The King of High Places

by Peter Damien



I. 

The King of High Places came to my alley on a Thursday morning. 

I didn't know he was the King of anything yet. I just knew him as a guy from five blocks down who had a shopping cart fulla shit. He was kind of twitchy then, you know? Like someone was going to swoop down an' take the cart if he looked away. 

Thursday, he was different. Calm and smiling. Regal, that's the word for it, he looked regal. Like he was gracing my alley with his presence. 

"I wanna invite you to my kingdom," said the King when I had got out of the cardboard boxes I call home. "I want to take you away from all this, Shouting Jim."

I hate it when people call me that. It's 'cause I got no tolerance for morons or assholes. If you want a steady parade of both, you go stand by a street and they'll flow by you in cars and taxis. On their cell phones, eating, doing their makeup, doing crosswords for chrissakes, all wrapped up in their own little worlds. I shout at 'em to pay attention while they're driving.

"Take me away from all what?" I said, looking at the King. I had a shiv in my pocket and I put my hand on it. You can't be too careful. "You got a room in the Ritz or something?"

The King chuckled. "How about on top of the Ritz?" 

I relaxed my grip on the shiv. This wasn't a fight, this was a crazy conversation. I have 'em sometimes, with other people who live out here. It's like playing that game, Mad Libs, with someone who doesn't have the whole sheet.

"Come again?"

"Top of the Ritz. And some of the others. Listen, Shouting Jim, God directed me to the top of one of these great towers last night. And as I stood atop the building, watching as the fog rolled between the buildings like a gray, I perceived that the rooftops were islands and I was to be king over them." 

I nodded like this was all hunky-dory. The thing you don't do with the crazy conversations is suggest in any way that it's nucking futs, you get me? Good way to get some drooling piss smelling nut on you trying to bite your face. 

"All righty," I said, "So why you tellin' me about it? How come you aren't just up there?"

The King nodded, expecting that question. He said, "Because what good is a king, even a God-chosen one, if he has no people to look after? If his lands are empty?"

I smiled. "OK, your Highness. That sounds . . . very nice. But I'm not really, you know, the subject type. But thanks, though. I mean it, thanks." 

I started to go back inside. You'd think you wouldn't get harassed much, living on the street in a stinking alley in a cardboard box and looking like hell. But it's either the cops convinced you're shooting up, or it's the scrubbed pink boys and girls who want to give me Jee-sus, and now the King. 

"Come on, Jim." 

That was someone new, and I turned back around. Violin Molly had come into the alley and was next to the King. 

Violin Molly's kind of pretty, somewhere in the dirty clothes and frizzy red hair. She'd clean up well, I think. She's got an old violin she tends to like a baby and she makes some money with it. I wish I could do that. No one pays me to shout at cars. 

"He got you into this?" I said. 

She smiled at me. "He's asked me to be his queen." 

I thought maybe she'd be smirking, but she was genuine in her smile. Odd, I never thought she was all that crazy. 

The King said, "I want you as a baron, Shouting Jim. The lord and master of your own island, under my sovereign rule, by the grace of God." 

Yeah, sure. But Violin Molly got closer and said, "There's nothin' but space up there. I was up. It's pretty andquiet. No people but us regulars. And nothing smells. Come on. Gotta be better than this, right?" 

After a second, I said, "Can you get me a pack of smokes?" 

The King nodded. "I can provide." 

So I dunno why I said yes. It wasn't just cause of the smokes or nothing. Maybe it was Violin Molly, she's got a good smile and a way with talkin' to people. Maybe I'm more nuts than I thought. I stuffed what I wanted to take with me into my pockets, and I hid the rest of my shit behind a dumpster and hoped it'd be there when I got done with this craziness. Left the cardboard home up. Someone else will probably live in it, but I don't care, I got a shiv and can get it back. 

I went with 'em. 

It wasn't the Ritz I got, but one of those huge glass buildings which the sun catches in the evening and turns into pure light. One of those buildings with names full of letters like PLC, LTD, LLC. 

It had loading docks around back like a lotta these buildings do. Bunch of big guys hauling boxes in and outta trucks. All that hustle and bustle, it wasn't so hard for me and the king to sneak in and get to the stairs. Violin Molly waited outside on the street corner, where she played for coins just to kill time. 

