Midnight Insurrection
flash fiction of an ancient palace coup
Secret Service men patrol all about the great pale house in protection of The Leader, but not in the bedroom. It is a flaw. The marines check visitors for weapons and make them pass through a scanner, but they don’t guard the kitchen knives. It is a flaw. Security will watch for prowlers but not look twice at family members. It is a fatal flaw.
At the hour before dawn, The Youngest Son meets The Mother outside The Leader’s bedroom. There’s a beautiful oil portrait of Lincoln Rockwell and a vase of white orchids opposite the bedroom door. A Secret Service man, mirrored shades and coiling earpiece, looks over at them from down the hallway, and nods once his assent to their presence: close family members must not be bothered. The tall young man and the icy lady walk wherever they wish. He looks away. They step into the bedroom and shut the door quietly behind them.
A snoring resonates within the darkness, and there’s a soft oldman odor of denture fixative and embrocation for stiff joints. The Mother doesn’t know this room very well; she never sleeps with her husband the Leader, has not had bodily contact with him ever since... since that moment down in Florida when she saw what she saw.
They stand still, waiting for their eyes to adjust to the dark, breathing softly. They are calm, purposeful, unhurried. It is in the genes of The Mother, warrior genes, the flinty bloodline of stern killers, to await the moment of action thus. The Son takes his cue from her, and though he is only half her hardness, it is hard and calm enough for the task they must do.
Finally they can see like phantoms, and The Mother takes out from her stylish Chanel dark-blue jacket with muted buttons of obsidian a long carving knife. The steel glints somehow in the gloom; perhaps it is the knife’s urge to slice that glows on its edge.
She hands the knife to the young man, and pecks his cheek once, coldly, as if it were a solemn ritual of some kind. She murmurs something in a foreign language, for herself apparently and not for the boy. The Leader forbade her always from speaking her tongue to the Youngest Son so he wouldn’t understand anyway.
They step on either side of the queen-sized bed. She kneel-crawls up onto it, taking a pillow from the vacant left side. The Leader’s snoring has softened, now they hear only the gurgling borborygm of a bowel stuffed with junkmeat and sugarwater. And their own soft breaths. The oldman stench intensifies, blanketed farts and the sour sweat of a collapsed endocrine system. He sleep-hiccups once, seeming to stir.
The action, when it happens, is swift and intense. She thrusts the fat pillow over his face and pushes down with her whole body. The Son jabs hard into his silken pajama jacket, once, twice, many times. The Leader’s body convulses, his cries sound barely at all from under the muffling pillow and the woman’s weight. The blood flows freely and the Son is bathed in it. He takes a moment to lift his fingertips to his mouth to taste his father’s blood. He nods once, satisfied: it tastes of him. He bends his head to lap in the warm fluid like a happy puppy.
Soon there’s complete quiet. She takes off the pillow, climbs down from the bed, and switches on the light. The Youngest Son stands with the knife in his hand, mouth and jaw painted in his father’s gore, his expression ecstatic. She begins the cleanup: adjusting the bed slightly, taking out a towelette to wipe the the blade clean of prints, gesturing him to go and wash his face in the ensuite bathroom.
He looks at her with such great amaze on his face, such a bounty of dazed satisfaction and asks:
Does this mean I’m President now, mommy?
She takes the blade in her thumb and forefinger and nods once:
The one who kills the king is the king. It is you who are new king.
With her crisp consonants and purring vowels, this pronouncment has the force of ages. He feels a slight erection beginning to grow in his Brooks Brothers boxers.
=== ( MIDNIGHT INSURRECTION // ENDS ) ===
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