“Royal Flush” (Chapter One: The Escape)

In a land far away... 1

2

In a time long ago... 3

4

There ruled four kings... 5

6

Who were ruled by four queens... 7

8

Until... 9

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Chapter One: The Escape 11

They beat him... and oh did they beat him. They beat him until their fists ached and the soles of their boots wore ragged. And so they whipped him. They whipped and they whipped until the bruises tore apart and formed strings of flesh that curled backwards from his bloody hide. 12

The midnight sky moaned and began spilling bulbous globs of rain down upon the dusky side-street. It stung. Each drop sent jolts of torture screaming throughout his entire body. 13

The guards scuffled away laughing as he slumped to the cold and muddy ground. He leaned onto his palms and slowly attempted to lift himself up. He noticed his reflection in the still of the puddle beneath him; a slender, pale-skinned boy no older than nineteen winced back at him through eyes of intense sapphire. He slipped and splashed face first into the puddle of disgrace where he stayed to allow his dreams a chance to soak up a few extra draughts of the reality that people always had and always would walk all over him. His name was Jadrien. 14

° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° 15

Morning sunlight punched through Jadrien's aching eyelids like a bullet through cellophane. After groggily staggering to his feet he started off down the alleyway and into the busy marketplace. The people, although all similar in haughtiness and snobbery, walked in separate social groupings controlled by the cruelty of fate. A rating system on a scale from two to ten is all that stood in the way of a gallivanting courtier, a robust merchant and a pick-pocketing peasant from trading it all in and starting a new life of his or her choice. It's almost funny how something as trivially useless as a birthmark can define the very meaning of why life goes on the way it does. 16

Jadrien scratched his upper back then rubbed his fingers across his own, little, personal reminder of why taking orders was destined to be on his menu every day for the rest of his waking life. Was a mother's love the only real reason a slave from birth was denied a swift and clean courtesy killing? Jadrien thought so. He would have carried out the mercy deed himself had he the time and energy enough to devote solely to himself. 17

He snapped his hand out from under his tunic and tried to erase the thought from his mind... for what damage can a silly, little number "2" actually inflict into a world where money is power and power is everything? 18

Rounding the corner gave way to a magnificent sight. Sharp turrets, twisting towers and a glorious band of Flags waving in the wind decorated the horizon at the edge of The City of Diamonds. 19

“Home, sweet home" Jadrien spat sarcastically as he coaxed his legs into a masochistic state of carrying him toward the palace. Being late was one thing, but being tired, dirty, excuse-less and late was a completely different story. Yet however terrible any punishment may have been, in Jadrien's case, avoiding inevitability usually ended up only adding to the agony. So he trudged along at a lazy-made-pace, except to quickly dodge the passersby who apparently had a birthright not to have to look where they were going. 20

The outer gate to The Palace of Diamonds stood at a frightening height of at least forty feet. Its silver bars were woven and welded together so intricately that only the realm's most powerful spell-casters could have constructed it. One of the guards on duty recognized Jadrien and signaled for the gatekeeper's attention. "Passage request for servant six-nineteen!” the guard bellowed aloud. 21

"You're late six-nineteen" the gatekeeper hollered back. 22

"Thanks for reminding me" Jadrien retorted. 23

"Any time" the gatekeeper said with a grin just before flicking a switch to initiate the opening of the gate. An unnerving clatter rang out and the two halves of the gate began sinking diagonally toward each other. The patterns glistened in the sunlight and reflected brilliantly into each adjacent rung as the slot beneath the gate surely slurped up the final bits. Jadrien hopped over and listened as the gate clanked its way back up out of the ground and into its original position. 24

Instead of continuing upwards to the main gate, Jadrien veered left and followed a narrow passageway around to the back of the castle. He halted at a large, wooden, bolted door and knocked five times. A small peephole slid open and two bloodshot eyes filled the negative space with authority. 25

"Six-nineteen, open up" Jadrien sighed tonelessly. 26

"What?" inquired a voice from behind the door. 27

"Six-nineteen" Jadrien repeated louder. 28

"What?" the voice spoke slowly as if insinuating something obvious. 29

Jadrien gritted his teeth and threw a vicious glare up at the eyes in the door. The eyes did not falter. Jadrien swallowed his anger with a grunt and decided to give in, "Servant six-nineteen", he finally relinquished. 30

The door flung open and the eyes reemerged in the guise of a man. Jadrien stepped inside and paused once beside him. Neither said a word but each understood what the other was thinking. The man’s shoulders rolled ever so slightly in submissive acquiescence as Jadrien chewed an alcove in his bottom lip to nestle his bristling hostility. A calming truce of colliding similarities then swept over both of them and a silent apology escaped the bloodshot eyes. 31