It was an awful lot of stairs and my knees were fucking throbbing. But we got up and pushed open the metal door, went out onto the roof, and I looked out. 

Well. I gotta admit it was worth it. Pure blue sky above me. The noise of the streets lost in the wind. The air was chilly and smelled great. 

"This is your land," the king said with a sweep of his hand. "My island is just there."

He pointed. There was a building to my north, taller than a lot of the ones around us. Shack on top. From a radio tower, the king had a pointy piece of burlap hanging like flag, snapping in the wind. 

I guess I said thanks. He left. I was too distracted to notice. Up here, it really was silent and calm. I sat down on the edge of an air conditioning unit and just enjoyed sitting and breathing and being there. 

And that was how I became Lord Shouting Jim. I don't care if it sounds nuts. I like it. 

II. 

I said yes right away when the king came to me because he said he would get me off the streets and that was all I needed. I don't like the streets. I don't like cars or buildings or all the people who are always walking around, coughing and sneezing and touching everything, and I don't like crowds because They can hide in them really well. It's so mean that people call me Twitchy as if that's my name when it isn't. I'm not Twitchy, it's not like I've got a sickness or something like epilepsy or something. It's just you gotta always be watching or They sneak up on you and feed you pills and make you forget, and . . . 

Sorry. 

So I came up here and got this roof, the king said it was an island and I thanked him. I don't know much about kings - the history books are lies written in iambic quatrains to alter how you think - but I knew that you were supposed to kiss the king's rings. Well he didn't have rings so I kissed his knuckles. He smiled and left and I had my tower. 

I wasn't the only one up here. I saw someone over to the west on another tower, bearded guy with his pockets stuffed full. I normally see him shouting at cars. He was just sitting there. And as the next few days went by, I saw other people turn up on other rooftops. Maybe a dozen all told. 

This was good good good, this kingdom up here. There is one door on to the roof and I can bar that from my side. They can't just walk up to me and inject me with the needles that don't leave a mark, or slip pills into my water. If They come in choppers, I'll hear and even if it's the silent black ones, I can at least see them. 

That first night we were all up here, the king and Violin Molly waved to us from their own rooftop. They waved all regal-like and we all cheered and waved back. 

And then Violin Molly took out her violin and climbed on top of a big exhaust fan. She played a dancing jig. We could all hear it, it traveled so clear up here without all that traffic noise. In the moonlight, I could see people on most of the other rooftops up and dancing, stomping their feet and clapping their hands, shouting and laughing. Even that guy who shouts at cars was up. 

Well I didn't dance or anything because . . . I just didn't. But I smiled and clapped. 

Then she played this sad thing, slow and tremulous and really beautiful. There was no dancing to that one, I think we all thought the same as me about it. Me, I sat there thinking about my beautiful Kelly, pinned to a tree when a car went too fast and shot off the road, and I remember all the flashing lights and how pale and still she was when I got there. What I remember most of all were the long white scratches on the hood of the car, across which she was slumped. 

After Kelly, things got weird, and I lost my job. They tried to have me take pills so I wouldn't figure out that They had taken my Kelly and all my money through a cunning stock market problem. 

I slept deeply, wrapped in my big coat and stretched out against the door, so if anyone came I would know. It was a good night. 

III. 

King came, suggested new life on island in kingdom. Said yes. Alone at first but slowly, more people come: the discarded refuse of the corporate-controlled world of anger and deadlines and time moving too fast. Swearing loyalty to barons. Who swear loyalty to the King. Who swears loyalty to God, the artifice of basic human language which is worshipped but not understood as the source of consciousness. 

Plenty of food now. Each island sends subjects below. Return with food from many places. Spread across all islands to feed all. Beneficient monarchy proven more effective for all people than great gears of democracy, always spinning, running well-oiled with the hot blood of those they have mulched. 

Gather on tallest roof for king's feast. 

Recognized or feared by all as The Man Under the Bridge, raised glass and toasted the king. Said: "To the just establishment of the righteous monarchy by which all men are free." 

Returned to this tower to discuss matters with subjects. Will write chapter seventy-five of manifesto tomorrow. World needs it more than ever but will not stop to read for if they slow down to do so the gears will grind them into pink meat and grease wheels further. 

Considered matters. Slept. 

IV. 

I'm not crazy. 

