Building Kingdoms (A Short Story)

I was within and without. 

We were walking along together in silence, his hand on the small of my back guiding me forward, directing our path. He and I had been speaking a lot recently - about me, about him, about us. There was so much exasperation and tension in our discussions, usually followed by a period of restless peace that was mostly a result of ignoring our problems and not finding solutions. Well, in all honesty, the tension and restlessness were mostly just on my part – he never seemed to be touched by it, but instead just sat there in his quiet resolve, as perfect and steady as a north facing arrow on a compass. This cycle repeated on and on so many times until finally, we had reached the point where he decided to show me the source of the repulsive disquiet that always stood with its arms out between us, like a guard pressing its hands against both of our chests. 

So here we were, making our way to the culprit of our problems.

We walked along a stone path, passing the strangest sights along the way. Everything was like a dream-world, with a strange heady feeling of being both frighteningly familiar and eerily foreign. I saw shadows moving toward me out of the corner of my eye, and thinking it was other people, I glanced up; however, as soon as I looked, the shadows disappeared. 

We were alone here. 

I ducked my head, unsettled, and pressed myself closer into the crook of his arm, looking for comfort. Oddly, he didn’t flat-out comfort me as he sometimes does; instead, I felt as if he was urging strength into me and I understood that this was important and comfort was second. This was necessary. 

“We’re almost there,” he said in his soft voice, and I nodded in agreement because for some reason I could also sense that our destination was close. Precarious waves of unidentifiable warring emotions writhed sickeningly in my stomach, and the landscape around us seemed to roll like a ship in high waters in time with the swells inside of me. There was a strange sense of familiarity that was beginning to run its slimy fingers down the back of my neck, and I knew that we were almost to…wherever we were going. Suddenly, almost as if it instantly appeared out of the nonexistent fog, a building loomed up in front of us. It was beautiful – solid and huge, bearing resemblance to a fortress of some sort. 

“A building…?” I mused slowly, knowing that he hadn’t made a mistake but not seeing how this place could possibly be the cause of the tension in our relationship. I wanted to glance up in his face, but couldn’t bring myself to turn my eyes from the fortress in front of me that was so strangely compelling. I felt him stiffen behind me, and knew that he had noticed my fixation, and that it had bothered him. 

Dragging my eyes away, I forced myself to turn around and look at him. “What on earth does this place have to do with anything?” I asked, failing to keep the hint of frustration out of my voice. “Everything,” he replied, and gently turned me back around to face the building. “Look again” he said, passing his hand softly over my eyes. As his hand lowered from my face, I blinked and gasped: the building had changed. The ivy was still there, trailing like organic nets over the towers and betraying the age of the place. However, the stone had taken on a different color, dimming into a waxy yellowish-gray tone that somehow looked like the skin of a corpse. The whole place looked unstable and awry, as if it could collapse at any moment, killing anybody inside. Even more frightening than its instability was the sense of watchfulness about the place, as if somehow it was conscious and was determined to fight to stand there no matter what forces came against it. The whole thing seemed to just pulse with a nauseating life. 

However, the factor that turned the crashing waves in my stomach to ice was that the place seemed to have a lurid, intoxicating beauty to it; it was as if the death that was clearly in this place was using its sickly sweet rotting fumes as mimicry for beauty. For some reason, it was working – I wanted to go in.

I moved forward toward the entryway, both drawn to it on my own and also knowing that he wanted us to go in anyway. I slid my hand down his arm to wrap our fingers together, unwilling to break our contact.

We entered into the dim coolness of the building and I stopped to let my eyes adjust to the change of light. The familiarity of this place pulsed like a heartbeat – no, maybe that was just my heart pounding in my chest that I heard…that was somehow reverberating off of the walls around us? I forced my mind from the eerie thought and began to look around. The inside seemed calm and peaceful; the walls were heavily decorated and the room we were in was fully furnished. I revolved slowly on the spot, taking in the space and making note of the various doors and staircases that led out of this room. Suddenly, I felt stillness come over me, and it was almost as if the air itself thickened. 

“This place is mine.” 

