good and she was kind, and she was everything that he himself could never be. She was perfect, and he was everything imperfect in the world, and he alone was doomed to take stride after stride to destroy all things wrong within it before ripping it all down into the fire filled depths of hell along with him.


"Click", went the butt of a glass tumbler against the stained wood top Kaiser was sitting in front of, the sound coming from a second glass that had been placed on the bar just one seat down from the large, swollen hunk of muscle that he was.


"What'll ya have?", asked the bartender, who appeared instantly a bit skittish of the newest guest that had joined them and chose to sit far too close to a man that wasn't prone to making friends.


"I'll have what this lummox is having. Heh.", the tall, slender man said, adding a laugh to follow up with his own playful, teasing words.


"Sure.", Jarrek said as he reached out and poured the same drink that he had poured for Kaiser only a minute before. As he poured the drink, however, he took in the sights of the newcomer who appeared younger in appeared, but was more gangly and far less bulky to the peer counterpart sitting next to him. "Anything else?", he made sure to ask as he raised the bottle back up and took a step back, though this time the newcomer didn't say a word and merely waved the man off as he glanced over at Kaiser.


"Sniff!", went the tall, slender man as he pressed his thumb against one nostril and sucked in a tuft of air with the other. His eyes were wide and sporting crimson cracks from all sides towards the pupil hinting at irritation. There were bags beneath them suggesting a clear lack of sleep and his narrow jaw and high cheekbones were feminine in nature, though his deep voice, long frame and thick Adam's apple was evidence enough that this was no woman.


"My my! If it isn't the Whiskey Sodden King…", he whispered into the hulking man's ear as he leaned over and pressed his bony shoulder into the much fuller, thicker one of Kaiser's. "I must declare that I am most pleased to find you here, Mr. Drink-it-all-away.", he said with a great, big grin spreading across thin, dried up and cracked lips.


"Careful.", the subtle giant whispered in response as his piercing blues slowly rolled across the white expanse of his eyes and set fully on that playful fool sitting next to him that wasn't even bothering to taste the perfectly good glass of whiskey sitting right in front of him.


"Oh come now, big man. Why can't I call you by your storied name? Isn't that what everyone calls you?", he asked as he leaned in a little closer to the man who appeared utterly calm and composed apart from the deeper and deeper breaths he was taking that caused his chest to grow thicker. "Or would you prefer one of the others? Ironspine? Steeljaw? Or shall I be formal and call you Mr. Black?", he asked as his silver eyes fixated themselves on the man next to him who's buttons he knew all too well he was pushing.


"What do they call you again? 'Demon Clown', or whatever?", Kaiser then said in an almost disinterested sort of way. His eyes shifted off of the rather surprised looking man sitting next to him who's smile began to slip and become something of a snarling expression for just a moment before he practically barked at Kaiser.


"NO! YOU DAFT FOOOOOLLLL!", he crowed into his ear as the skin above and across the bridge of his nose rippled to show his frustration while his eyes narrowed while bearing a vicious grimace. "Well, let's just see what Malachie has to say when I drag your husky ass back to…!", but a small sliver of silence filled the bar as not a word was spoken. The air left the Demon Jester's lungs before his words could reach completion because a massive hand had snatched him by the nape of his neck, fingers drawn tight around his scrawny throat and specifically were applying pressure to the protrusive adam's apple that was now being pressed into itself by a powerful grip.


He didn't say anything at first. He just sat there, now turned towards the bothersome man who's hands were scratching at the massive paw that was practically squeezing the life out of him. Before he could decide not to do it, though, he turned back towards the bar and, with a mere flick of his wrist, threw the man's head forward and slammed his pale and slender face into the wooden top, crushing the dry glass of honey whiskey beneath his forehead and nose.


"AGHHHHHH!", the gangly man cried out, his deep voice sounding pained and angry all the same, and when he swung his head upright there were shards of glass that could clearly be seen sticking out of his cheeks, forehead, his crooked nose and even a few pieces in his lips. It looked excruciating, and there was blood running down his face and out of the newly formed cuts already, but despite their heavy flow they were unable to keep the whiskey from seeping into his freshly opened wounds to cause him even further pain…


"GYYYAAAHHHHHHHHH!!! FUHHHHHHHHHHCK!!!"