I like that no one up here ever calls me crazy. 

I don't know how long we've been up here now, because I haven't been trying to keep track. I'm the baroness of my own rooftop island. Baroness! Like something out of a Victorian novel! There's no beautiful yet mysterious man wearing flowing white shirts who has deep mysterious pools for eyes, but still. Baroness. 

I have subjects, although I don't like to call them that, it feels so mean. They're just my friends and we all work together. Out of all twelve islands, I think we bring in the most supplies for the kingdom. I'm good at organizing. I was always good at it. 

One young man calls me "my laady," and doffs his filthy Boston Red Sox cap whenever he sees me, and I laugh. 

The king and Queen Violin Molly had me over for dinner last night. We drank red wine out of little paper cups. The king told me he thought one of his subjects had stolen the bottle, but had forgiven him. Down there on the streets, the king said, time goes so fast that whoever owned the wine probably forgot about the theft after five minutes. 

The king didn't ask me anything like, "So what did you used to do, down in the world?" No one asks that. You assume that what everyone did was struggle to survive, stay out of the rain, and find enough to eat. 

So he didn't ask, but I started talking about it anyway. Probably it was all the little cups of red wine, making me chatty. He listened and nodded, and Violin Molly smiled periodically. 

"I went to school to be an engineer," I said. "Not an architect, I didn't want to sit and draw blueprints. I wanted to be the one who took the blueprints and interpreted them, who figured out how to make it all happen. Who worked with the architects. It's fun work. It's outside. Only . . .

"...Only, sometimes, I would black out and wake up somewhere else. Sometimes naked. Sometimes having broken into someone's home. I was arrested. It turns out I wasn't blacking out, I was having episodes in which I seemed to turn into someone else. They talked to me about this other person, as if I would know all about her. Know her motivations. Know what she took. They didn't believe me when I said I didn't know. 

"I didn't. I don't care if we were in the same body. I'd never met her. 

"They wanted to lock me away and treat me, but I couldn't stand the thought of being contained. I love beingoutside. Not locked in a room blacking out periodically. So I escaped. We escaped. She escaped. I blacked out, woke up in a park with bloody knuckles and a headache. I never went back. Better the streets than a room with bars over windows you can't open. 

"I'm not crazy." 

"I don't think you're crazy," said the king. He gestured, taking in all the islands. Some of them had little columns of smoke rising as people built cooking fires. "Could we have done all of this if we were crazy?" 

"I think what you did sounds very brave," said Violin Molly. "I think that's the important part." 

That night, I blacked out before bed. When I woke up, I was naked and against the chest of the young man with the Red Sox hat. It wasn't a total shock. He was handsome, in a dirty and wrecked sort of way. It wasn't the first time this had happened, during a black out. 

I wanted to do something, to really help the kingdom, and to escape the other lingering glances the young man gave me. So I sent him out, along with others, to gather up ropes and shopping cart wheels and small plastic buckets. 

We worked and rigged and fastened all through that day and the next night. When the sun rose, I had created something like wash-lines running between all the buildings. We could put bits of food, or messages, in the little plastic containers and wheel them to and from the islands. We were networked. 

The king, grateful, sent me the first message. It was a bottle of wine, completely full. I shared it with all my friends. 

He's right. How could I have done any of this if I was crazy? 

That evening, something scary happened. I had just bid my friends goodnight, when there came the squeak of someone trying to use the door, trying to get onto the roof. We all froze. Everyone was here. I don't know about other islands, but I have a roster system in place so I can keep track of everyone. 

Through the door, someone shouted, "Hello?" 

We didn't say anything. 

Someone on the other side rammed the door with their shoulder. We had the door secured with boards and ropes. It rattled but held. 

Someone grabbed my hand, and I jumped. But it was only the young man in the Red Sox hat, looking waxen and spooked. I squeezed his hand and we waited. 

After the shoulder-slam, the person went away. 

Along our clothesline network, I sent the king a message right away and then we all spent the night half-dozing, nevers jangled. 

For the first time, I realized that if someone bad was at the door, there was no other way for me to get out, and get away, to keep from being taken and locked up. 

I fell asleep curled up with the young man in the Red Sox hat, my head full of diagrams and plans to build a massive rope ladder that could go down the side of the building. 

V. 

