Neverquest – Part 117

Characters: Lord Dartemus

Location: The royal bathtub

Time: Day 5 – 3:41 AM

Lord Dartemus was in a puddle at the bottom of Queen Isabella’s bucket, a broken man. His once royal clothing now dangled from threads to his skin, soapy suds burned his retinas until they were bloodshot, and his long hair wriggled out behind him like a beached squid. These three long months had ruined him. Trapped in Isabella’s clutches, forced to live in conditions that no creature of Dai Celesta deserved, he had lost all hope. His life was now here, at the bottom of this bucket. Staring up at the ceiling of the alcove, numbly wincing from dripping water against his brow, he realized for the first time how it was possible to drown in a puddle. He wouldn’t be the first. And who would have thought it so easy?

He coughed. Looking up again, wishing for some salvation in this godforsaken world, he tried to remember how he had ended up like this—a loser, a failure, a shell of a man forgotten by his people and ridiculed by his captors. What more was there? What more could there be?

“Women…” he muttered. “I blame Women for this.”

Then he shook his head and started to chuckle at the complete hopelessness of it all. “How stupid are we to obey those who kill us without mercy, without thought for our kind…? And how stupid are Women to mistake us for mindless fools? Those poor bastards… No, we’re all poor bastards. Every damn one of us. We’re all puppets playing puppets, twisted marionettes on strings from the heavens…climbing nowhere, falling from our high horses like drunken captains of a no-named ship…  Ain’t one of us who ever cared for the other… Ain’t no chance for peace among us until one or the other is wiped from this damn slate of history.”

He closed his eyes for what he hoped would be the last time, but his fingers slowly came together into a ball and he only laughed harder. “And Dai Celesta knows who that that will be. Oh, yes, the mighty Dai Celesta knows all. Let’s call on her for all the answers! That bitch… Yeah, bitch. I know you hear me, way up there. I’m not small. You hear me?” He cupped his hands over his mouth and sat up. “Do you hear me up there, you godforsaken bitch!? Why don’t you answer!?” In a fury of rage, he kicked up water and stood hairy and barefoot in the bucket, cursing the heaven over his head. “Come down here and speak to me like a fellow human being, Dai Celesta, you bitch! I’ll show you what kind of Man I am! I’ll show you what your hands have created, what your horribly bent mind has envisioned, and I’ll show you what I think of your future of our kind! You want to see? You want to know everything, you almighty bitch!? I’ll teach you something new. Why don’t you come down here? Why don’t you see me? I’m right here. I ain’t moving. This is my home planet and I like it! Come on, baby. Come and get me! Yeah, come on, Dai Celesta—I’m waiting for you!”

Then he laughed until his voice became garbled and the water in the bucket shook like a tidal wave. He cursed the water too, and the bucket, and began pounding on the plastic sides as if they were the faces of the angels. He punched them all. He punched holes through their velvet skin and he punched holes until their clouds burst and the sky rained with laughter and pain. And his voice rode over it all, until the bucket began to wobble.

“What can you do to me now!?” he roared. “Even in death, what can you promise me? Nothing but lies, Dai Celesta! You’re full of nothing but lies!” He laughed so hard that he didn’t even notice the bucket tip over and land on its side in the alcove. He didn’t even notice as the bucket began to roll towards the edge, knocking a handful of silver rings into the tub, and then finally plummeting downwards. But he did notice as the bucket quickly filled with foam and water, pushing him to the bottom of the bucket once more. And then a wave rose up and he watched it, like the hand of the goddess over his head, come crashing down in a torrent of wrath. He was swept under.

He came up sputtering and grabbed hold of the lip of the bucket. The bubbles had made an airy cushion to ride on and the bucket now lay at a forty-five degree angle, half under the surface of the water. With foam stinging through his eyes like a snake’s bite, he cursed the heavens once more.

“You think I’m afraid of you!? Come on! You may find me as more than a bug that can be squashed, my sweet, bitching goddess. Oh, yes, you just might be surprised! Hahaha!”