He nodded at my declaration; of course he had known all along. The angry waves in my stomach were beginning to churn again, and anger and accusation were burning up my throat. Before I could open my mouth to speak, he leaned forward and passed his hand over my eyes again. This time, I closed my eyes under his touch. I hesitated, and then with a shaky breath, opened my eyes once again.

A strangled cry rasped through my lips, and I jumped back against him, clutching him in confusion and shock. Everything had changed in the room.

The place had turned into a horror house. The walls were streaked with what looked like claw marks, the furniture was torn apart, and the hangings had been ripped from the walls. The air stunk of fear and sadness and doubt, and there was a heaviness that spoke of suffocation and oppression. 

This was a place that was created out of fear - I instinctively knew it. At second glance, I saw that the meticulously constructed walls clashed with the haphazardly placed hallways that were really just escape routes into the darker parts of the building. The architecture of the room created odd, sharp nooks that appeared to be hiding places but lacked all sense of comfort. There were staircases going down, down, down into the depths of the building and I knew that I never wanted to know where those went. Looking up, I saw something in the middle of the room that I had somehow missed before: a throne.

I scrambled over to it, drawn erratically and nonsensically. Something in me knew that this was mine and that it fit me perfectly. I gripped the arm of the chair and nearly threw myself into it in my rush to sit. It wasn’t until I sat down and looked around the room from the perspective of that throne that I recognized the room in full, and the strangeness of the scene came into clarity. From that perspective, I recognized other things in there as mine. My viewpoint. My outlook. This throne was the position from which I made my decisions. From here I could see where the things I had hurled away from me had landed in broken pieces on the floor; amongst the shards I recognized gifts that he had tried to give me, times of healing and of love that I had been too afraid to trust and consume. From here, I could see that the markings on the walls were things that I had written with words projected from my mouth when I had sat in this very seat. I read them now – words of doubt, of self-hatred, of confusion and fear. 

This was my throne from which I had unknowingly reigned over my life –  the place from which I decided, thought, judged, and lived. 

A sob wracked its way up from my ribcage and shook me on its way out of my mouth. He was before me now, kneeling down at my feet and lifting my face with his hands. His eyes locked on mine and there was eternal sadness in them. In that instant, I knew. This was the place that I retreated to when I ran from him. The place I withdrew in when I hardened my heart to him and let lies and accusations of fear and doubt and deceit wash over me. This place was my back-up plan, my solution to the “what if.” 

I cried then, leaning my forehead against his as his tears mingled with mine. It was only now that I realized that every time I ran from him, I laid a brick in this foundation. I hadn’t realized the consequences, hadn’t realized that I had been building something all that time. I hadn’t realized the consequences of giving in and dancing with the ghouls that had plagued me, enticing me away from the safety of his arms with darting tongues that warned me not to trust him, that he was too good to be true. 

This place was my kingdom.

And it had masqueraded as beautiful, I thought to myself sickly as my stomach churned; it had itself become a deception of control and ownership and identity. 

He pulled his forehead back from mine and looked into my eyes again. “Now you see” he said softly. “Now you must understand that what is built on fear can’t stand. This place is what stands between us – this place you keep and in which you hide. From here, you rule over a kingdom of fear and pain, and all you can see is the broken remains of your troubles. You can’t see me from here, when you sit on this throne. The perspective is wrong.”

“I want to be found by you,” he whispered, and this time sadness crept into his voice. “I have never ignored you, never deceived you, have never failed you. But if you keep running back here to a place where you’re drowning in lies and doubt, you’ll never be able to know me – and if you can’t let yourself know me, how are you going to be with me?”

His voice was a paradox – commanding all the authority one would imagine of the person who breathed the very stars into existence, yet still offering choice. “I need to sit on the throne of your heart, but not in this place” he continued on softly. “This place has to go. You can’t stay here anymore, it’s killing you. It’s time to leave and to let this place die.” Looking around at the deprecation, I felt an irrational grip of protection over it. A fierce snarl of ownership seemed to roar in my chest, for this was mine. I had made it. Even though it was a home for nightmares, my heart almost burst out of my chest at that moment with the desire to stand before it with my arms held out in a crazy plea for him to spare it and not come any closer. 