So it was that in the fourth day of this Our King's sovereign rule, I who am called L'Desma, did come before him and speak unto him, saying: "O Lord, you have given many people gracious leave to live within the bounds of your kingdom, and all your flock is well-tended. But I would seek boon from you." 

The king, in his beneficence, did not speak harshly unto my poor appearance, for my Reeboks did have holes and my hoodie surely was rent across one arm. 

"What boon would you seek?" the king said unto me. 

I said, "Grant, O king, that none may come to the island which you, in your wisdom, have seen fit to bequeath upon me. For I have come to realize my true calling, and shall devote myself to the mysteries of Our Lord's radio waves, that I might come to understand his voice through them." 

And the king did look puzzled and said, "I don't understand. What about radio waves?" 

I thusly showed him the portable wind-up battery radio which I kept always on my person and explained unto the king: "There are radio waves which come through garbled, the voices rent asunder and naught but gibberish. Yet truly, the Lord God speaks through those gibberish voices, if one is only still and silent enough to listen and understand the Lord's messages." 

The king did verily look confused, but his radiant queen, Violin Molly, did remark that this was a wonderful idea, and the king granted my boon. 

Others came unto my island monastery, but they, like me, took a vow of silence. We worked hard, the Brotherhood of the Roof: we gathered food, down in the world, and we gathered portable radios. Some who came among us had demons within, and we would bind them and tend to them, listening not to their pleas for one more snort, or one more needle beneath the toenail. The demons exorcized, the Lord God did shine holy light upon them, and they became Brothers, silent and listening. 

We listened and we prayed. We watched. We witnessed Bernadette the Third - a holy woman, I am sure of it - build a great network of lines. It was with some dismay that I allowed one leading here. 

We watched someone hammer on their door and were concerned. We listened to the stuttering radio waves for guidance. 

We were watching when the door leading to Brown Henry's barony was shattered open and the roof did fill with police, those men of handcuff and rifle and shouted command. They all wore radios, but did not hear the voice of God. 

We watched. 

6. 

Those were the best days of my life, I think. They were perfect. The time before becoming queen, those days when I stood on street corners and played violin for dimes . . . those days seem like a dream, and not a convincing one at that. 

The king thought we could go on and on forever. I didn't tell him otherwise, but I never believed it. I knew whatever happened would probably be bad. And it was. But it was worth it, for the adventure. For the nights spent with nothing between us and the stars, the moon so close, it seemed we could reach up and slap it, send it spinning around like a globe. 

It all went wrong so quickly. 

First, there was the hammering on the door of Bernadette the Third's door. The next morning, we were awoken by sounds coming from the rooftop of Brown Henry: shouts, grunts, and the high-pitched echoing sound of glass being broken. 

We could do nothing but watch from the edge of the rooftops as policemen with helmets and shields moved across the roof like a tidal wave. Brown Henry's subjects fought back, of course. They did some damage. One young man attacked a policeman with a broken beer bottle and cut him badly. The police took him down with tasers and hauled him away. Hauled them all away. 

The king watched with eyes growing damp. The only time he made a sound was a cry of alarm when the young man stabbed the policeman with the beer bottle. 

He said, after it was over, "I thought we were better than that. We should be. We're above them, in every way." 

I held him close. 

He reassured his own subjects, who were growing scared. Some wanted to bolt, but he argued that we shouldn't abandon the kingdom. That we should stay and fight for what we loved, stand and defend our rooftop world. 

They listened. They knew they couldn't really leave. Someone would get 'em if they did. So everyone stayed and barricaded the door, wrapping it in boards and ropes. The king commanded the shed to be dismantled, and all the pieces of it were plastered around the door. 

Before they boarded everything up, though, he pulled a man to him. A guy named Big Tony. Big Tony's all right, though he doesn't look it. Nasty scars on his face and arms, and everything else is covered in tattoos. He'd killed a man once, on accident. He had admitted it to me, the other night, with all the solemnity of confession. I couldn't forgive him, but I pressed my hands against the top of his bald head and said nothing. It was enough to comfort him. 

"Go with Big Tony," the king said. "He'll take you down into the world. Keep you safe, until we've defended the kingdom, and then we'll bring you back." 

I smiled a little sadly. It was sweet of him, but there wasn't any leaving for any of us. I knew it, even before he told his subjects that. And it was also sweet that he thought the kingdom could be defended. An attack that could be rebuffed. 