Amidst the insanity, the bucket began to drift lazily across the tub and beached on the small island in the center. The dozen or so half-naked Men peeked out from their homes and watched as Lord Dartemus stumbled ashore, hands and knees in the sand, and cursed the sky again.

“What is he?” one of the Men asked.

“He must be one of those madman.”

“He don’t look mad.”

“He’s swearing up a storm, ain’t he?”

“Maybe he’s in pain.”

The Men murmured something as a group and then one of them stepped forward. “Hey, boy—you insane?”

Lord Dartemus looked up. His hair scraped over the ridges in his face like withered vines and coarse sand dribbled from his beard. He choked on water and it came spurting out his lips like dry spit.

“Hell…” he whispered. “I’m in hell…”

“No, boy, but you’re darn close.”

He crawled to his feet. “Isabella… Where is...she…?”

“You won’t have to worry about her no more. None of us will.”

Lord Dartemus just stared at the Men, seeing only blurs of skin and rags through his red-stained eyes.

“That’s right. She finally got what was a’coming to her.”

“You shoulda seen these two girls take ‘er down,” another Man said. “There were two of ‘em, I say. A big one, kinda chunky, with slimy black hair that looked kinda like oil… And another one—a mean thing—with a snake critter staff that came to life. Yes, sir, I’m telling you… These two girls marched right into here, grabbed ol’ Bella the Malevolent, and took her away. Said they were gonna kill her in the mornin’. Yup… I reckon she’s a goner by now.”

The others cheered. “About time someone put that girl in her place! Always spittin’ on us like we was nothing.”

“Yeah, we showed her.”

“Yeah, we did.”

Lord Dartemus continued to stare and then brought his hand over his face, wiping away the dirt and hair and sand and water. “Isabella…was kidnapped?”

“That’s what we been sayin’, boy. Ain’t that great? We can finally live in peace.”

“There was never peace in a hostage situation,” Dartemus said.

The Men looked at him.

“What you sayin’, boy? You sayin’ the wench don’t deserve what she’s getting?”

“No. The wench is getting exactly what she deserves. I have no doubt about that. But what concerns me is what the murder of a noble could do to the political power in this country.”

“Well, shucks, why should we care? We’re free Men now, ain’t we?”

“Free? Is that what you think we are?” Lord Dartemus shook his head and turned away, clawing at his face with his hands. Then he looked up to the ceiling and tried to breathe again. “Look around you, Men. Do you see freedom? All I see is a sea of evil and walls we can’t climb.”

“But no Women,” one of the Men pointed out.

“Isabella’s not the only Woman in this kingdom. Nor is she the most  unreasonable.”

“But she’s the one who been keepin’ us here.”

The others murmured their agreement. “Yeah. I got me a family to go back to. She wouldn’t let me have none of that.”

“She’s cruel.”

“Heartless.”

“She deserves to die.”

“Never liked her anyway.”

Lord Dartemus closed his eyes and tried to forget these past three months of torture. “I know it’s hard, but we can’t put all the blame of Isabella. She is only acting the way she was raised.”

“Shucks, her momma sure raised a fool. She don’t care about no one but herself, she does. A-yup.”

“But it’s not Isabella, nor the Queen, nor all the queens before her who we should blame. It is Dai Celesta herself. She is the one who cursed us from the beginning.”

“Yeah!” the Men bellowed.

“We’re a’tired of praying to gods who don’t answer,” one of them said. “She never once answered one of my prayers.”

“She never answered none of mine either.”

“Blame Celesta!”

“Yeah, blame Celesta!”

“Whoa, now, friends,” Dartemus said. “Dai Celesta has always hated Men. We can’t change that for our past or our future… But we can escape from here. We can return to Penee and reunite our people. We can wage war against the Women of Ellewyn if they should choose to attack. For our ancestors, for all who have been slain at the hands and feet of Women, we must be strong. For the little guys!”

The Men stared at him until one of them finally spoke up.

“You a king or somethin’?” he asked.

Dartemus sighed.