He looked at me calmly, clearly. He knew, I could tell; He knew what I was thinking and knew my terror.

"I won't force you," he said in his paradoxical voice. "I won't do it if you won't let me. But this is what stands between us, what’s causing a divide between us. And it will hurt momentarily if we get rid of it, but I promise you that I will catch you, I will help you, and it will be better. Trust me."

"But…dying? You would really cause something of me…to die?" For as I spoke, I realized that this building had not only been laid brick- by- brick by my thoughts and will, but that this place had become me as well.  By my will, this is what I had produced in myself.

"You wanted a safe place, a place to control and rule from, but that in itself will ruin you. You wanted a home, but you’ll only find home in me. This place is a prison and it will break you. If it stays, I must war against it. I won't leave you, even if you refuse to leave this place. But it will stay as a barrier between you and I. I will war against it daily in order to get to you, but that's not the best way."

“But this is me, this is who I am” I said sadly, for I knew it was true; this place was everything I had loathed about myself and tried to hide – it was the true reflection of my flawed and dirty heart.

"It’s who you are right now, but it’s not what you can be – what we can be. You can be something new, something better. In an instant, we can have a new lifetime. I would never cause something to die without the intention of raising new and better life."

I looked around the room, at the broken, dirty stone in the walls. At the marks on the walls, at the broken pieces on the floors. I could feel the weight of this place – the weight of what it took to build it, to create it. I could feel the oppression of the room. Why did I even want this place? Why would I even want to be this? 

The opportunity to sit on a throne of a place such as this was not worth it, even if it was mine to rule.

I looked at him, the source of my love and life, and saw clearly in his eyes that it was with him that I belonged, and nowhere else. With tears that burned a sick brew of shame, frustration, humiliation, pride and resentment, I nodded my agreement. 

I stood and we walked across the room, standing with our backs to the entryway. He came up behind me, and put his hands lovingly on my shoulders in a gesture that radiated protection, security, and promise. I leaned back against his chest, seeking solace from the war that screamed inside of my heart and echoed all around us against the walls of my fortress; the screams bounced around us, both within me and without, shaking the walls in desperate defeat, attempting to find life in their final death throes. For that is what this was, death – the death of my kingdom. And then he readied himself to do what I could not do, what I could never do – to save me.

Then he spoke.

He spoke a word, a name – his name.

Immediately, my chest restricted and I gasped out a breath; I couldn't tell if my heart was imploding into nothing or stretching apart into thousands of pieces. But there was pain, and in this second, the walls around us broke down – or did they only transform?  It was hard to tell, everything happened so quickly. All I know is that this death was real and absolute, but at the exact moment that death left, new life began. Before I even had a chance to grab at my chest or cover my head from the debris crumbling around us or hide my face from the shadowy demons that lunged from the very walls and flew in anger at my face, it was over.

Everything was still, and his hands were still on my shoulders.

 

My kingdom had fallen, but now…his was here.

 

The kingdom within me that I had built had crumbled and died. But before I could even feel the sting of breathlessness, a new kingdom of life had risen within me. At the moment of death, he had breathed, and I hadn't time to feel the loss.

I looked around in awe, turning to wrap my arms around him and feeling the shakings of quiet laughter reverberating from his chest at my reaction. The walls around me were pure white, and there were new words written on them - but these were words of hope and of power. Where my old throne had stood now stood a new throne, magnificent and elegant. I could see even from here that he fit it perfectly, and I knew that when he sat there, he would reign with such a truth that accusations and lies would flee. I knew that as he sat there and as I watched him, everything would make sense.

We were no longer at war. He had conquered me, and I had let him. I could breathe again.

His kingdom is made of beauty that is pure, and isn’t darkness masquerading as light. His kingdom is true and selfless, and bore none of the faults that my own kingdom had. His kingdom is called faithfulness; it bears his name and will always have the gaze of his eyes upon it. This kingdom that is his, yet is somehow mine as well. 

It was ours. It was worth it.

A kingdom that was both within me and without.