The moment passed just as quickly as it had arrived and Jadrien crept onward. Through candlelit hallways and passed steam-filled, kitchen doorways Jadrien walked. His fervor lessened with every step that dragged him closer to the ruthless and relentless tauntings of the evil foreman. The echoes of his delayed footsteps resounded like rubber band twangs inside the fury of Jadrien's thoughts. 32

The small staircase at the end of the hallway brought Jadrien to a junction. He suspiciously peeped his head around the corner to the right and there he was. The foreman atop his pedestal of pestilence, was flicking away at his pile of paperwork like always. Jadrien often daydreamed about carefully yanking the hairs from the foreman's twisted handlebar mustache one by one by one... 33

The foreman's nose twitched. He had picked up on the fresh scent of Jadrien's arid vulnerability. His finger shot at Jadrien like a poisonous dart and winded him nearer like a fish on a reel. Jadrien tightened the muscles in his face to try and form a wall for protecting himself from the bombardment of bullets he was about to endure. 34

"Ih-uck! Again?" the foreman slobbered. Jadrien did not answer. "I know how you've dreamed of the day when you'd be in hot water deep enough to get you a one-way-ticket out of this place, but you and I both know how effective relying on dreams is." The truth of the foreman's statement burned itself into Jadrien's forehead like a branding iron burns ownership logos on bovine backsides. The foreman licked his finger and ever so slowly, flicked to a new page of the documents he was sorting. He averted his eyes onto the paper and ignored Jadrien for the longest three seconds of Jadrien's life. 35

"Now..." the foreman began as his full attention re-averted its way back onto poor Jadrien, "get your skinny ass back at the cheap stables before I summon the executioners to come whip you all the way there!"
Jadrien knew what sarcasm was and what the foreman had just barked at him was anything but sarcastic. Jadrien flew down the hallway as if the whips were already on his tail. The doorways blurred in his peripheral vision as the hallway ahead danced like a giant kaleidoscope of swirling technicolors. Further and further he traveled through the blending and bleeding of the chaotic castle walls until a slight certainty of light rescued him from the calamity. 36

The courtyard archway beamed with a brightness that grew as it came sharply into focus. The greens of the grass outside along with sparkling fountain at the center of the royal walkway seemed to liven Jadrien's pessimism up to an almost cheery disposition. He couldn't believe he had gotten away from the foreman without a scratch. Escaping the foreman on a punishment day was about as likely as a prison warden releasing his prized convict after buying him a carriage and waving goodbye. It didn't make any sense. It just didn't make any sense at all. 37

Just then however, it did make sense. In fact, it made too much sense. With Jadrien's first step out of the castle he heard a familiar shuffle of feet approaching at an alarming speed. He gasped and tried to regain his foreman-escaping-pace but it was too late. One of the guards had launched his diamond-shaped pole-staff between Jadrien's legs and used it to trip him. The ground beneath the grass was a stiff and brittle landing pad. Jadrien stretched his arms ahead of him and sat backwards on his feet. He desperately pondered crawling frantically away but wasn't even given a chance to make the decision not to. The same guard's pole-staff struck the ground between Jadrien's arms and landed with the sharp edge only an inch from his face. In it Jadrien saw the outlined reflection of his friends from last night who had come back for more fun. 38

"Well, well, well..." began the brackish twenty-two year old, "back for more, are we?" 39

The other two each choked out a blanketed chuckle of delight. They walked up beside the other and brandished their weapons in clenched anticipation. 40

"Why?" Jadrien half-complained and half-cried, "Why, why, why?". He lowered his head to the ground, let it sit there, then rose and sank it repetitiously until a hand firmly gripped a chunk of the front of his hair and tore it backward. 41

"Because…" said one of the guards. "If it's not you..." added another. "It's one of us" concluded the third who let go of Jadrien's hair only to throw the rest of Jadrien face-first back to the ground. 42

The kicking commenced. Jadrien could now almost tell them apart by the feel of their heels and toes as they jabbed and hammered into his sides and backside. Down the pathway and over the jagged gravel the guards prodded him. The stables slowly lingered closer and closer in distance each time Jadrien could bear to keep from wincing his eyes shut from the pain.
Once inside the stable's wide and uninviting doors the guards stood Jadrien up to a posture that only faintly imitated an upright individual. Three blades of silver began swinging dangerously close to Jadrien's legs. One nicked his shin and the intent became obvious. Jadrien scrambled both to keep standing and to proceed further to the very back of the stables (where the illustrious cheap ones were kept) because he regrettably valued his need of his legs. The smells seeped though Jadrien's eyelids as his lips curled into a sour-sucking knot. 43

