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    The Days of a King
    The Days of a King
    The Days of a King
    Ebook105 pages1 hour

    The Days of a King

    By Phil Skaggs Jr.

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Adam heads out to shake his life up. To make something of himself. He’s tired of letting life happen to him. So he heads West. And with each step his journey gets stranger and stranger.

    Along the way, he meets Jackson. A young cult dropout that’s just looking for a good time. They travel together through each state and encounter all sorts of individuals. Each new place seems fascinating and unique, but Adam keeps heading West. Looking for something. And hoping that he’ll find it.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPhil Skaggs Jr.
    Release dateMar 25, 2013
    ISBN9781301591039
    The Days of a King
    Author

    Phil Skaggs Jr.

    Phil Skaggs Jr was born in lovely and flat Indiana. He has been writing stories since elementary school, mostly in comic form. Recently, however, he's been dedicated to telling his strange and wonderful stories in prose, essays, and occasionally poetry. With little money and mostly passion, he writes, edits, and designs all of his work which gives him great satisfaction when he finally presses that publish button. Runs Mutant Times blog. Supports the Creative Commons and all works are DRM free.

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      Book preview

      The Days of a King - Phil Skaggs Jr.

      The Days of a King

      By Phil Skaggs Jr

      Copyright 2013 Phil Skaggs Jr

      Smashwords Edition

      Indiana

      (1)

      Arnold took to the drive easily. No, not Arnold. Let’s call him Adam. Yes, Adam has a much broader stroke in this world. Very biblical, very atomic. Very past, fast, but very far into the future.

      And Adam was driving. He was taking to it easily. He rarely does, but it was Fall and there was a stillness in the air that was only broken by falling leaves and misguided songs. Play an album, a live album any time during the warm parts of Fall. Roll your windows down. I dare you. Adam would do it. He had no choice. It made the dead songs come alive, and the nerves stiffen with grace and warmth when he drove. Rather than anger and fear.

      Dream enough of dying and just about anything will make you angry and fearful.

      Adam drove looking casually in the mirror as he waited for the cars in the funeral to catch up. He would lead them. Then abandon them. He carried signs in his car. All of them said funeral. Plastic, molded, magnetic, flags or banners; it didn’t matter. He had them all. Piled high in the backseat of his car. Wait a little bit for a procession to begin and sneak in line. You just look the part. Disheveled and broken, poor in spirit and with a great burden of excuses for being late. And sneak in. Someone will always let you in.

      In suburbia it is easy to become a ghost. People become translucent or still like a part of the scenery. Adam’s shoulders hunched as he steered. He peaked his eyes over the steering wheel hoping for a chance to get in with his steel whale.

      That was Adam’s Sunday car. He would sell it by the end of the day when he had grown tired of the whole thing. And seen the last crying and lost grandmother he would want to see for a while.

      At two o’clock, Adam left the car line broken and confused. He headed to the junkyard down on Grey Gardens Avenue. The car combined with a trunk full of aluminum scrap metal and crushed cans is enough to get him the small red motorcycle tucked away in the corner.

      It was something nice and just rebellious enough to make him feel like the shit. It may have been foreign, but the markings had rubbed off years ago. Who knew where it came from? It was an Earth model, small red and rusty with dirt clumped wheels.

      Adam tore out of that junkyard with a madness of 55 mph. That cycle could zoom out from under him if he didn’t clamp his knees like an old girlfriend. It would move and buck and if you leaned too much, you feared smearing your skin upon the ground and leaving a ripped and bloody mess for the rest to find.

      (2)

      Adam was returning a call to his mother. She was worried, hadn’t heard from him in a few days. The father was shouting questions in the background. How is the job going, how was school going? Adam told his mother fine. Job was well. In fact it was so well, he hadn’t shown up in days. After a few months of clocking in and staring at a computer screen with a back that began to hunch over, he figured his health was more important than some good old fashioned experience.

      And school? Beautiful, say anything that remotely resembles the shit that was coming out of the teachers’ mouths a few days ago and you’re fine. Congrats on the B+, the professor would write on some half-assed paper. Overhearing kids as they freak about how much harder a university is compared to high school. They expect so much! You going to Chester’s tonite to get fucked up?

      Adam said goodbye while heading to the bathroom. Looking in the mirror was an unusual pastime for someone who didn’t live on a social network. But there he was, leaning in close. He was letting his beard grow out again. It’s periodical. Out of boredom and mourning. Predictable everyday things and a few experiences outside of his home and he mourned for the happiness he was missing out on.

      A close look. The beard was lovely. The hairs of red, black, brown, and blonde are coming in nicely. As he shifted his glance, he couldn’t help but be impressed with his clear skin. Years ago, a landfill for shit and now thanks to endless products and doctor visits his life was saved. No acne as an adult. Hard to believe! The skin shifted back to a purpled black and then back again, freckled and pale then darkness ascends upon those white plains, shifting like a mood ring.

      A skin as uncomfortable and uncertain as he was. He tossed out his phone. He didn’t want anymore connections.

      He wanted a pilgrimage.

      (3)

      Adam took a quick line from the newspaper, but ended up spending more than a few minutes on it. Good for the eyes. Spending time like this on an article would kill him at the computer. Of course, he picked up seven or nine news items in ten minutes staring at a reliable feed. Get the headline right and you won’t have to read the rest. A Tribune said California can make even the dead dance. Adam sighed.

      He needed to give up on paper all together. Enough’s enough. It never tells him anything new. Information that has been around for hours.

      Adam took a deep seat into his couch. He didn’t move. He could feel the heat of the day settling into his skin. It was sunny out and what he felt was a toasted flesh cooled by the air. It’s a comforting sensation. He prefered this to the summers he would spend outside as a child.

      He could not stand the life. He would try every now and then. Stick out his hand and say hello, but it never lasted.

      It was too hard for him. He withdrew further even as his contemporaries found homes they could call their own.

      Even a miserable hermit fears a lonesome death.

      Adam closed his eyes. Adam had decided something.

      Adam walked from the couch out to his bike with a stride that many friends and girlfriends would laugh about, he left.

      Several days after Adam’s absence. His roommates and a few friends would look for him in his room and find it empty. The things that he clung to had been disposed of. All the memories he wanted were to be carried in scars and bruises and blood lose from fucked up fights and fists full of passion.

      Abandon yourselves to the road, Adam. You are a better pioneer than your forefathers.

      (4)

      The eyelids of Adam grew heavy. The yellow on the roads that once awoke him with every jump was nothing more than a hypnotic blur. A softening of the throttle as his head lurched forward was enough to send his bike in a spin.

      The brown corduroy suit he wore, ruffled and mixed with the dirt and glass in the ditch. The vest moved from a crème yellow to a deep-set red. Adam looked down and was more surprised by his unwillingness to get up more than anything else.

      Adam commanded his body. Adam’s head was the only portion willing to move. And that merely rolled into a spiral that ended in blackness.

      Adam, poor Adam, laying there as the night air remained filled with vibrant white noise. A blood splattered ditch-angel.

      What the fuck, Adam.

      (5)

      Jackson -her full name being Emily J. Thurgood, when asked what the ‘J’ stands for she says Jackson even though many, including her mother, doubt that is her middle name- awoke and looked to her left,

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