I’m King

11) the gift of living hell

Blood

Stark against the white bed sheets

It coats every inch of Gianna

Slips down her wrists and drips off her finger tips

Cakes in her hair

Her feet are slick with it

It smears across the wooden floor and soaks into the carpet as she stumbles across the corridor and into the boardroom

“You did well,” her demons voice slithers along her neck and up to her ear.

“f**k you!” she places her hand on the desk to spit at him. If she was closer, it might had actually reached his face.

“It wasn’t so bad, Gia,” he leans back in his chair.

“Yes. It most certainly was.”

“Well,” he pulls something out of the pocket of his robes and places it on the desk, sliding it across the able to her, “As promised, your gift.”

Gia stops it before it can slide onto the floor. A CD box?

She looks up at him with disdain.

“Inside that box is a CD, something you like I've gathered. On that CD is music from a playlist – a playlist you would have created if things had not played out like they had,” he explains to her.

Gia opens the box to see a white cover Cd with the word GIA written in her dads hand writing. He used to write on all of the CD’s and DVD’s when she was younger. She closes the container and picks up the box.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” she throws it back onto the table, “I can’t take the tea cups out of Wonderland.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Gia scoffs and turns away while she runs a hand down her sticky hair.

“What if I decide I’m done?” she turns back to face him.

Her demon smiles, the sight is appalling, his teeth glint in the blinding setting sun.

“You can’t quit,” he mocks her, leaning forward to place his hands on the table, “That decision is not up to you. It's up to the God. Just like everything else.”

“And what does this God care?” she snarls back.

“I am not privileged to that information but you are... an obsession of his. Along with the other leaders.”

“So, he’s the one that brought on today?”

“He is.”

“Then he really is The Devil.” Gia wraps her arms around herself, suddenly chilly, “And you can tell him to go f**k himself, too.”

~

SCREAMING

Gia shot upright and scrambled onto her knees at the sound. Searching the dark room, she could tell she was alone. Alone and hallucinating apparently. She folded at the hip and relished the coolness of the duvet at the end of the bed on her forehead.

Deep Breathes

Gia rolled out of bed and placed a record on the player. Hopeless Fountain Kingdom. She enjoyed the Shakespearian themed album. She sometimes wondered what it would be like to die. Not to kill herself, she used to find the notion of killing oneself to be stupid, but just to die. She had never been scared of dying. It was one of her character flaws she supposed. One of very many. Another being that she had never had her first kiss. She thought about it often – a hopeless romantic who has never been kissed – the irony. She wanted to, of course. She wanted to have her first kiss, but she wanted a great romance. She wanted deep, consuming love. She wanted heartbreak and despair and everything that came with an epic romance.

Stupid teenage brain!

Thinking of things like dying and love when she had so many more important things to focus her time and energy on. And with that, she got up and ready for the day – at 4 in the morning. A lie in at least.

Gia headed downstairs to grab something to eat, not that she would eat it. She missed the summer fruit. Strawberries and blueberries and watermelon! She would kill someone for a watermelon. But no, there were only naartjies. She hated naartjies so much. But fear of scurvy made her eat them. Not this morning though, this morning she simply stared at the naartjie on the counter as she drank water by the sink. Not even the footsteps coming down the stairs tore her concentration from the naartjie.

“What are you doing?” Conrad asked as he put the kettle on.

“Contemplating my hatred for naartjies,” Gia replied flatly.

“Why do you hate naartjies so much?”

“They are not tasty enough for how much work it takes to peel them,” Gia placed her empty glass in the sink and walked past the counter, pushing the naartjie onto the floor.

“You are a very strange woman,” Conrad admitted as he picked the naartjie off the counter and peeled it, “Will you eat it if I peel it?”

“Yes,” Gia grabbed her shoes from the front door, “Because the effort is equal to the taste. If I have to peel it, the effort is not equal to the taste. Not to mention the hassle of taking off the lingerie.”