I'd rather he was right and I was wrong. 

I cupped his bearded cheek. What I said was, "This is my kingdom too, isn't it? I'm your queen. I'll stay right here." 

The king said, "At least go to L'Desma, to the Brotherhood of the Roof. They can guard you. Hide you." 

"No," I said. Then I went to help them barricade the door. 

The king sent messages to all the other islands, telling everyone to get out and vanish, if they could. To wait for the Imperial signal which said it was all safe to return: he would take down the tarp-flag and hoist it back on the radio tower when their lands were once again safe. 

Some of the messages were received. Many just hung on the other end of the clotheslines, next to rooftops which no longer had anyone to collect the messages. 

The king entreated his people, demanding they stand and fight. "But fight gently and carefully," the king pleaded. "No one must die! That is not our way! We're better than that." 

He was better than that. I sat on an air conditioner with my violin on my lap, strumming chords on it and I looked at his subjects. Lean, wiry, dirty, broken men and women who had been hurt and abused too many times in their lives by the world. Like a traumataized animal, they were good and loving until something spooked them, and then they would go for the kill. There were no middle gears. 

The king didn't know that, but I did. When it came down to it, they would each of them take a bottle, or a knife, and try to slit someone's throat with it. 

And then it happened. The shoulder to our door. The voices shouting through. Police, open up. Hands up. Do not attempt to resist. Open the door now. 

They formed battle lines, the king in front. 

In a rush of madness, I stood atop the air conditioner and begain to play my violin. Not a jig, because this was no time to dance. Not a dirge, because that was the last thing they needed. I played Danse Macabre, because it was what I knew. 

I played as the door exploded inward under the force of the police battering ram. 

I played as the police swept in and the king's men charged them. I played as the blood spilled. As the king went down, trembling from an electric shock. My eyes were dripping saltwater onto my violin, which was bad for it, but I kept playing. 

I would have played until the police took me down and handcuffed me. 

But Big Tony snatched me off the air conditioner and practically carried me, charging like an ox through our people and the police, knocking people aside. He got us into the stairwell and began taking the stairs two or three at a time. It was like we were falling. 

We hid, two floors down. To go out of the building would have been a mistake, so we found a broom closet and hid, for what felt like hours. 

Somewhere in there, I lost my violin. It slipped out of my hand and clanged, a sound of pain, as it hit the cement. I'm sure it got trampled. 

That's not the saddest image of all. The saddest image is the king, lying on the ground and twitching. 

It was over in an hour, of course. We may have been kings and queens and barons and so forth, but they were the police, and that was the end of the matter. 

I surprised myself by crying for the fallen kingdom. I wish it had lasted. It was wonderful, and insane, and better than standing on a street corner, playing for dimes . . . 

7. 

I don't remember what first inspired me to head up. Surely that was God's urging. Like a prophet, I had to go at once, leaving behind all my wealth - which I kept with me in a shopping cart, or else someone would take it all - and I headed into the building in whose shadow I had napped until the fog chilled my bones and woke me. 

I went in through the loading docks, because God had not chosen a fool. I brought others in through loading docks. 

And I saw that it was good, what we built. 

It lasted only a little while before the world below us, jealous, came to take it away from us. Jealous because up there, time moved slower and we could find things that didn't exist below, like love. 

We defended what was ours, but those men with guns and cuffs, those dark soldiers, they had a battering ram. Our door exploded. 

I led the charge, as a king should. And I fell with my people. 

The Order of the Roof, under L'Desma's rule, did not fall that day. They vanished, exiled for now from our kingdom, they endure and await my return. 

So many of us escaped. I know it. Violin Molly got away, though she lost her violin. She comes to see me now and then, and we pretend to be brother and sister to fool the men who hold me. When she leaves, when we embrace, she always whispers "I am still your queen." 

We have not fallen. They think it doesn't but my kingdom still stands. 

They might have shocked me and taken me and tried me and snapped endless pictures of me and put me in this cell . . . 

. . . but I am still the King of High Places. 



Peter Damien lives in Minnesota for no known reason, with his wife and two sons, his cats, rats, and a million billion books. He writes to fund his tea habit. He has weird hair. He nervously suspects he would be the first to go in a slasher film.


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