IN MY HOUR OF NEED

Chelsea Hogue

"The Grandchild by Alice Neel, 1972"

I have seen shelves of vinegars made from unheard of fruits. The sun’s rays are stored here and flash out from spoiled wood. Some jars are thick, syrupy, and 200 years. Heart junk. Everything here belongs to a gothic baby king named Friday the First. In a large notebook, I record and organize the vinegars by country of origin, flavor, color, and potential, but I’m interrupted by a stone penis banging against a lead pipe, summoning me to another round of hide and ransack.

I tuck myself into the shadows seconds before the king enters. He takes off his hat, and his wig ripples down to his waist, gleaming strawberry blonde in the candlelight. A summer waterfall, a second sun.

But I know his games. There’s the flyspeck, the fungus, what he’ll do with a banquet set for the table. He clinches fluffy bread spun with pink sugar in his fist, and following its scent are those two beautiful dogs of his. Wonders of science, waiting to pick the bones.

Something falls from the topmost shelf. A sharp sibilation, rolling and clinking across stone, and then it stops.

“Is that you?” the king lisps.

All the inhabitants of the castle are asleep—even the king’s dead father, who still lives in the walls, and my brother, chained to the ground in the prison below, where he listens all day to the chatter of the court’s sewage.

“Are you there?” The king giggles and takes a bold lurching step forward. He steadies himself with a table. A coin falls from his cuffs.

In the morning, I am supposed to do it for the ceremony. I am to flourish the ritual activity, pose for the king’s portrait with a massive nose of clay strapped to my face, cards in hand, playing a game I’ll never win, seated upon the king’s reeking glittering pillows. The little blue box will be on the table between us, calling to me, so thin and precious, like the stomach of a nun, full of whispers.

The queen would be there for it, spotted and always a lot of fun. “Someone has died,” she’d scream. “Who did it?” And we’d all look around, madly yelling from the rim of the volcano, confusing our own shadows. “Who was there?”

As the years have succeeded, the rituals have gone on, but our patience is not interminable. Every night is a new mystery and possible prize, until the tired king cries and throws his small body against the tatters of his maid’s skirt.

But I’m under different instructions now. The stones I’ve chosen are cool and heavy. I know the nightguards are bored and underfed, watching fireworks from a distant balcony. And so? What will I do, now that the time has come? Step out of the shadows? Show him how soft my belly is?

I am beginning to have fears.

Chelsea Hogue is a writer based in Ypsilanti, MI. Her work has been published in Cleveland Review of Books, Sleepingfish, and The Rupture, among others. She's the author of the chapbook Ethel (Keith LLC), and is working on a novel called I Am Smoke.