“The what?” Conrad had a blush spreading across his cheeks. Gia did not take him as someone who was even slightly embarrassed by the notion of s*x. Clearly, she was wrong.

“The lingerie. The weird wispy bits that stick to the outside of the wedges,” Gia couldn’t help the mischievous smile as she tied her shoe laces. She enjoyed making Conrad unsettled.

“Ah,” he dipped his head as he placed the naked naartjie on the counter.

“Thanks,” Gia said as she walked over to pick up the naartjie, “See you later.”

She walked out the door and into the dark chilling morning. It was peaceful. She couldn’t help but stop and take in a deep breath as she walked down the road to the school. The front drive welcomed her as it always had. But something was off. The kitchen rotation was standing on the main stairs. She hurried over and found Aly trying to calm everyone.

“What’s going on?” she touched his arm and he turned to her.

“I don’t know but there is blood everywhere,” he looked shaken.

“What?” Gia pushed past everyone and into the main corridor. She halted.

A massive stain of blood right outside Mrs Lloyd’s office and then bloody footprints into the boardroom. Gia quickly rushed into the boardroom. She sighed in relief when it was empty. Except for a single CD case against the wooden desk. She walked towards it, standing on her bloody footprints in the carpet, and opened the case.

GIA

There it was. Black ink in her dad’s handwriting against the white backing.

“Aly,” she whispered.

“Yes,” he stood by the door just behind her.

“Can you please get me some cleaning supplies?” her fingers were trembling as she closed the box, “I need to clean this before anyone else sees it.”

~

Gia was sitting on the chair at the boardroom table when Conrad walked in, her bun just visible over the back of the chair. As usual, she was at the head of the table so Conrad pulled out the chair to the left of hers. She had her knees tucked to her chest with her hands fiddling: left with her lips and right with her lefts sleeve and bracelet, just staring at the table.

They sat in silence for a while until Conrad leaned forward onto the desk and into her direct view. She looked at him in the eyes.

“This should not be possible,” she said from behind her hand.

“What?” he asked softly. She looked utterly shaken. He had never seen her like this.

She reaches out and pushes a CD case towards him, “This.”

He picked it up. It was a plain case. He opened it up to see a normal looking CD that said Gia on it. He did not understand.

“He gave it to me,” she started talking, stared at the CD as if it might grow fangs and bite her, “last night in my nightmare he gave me that CD on this desk. And now... it's here. My bloody footprints. The stain where I fell. It is all here.”

“I still don’t think I'm understanding,” Conrad waited for her to finish before talking, “It’s just a CD and there's no blood.”

“Because I cleaned it,” she snapped, “ask Aly. He helped me.”

“That’s why it smells like bleach,” Conrad said more to himself than anything else, “Does it work?”

He lifted the CD out of the case to look at it more closely.

“I don’t know,” Gia admitted and went back to staring at the case on the table, “It shouldn’t even exist, never mind work.”

“Should we try it?” Conrad spined it on his finger.

“No!” Gia snatches it and puts it back in the box, slamming it closed and sliding it across the desk, “We are going to leave it the f**k alone.”

“But Gia,” he countered, “Aren't you even a little bit curious?”

He started reaching for the case.

“No,” she said with a shake in her voice, “Just leave it alone, please.”

~

No one dared to go into the boardroom for the rest of the day. No one knocked, poked their head in, spoke from the threshold, even walked down the corridor. Conrad sat with Grizz on the benches at the top of the steps to the main building. The air was crisp but it was definitely spring.

“So,” Grizz said from the bench across from Conrad’s, “What are we doing here?”

“I don’t know,” Conrad admitted, the two had been lazily draped across the benches for a few hours now, “waiting?”

“For what?” Grizz popped another piece of popcorn into his mouth.

“I don’t know,” Conrad watched the children walking across the front drive for dinner, “for her to have a break down. I dunno know.”

“What is going on with you and this girl?” Grizz throws at Conrad.

“What?” Conrad sat straight up, “There is nothing going on! I have a girlfriend! And for all intensive purposes, Gia is my boss.”