Jadrien threw himself into the stone wall at the end of the putrid pavilion and wished he had some less-than-loathsome air to catch his breath with. Reluctantly he swiveled around and peeked his eyes open. The three cretins still sported their sinister smiles. One of them pointed with his pole-staff at the hanging remnants of what may have been, in another lifetime, a tin bucket. Jadrien obeyed. He scooped it up with both hands and dropped to his knees. 44

The ground had risen a good foot and a half above the wooden floorboards. Compared to the polished glistening of the ground in the front-end of the stables, this very last stretch of sludge was hardly recognizable as sharing the same planetary atmosphere. Jadrien's toes and knees began to sink into the horse-made quicksand. He sat up a little and reached his hand toward a shelf on the wall for the lonely trowel resting there. 45

The blunt end of one of the guard's pole-staffs was sharply rammed into the back of Jadrien's head. "Ah, ah, ah...” started the guard with the satisfied guilty look on his face, "you're not authorized to use The Queen's royal shit-picker." 46

"Yeah, make him use his hands!" chimed in one of the others, cackling like an idiot. 47

"No!" laughed the third, "Make him..." he chuckled some more, "Use his mouth!" The other's faces lighted up as a child's on their birthday. But a comical seriousness swept over them as soon as their attentions had drifted back onto the doomed Jadrien. 48

The silence plummeted right down to the heart of Jadrien. He dug his fists around two clumps of the filth he was knee-deep in and gritted his teeth to just before the breaking point. Jadrien then closed his eyes and shook his head from left to right in a discombobulating fury. Moments of his past flashed like a strobe light into and out of his blind mind's eye. Tears fell backwards and filled his skull with a distaste that Jadrien could no longer bear. 49

Opening his eyes, as if for the very first time, Jadrien felt within him a power. A force. An intensity of immeasurable stature. And with that power, he felt a need. A need to take hold of that power and crack it open for all it was worth. So he did. 50

Jadrien released his handfuls of excrement and took hold of the infernal bucket. He stood up and hurled it in a single motion right into the face of the nearest guard, the leader. He then ran up behind the horse kept in the very last of the stalls and leapt up on top of it. The two cronies were right on his tail. Jadrien peeked over his shoulder to find two less-than-amused python expressions who were about to strike. He stood upon the horse's back, gave it a swift kick in the side and jumped up to grab hold of the rafters on the pavilion ceiling. The horse reacted by fiercely kicking its hind legs backward. The two guards had no chance. They collided with the horse's hooves and flew across the walkway, landing flaccidly unconscious. 51

Jadrien transferred his hatred into energy that he used to climb up into the space underneath the roof. The guard Jadrien had broken the nose of was now making his way to his feet. "Oh, Hell no!" he shouted as he slid his pole-staff into its holster and began the climbing chase after Jadrien. 52

Heartrending and wide-eyed, Jadrien scrambled to dissect a hole in the loose straw that constituted a viable roof. He slithered through and emerged into the illuminating mid-day sun. Blinking and thinking Jadrien attempted to construct the rest of his plan-less tribulation. A shiny diamond pierced the straw roof between Jadrien's legs, disappeared and reappeared again right up the bottom of Jadrien's pants. This time the disappearing left a scratch wound on Jadrien's ankle. He dangerously hop-danced around the unpredictable appearances of the final guard's pole-staff one slice after another. 53

Not knowing what else to do Jadrien latched onto the stone wall that continued up along side the outside of the castle. He winced upwards and discovered his only hope for salvation; an open window about sixty feet above him fluttered its crimson curtains in the wind. One hand, one foot, one hand, one foot... Jadrien struggled not to fall and not to slow down. Upwards he ascended, twenty feet... thirty. 54

"Run! Run! Run!" came the voice of his bootlicker who wasn't even a whole ten feet beneath. 55

Forty feet, fifty, fifty-five... then a loose stone! Jadrien's toe slipped and down he went. No, he kicked a new stance in the side of the castle and held on. The last guard now literally on his heels reached with one arm and grasped Jadrien's left foot and yanked. Jadrien's fingers strained and sweated to keep their hold. Jadrien jerked his leg and luckily the guard let go. He shot up the last five feet to the window, rolled over the sill and flopped onto the floor. 56

