#2 The Kingmaker

Robert Feldman is the most popular, most talked about, most widely loved man in the known world.

“Well isn’t this the bother,” proclaimed Robert. The prickly blades of the fraying rope poke and scratch at his throat like tiny needles as he tightens the perfectly tied noose.

Robert is dressed in a brown tweed suit his father once wore on a date with his mother back in Portland (an evening under the stars complete with crusty bread and a 1968 vintage red), their third. When on that night he had embraced her greedily and kissed her deeply, he had known she was the woman he would marry. After the pair fulfilled the “til death do us part” clause in their wedding vows, the musty suit was left to Robert, and he treasured it. He desired so earnestly to be like his father; loved unconditionally by another.

“Let’s carry on, then,” sighed Robert.

With a flick of a shin and the flash of a brown leather shoe against the fluorescent ceiling lights, Robert kicked out the dusty and skeletal wooden chair from beneath his feet. His previously cappuccino skin transformed into a cadaverous shade of white. His blue irises suddenly surrounded by red arching fingers, ravenously reaching for that central sapphire. Dangling there, jerking about, Robert’s mind wandered to the past.

Robert was known as The Kingmaker throughout the global media. Dubbed as such when but a touch from Robert would grant those tapped with euphoric extra-human capability lasting a full sixty minutes. Exactly was sort of capability was seemingly random and ranged anywhere from a humdrum extra pair of eyes to absolute omniscience.

Robert kept to himself as often as he could, but once word of this endowment spread there were entire countries of people looking to him for religious guidance. For leadership. For fleeting power. Grabbing, scratching, pinching, pushing, poking, punching, kissing, biting — wherever he would travel, someone would be there, looking for that lovely hour they felt so entitled to, without so much as an iota of remorse for the man they were slowly eroding.

He could take it no longer.

Now, dancing about unevenly like a marionette with all but a single string cut, he felt as vast a sadness as he had ever felt. Robert knew even if he were to live out his pitied existence, he’d never be his father, he would never had what he had. There would never be twinkling beacons above a true and passionate display, red with drink and fire. There would always be ulterior motives.

He felt gravity pull him down to the ground as he crumpled to the floor with a dense thud. Confused and grasping for the air he just now forsaken, he opened his eyes and saw them: his maniacal devotees. Robert, we could not let you do this to yourself, we love you they would say with transparent feeling. Not before we touch you, they would think with voracious avarice — just once.

***

Category: Fantasy, Superhero