“Your girlfriend, right,” Grizz has that look on his face that Conrad hates, “How is Kat?”

“Fine,” Conrad said stiffly.

“Really?” Grizz sits up and dragged the word out, “because she said that you have moved out of the room. She said that she is just waiting for you to break up with her.”

“Where are you hearing this?” Conrad was starting to get mad, “That is not true. Kat and I still sleep in the same room, same bed, like all of the other couples.”

“I’m finding that hard to believe seeing as most mornings you come downstairs with The Governess,” Grizz leans forwards with his elbows on his knees.

“Yes, because of her nightmares,” Conrad stands to defends himself, “Nothing else happens.”

“But do you want something to happen?” Grizz waved his pointing finger around in emphasis, “That is the question!”

“Can we stop talking about this?” Conrad lowered his voice in case Gia could hear them through the open doors, “I do not have a thing for Gianna!”

“You say that,” Grizz lowered his voice as well, “But, I don’t believe you.”

“And why is that?” Conrad crossed his arms over is chest.

“Because of the way you act around her and the way you look at her. You’ve never looked at Kat the way you look at Gia. You haven’t done anything nearly as romantic for Kat as you did for Gia and the game.”

“That was not romantic!” Conrad whisper shouts, “That was a friend doing something nice for another friend.”

“It was so romantic,” Grizz smirked at him, “even the way the two of you communicated was romantic.”

“It was no,”

Conrad was cut off by Kiki, the head of power, walking up the stairs.

“What is going on?” she demanded in a huff, “I get a radio from Aly saying G hasn’t been out of the boardroom the whole day.”

“We have it under control,” Conrad said half-heartedly while rubbing the back of his neck.

“The way you boys have things under control makes me wonder sometimes,” Kiki walked past them and into the old building. Conrad made to go in after her but was quickly stopped, “Do not. Why don’t you two go get dinner.”

The two of them sulked off to do as they were told.

~

Kiki was still trying to figure out this whole friend thing. She had never had such close friends as she did now. It was difficult for her to navigate it. How much was too much? When would they realise they didn’t actually like her and kick her out the house? When would everyone realise she was a fraud and didn’t belong as a leader or their friend?

She tried to be as confident as she could. Her mom always said that confidence was the key – you could fake it till you made it. Which is what she was doing as she went into the boardroom.

G sat in the big chair closest to the door at the head of the table, like she always did. That was a shock to Kiki at first, a woman at the head of the table, but she quickly got used to it, even came to do it herself.

But, G was not confidently sitting at the table today. She was tucked up like a little ball on the chair, just staring at the end of the table. Kiki looked down the long wooden surface to see a CD case. Strange. G liked CD’s.

“CD’s melt when you burn them,” G said as way of greeting.

“You could drown it,” Kiki piped back while leaning against the wall by the windows.

“It would still exist if I did that,” Gia didn’t take her gaze from the CD case, voice flat and tired she kept talking, “I need to drop it in radioactive waste.”

“Or vaporise it with one of Doofenshmirtz’s inators,” Kiki tried to lighten the mood.

“Or have Superman blast it with his laser eyes.”

“Or,” Kiki dropped her voice for dramatic effect, “We could listen to it.”

“Nope,” the brief hint of normalness in Gia’s voice disappeared again, “no one is playing that cursed CD.”

“Why?” Kiki sat down to look at her friend.

“Because,” Gia took a deep breath, “if we play it, it’s real. And if it’s real, I am screwed.”

“I doubt that. It’s just a CD.”

Gia leaned forward with a crazed look in her eyes. The unexpected, sharp movement made Kiki jump.

“Except it’s not just a CD,” her hand movements were sharp as she spoke in a hushed voice, “This CD came from my demon. He gave it to me last night. And if he can do this, then...”

Gia stopped and leaned back in her chair, biting on her nails.

“Then what?” Kiki leaned forward. This was bad. Very, very bad! Especially if it made Gia this nervous.

“Then my nightmares can turn into my own living hell.”