It was the royal chambers! Though upon inspection they appeared to be, at the moment, abandoned. Jadrien crawled across the room and creaked the door open. Someone was in the hallway! Jadrien fell back and hid behind a large chair in the center of the room. He sat on the floor facing the window. Five fingers, two hands, then an upper body of the last person Jadrien wanted to be reminded of climbed through with a menacing fervency. 57

Boiling saliva flung from Jadrien's assailant's mouth as an earsplitting war cry splattered its way out. Jadrien was a sitting duck in a one-way jousting bout. The diamond-tip of the oncoming weapon twirled in the slow motion of Jadrien's thoughts. His eyes fixated. His heart frozen. His tongue flat on the bottom of his dropped jaw. But his hands... his hands ran rampantly along the sides of the throne behind him until... contingency! 58

The pole-staff whipped out of slow mode and neared it's destiny between Jadrien's eyes. But from behind Jadrien there emerged a wide-handled, golden sceptre with a clear globe embedded in one end. Jadrien quickly thrusted it upwards horizontally using both of his hands and tilted his head back just in time to witness the guard's missed attack strike the air above him. He could smell the steel angrily retract past his nose and back into the firm grasp of an even angrier twenty-two year old. 59

Jadrien shot to his feet and positioned his weight onto the foot furthest from the guard. He studied the length of the sceptre that had just saved his life and gave it a second practice swing swiftly in a circular motion. Then his eyes met the guard's. And once again they exchanged glances of insult. And once again the guard resumed his word-less war cry. 60

Steel sliced against gold. Jadrien gritted his teeth and studied his opponent's attacks. They were unyielding and relentless. Jadrien's sceptre and the guard’s staff collided in mid air and each of them refused to give any leeway. The shafts slid and sent the tips crashing down to the ground. Jadrien stumbled to his left as the guard fell to his right. Their shoulders broke each other's fall yet they still hadn't loosened their grip on their weapons. 61

Jadrien spied the torn sleeve on the guard’s uniform and sneered at the number “4” peeking out like a curious bystander. "You're nothing" the guard spurted sharkly as sweat rolled swiftly off his forehead and down the side of his face. And he jerked his right elbow up into Jadrien's chin and kicked him hard in the stomach. 62

Jadrien cowered backwards and hit the throne room wall. The sceptre slid out through his fingers and rolled a few feet off. His stomach lurched as he rubbed his chin with his hands trying to sooth the pain out. 63

A fiercely clenched fist yanked the back of Jadrien's hair and dragged him away from the wall. The guard whispered words into Jadrien's ear, "You'll never be rid of me Six-nineteen...." and he yanked Jadrien's hair again, "this is your life." 64

"No" Jadrien lipped silently. "No" he repeated a little louder. "No!" the word finally came stomping out of Jadrien's mouth. And likewise, Jadrien stomped backward into the guard's shin and flailed his body free of the guard's grasp. The pole-staff swung near and caught him in his side but Jadrien did not flinch. Instead he reached over and took hold of the staff on the area that the guard was holding onto it. They played horizontal tug of war and began circling the open area of the room by the window. Faster, faster, faster. Jadrien's eyes narrowed and he timed his opportunity perfectly. He gave the pole-staff one final, mighty tug and then slyly let it slide through his fingers. 65

The guard's feet were the last part of him that Jadrien saw alive. He had fallen backwards and tipped over the open sill of the window. "You're nothing!" Jadrien heard the guard's voice cry out. "Nothi-" started the voice again, this time fainter, but was interrupted by quick thud of splashing flesh. Jadrien peered downwards out the window at a motionless version of the man he had just killed. A pool of red made itself visible around the outline of his body and Jadrien looked up and away. 66

He saw new guards running and waving their arms in the palace courtyard. And a band of alarm whistles rang out as he saw one of them point up at his appearance in the window. Jadrien decided his exit cue was most definitely at hand and he darted back across the room, picked up the sceptre, and slowly peeked into the hallway. 67

Fortunately it was emptied and silent. Jadrien took heed down the hallway to his right and stopped when it came to a turn. He quickly peeked his head around the corner, saw that it was clear, and darted towards the staircase doors. Just as Jadrien was about to grab hold of the handle it rattled and twisted from somebody using it on the other side of the door. He rolled aside just as it was kicked open by a troupe of four guards. 68

They rushed in and followed the hall down in the direction Jadrien had just come from. The door had shielded him from being discovered as the guards had not thought to stop and close it behind them. Jadrien sighed a small lump of laughter out of his throat, checked the hallway for signs of other people, and eagerly slipped through the doors. 69

A narrow flight of forty steps brought Jadrien into a new hallway that widened as it continued before him. Unfamiliar voices grew louder and louder as Jadrien inched his way toward the large open area at the end of the hallway. He was now standing at the railing to the summit of the main foyer. Golden spiral staircases descended on either side of him and a lobby full of flustered guards shuffled in and out of the room below him. Jadrien guessed that they had already manned every main entrance in precaution to his escape. So with no where else to go Jadrien doubled back and played eeny meeny miny mo to pick a random doorway that might lead him to safety. 70

Jadrien closed himself in one of nearest doors just as a new string of threatening footsteps stormed past him. A gust of bone-chillingly cold air flew up Jadrien's back and brought with it a smell of brittle and stale air. A crumbled set of stone stairs twisted its way downwards ahead of him. A ways off Jadrien could sense the faltering light of a small torch. He reached the hard bottom of the rubble passageway, stole the torch from a niche in the wall and crept through the darkness. A lonely drip-drop of water echoed into a puddle at Jadrien's feet. The darkness seemed to be growing thicker. And suddenly, a human voice screeched out in distress.
The sound had risen from a broken-stone cranny in the wall near the ground on the left side of the passageway. It was the voice of a little girl Jadrien had decided as the first faint bursts of, “ehee, eeee!” started to crescendo into a definite cry of fear. He knelt on the ground and tipped his head toward the opening. A grey space shot all the way through to the next room a good foot or two. Jadrien could see all the way through to what first mimicked a sobbing young child rocking to and fro in a panicked state of shock. He leaned in closer and rested his fingers on the bottom ledge to better sturdy his perspective. The cries and the rocking continued and Jadrien glanced over his shoulder to check that he was still alone. Satisfied by the familiar silence he swallowed a swift gulp and spoke. “Hey, hey little girl?” he half-whispered half-squeaked, “Are you okay in there?”
She spun her body and latched to the wall like a magnet to the sound of Jadrien’s voice. Her stopped sobs upset Jadrien’s calm but he didn’t pull away from the crack. He couldn’t. He was entranced by her eyes. A little girl no older than four or five years old stared back at Jadrien with the most peculiar set of eyes he could ever have imagined. She had dark, dark hair that thinly traced the line of her neck and shoulders and a mixed complexion, like a smooth cara-mocha-mauve, but it was still her eyes that bit at Jadrien’s attention like a starving sea-serpent. They were large, and not just for a little girl, but they did not blink or wander. The only movement was inside them; the subtle yet unmistakable swirling of colors that had Jadrien dreaming of a magical corridor of oil-painted clouds. The blues melted into magenta and the magenta twisted inside-out until tiny, sparkling rainbows surfaced. Then the process would re-begin again, leading Jadrien deeper and deeper into the magic as it formulated into a most-unnerving strategy of escape. 71

The girl jolted her eyes shut and lifted a trembling hand to the kiss of her lips. A flick of the wrist and a tilt of the neck sent the gesture flying through the crack in the wall just as three very loud and very impatient thumps sounded from inside the room the little girl was entombed in. 72

"Haaa, ah ah haaa, ah ah haaa!" she resumed in a heightened panic. A large guard backhanded her hard across her face and she fell to the floor. Jadrien stood up and scrambled backwards to hide the light his torch was spilling in through the crack in the wall. A moment passed without sound. Jadrien leaned back down to see if the guard had gone back out the way he had come in and found out quite the opposite instead. The guard's arm punched through the crack in the wall and swung at Jadrien's face nearly snagging a chunk of his hair. Jadrien leapt to a safe distance and watched as half of the guard's arm flung around searchingly. And without letting the hand decide to slither back in, Jadrien aimed his torch at the wrist and drove the burning end directly into it. 73

"Graaaaa!!!" The guard whelped as he reeled his arm back through the opening. He and Jadrien each peered through their ends of the hole and Jadrien gritted a smile. The guard then disappeared hollering for other guards and Jadrien raced off as well. Jadrien crossed into a wooden-floor area and noticed the walls opening to a wider distance. A cobwebbed array of doors also presented themselves to Jadrien's dismay. He ran first to the one nearest on the left, thought for a moment, then brushed the cobwebs away and wiped the dust off the hinges and handle. Feeling more optimistic, Jadrien next hobbled back to the door nearest the right side of the room and carefully squeaked it in being careful not to disturb its facade of uselessness. 74


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(rest being written) 76


CHAPTER TWO::: www.allpoetry.com/Story/109904177