Short Fiction: The Confession of King Enoch, the Benevolent Tyrant
A first-person narrative does not indicate endorsement
From the collection of The Library of Eristat, which is not required reading. Classifications: Multiple, see endnotes.
Today is one of the days that I die.
It occurs to me as I write this, that I have suffered far more death than I am given credit for inflicting. Those who call me a butcher should know that I understand better than anyone the unpleasantness that arises when life ebbs. Whether a dagger in the stomach, or the grip of the hangman’s noose around your neck, the body can never resist fighting to hold onto life until the bitter end. Even when that bitter end results in nothing more than waking up from a bad dream, it is a barrier not easily traversed.
And here I sit. About to cross the threshold once again.
There was a time when I would have said that my gift had made me the most powerful man alive. I was feared for my foresight and cunning, as each failure I experienced came with a chance to rewrite destiny: whatever killed me only made me stronger. And now that same gift has me trapped here, watching the same events play out in a loop with no ability to alert their course.
I have no record of the passage of time except my memory. I had begged for chalk to be placed inside my cell, or for so much as a rock with which to scratch out the days. My jailers have refused to tell me how long it will be until my execution. Some days I wake up, chained, unkempt, in a featureless cell, with nothing to do but sleep and eat or be force-fed. Other days I wake up and am fed, washed, and shaved so that the masses can see their proud king die as they remembered him living.
My executioner is a simple man with no capacity to be swayed from his purpose. I have perhaps ten seconds from the moment the hood is pulled off my head to the moment the trapdoor opens and my neck breaks from the impact. So far as I can tell there is nothing that can be said in ten seconds to reach that man. I have told him truths about himself no other man could know, promised to save his ailing daughter, described the names and faces in the crowd in front of me with my eyes closed. The mob only roars louder in response to my devilry, and then the deed is done. And so I wake up again, chained and alone.
I suspect that the guards who serve me meals are deaf and mute. I have never been able to get a word out of them, or received any indication that they comprehend anything I’ve said. I have tried telling them this story, or as much as I could get out. The only man I seem to be able to reach is the captain of the guard. Whose sole purpose is to bring me to my executioner on the day of my death.
I have tried fighting off the captain in our few moments alone. I’ve made the attempt at least three score times, perhaps more. I am always weak from hunger, muscles atrophied from lack of use. The most that effort has ever achieved was a swifter death, and a bit of embarrassment to the captain. I was never a fighter, and my talent is poorly tuned for it. Each encounter plays out in frustratingly divergent ways. If I strike at the captain’s right, he raises his shield to match me. If I attack to the left instead, he senses my intention and meets my blow on that side. Once, only once, I broke free from my captor, only to be pursued and slain by the guards at the front gates. Even armed with the full knowledge of how each battle played out, the endlessly branching stream of possibilities never seems to favor me. Even the dullest tactician could see that escape is impossible for me. The entire country wants me dead, stirred on by radicals cursing my name. My being granted asylum anywhere would be an act of war.
The only ploy I’ve tried that has ever managed to move the captain is an expression of regret. And the only action he has been willing to let me take is to write a confession for my crimes. An apology to the mothers of all the sons I sent to die, the lords I had slain, the corpses piled up at the feet of their vile and despicable ruler.
The captain is checking in on my progress. Calling this man literate would be an insult to language itself. So long as I scrawl the words “death” and “murder” often enough, he tends to be satisfied he’ll have something to take back to his superiors. Not that they need any further proof.
His life was one of the lives I saved, a fact which I am never able to convince him of. A plague would have spread from a courtesan to a page to a maid to a knight to half the guard, including our dear captain himself. The courtesan was already on the ship docked in our harbor, and I had no proof the other passengers weren’t infected. Quarantine had already failed twice, and I was out of options, time is my greatest asset and my greatest enemy. I ordered the ship to be incinerated with its passengers still on board, and told my archers to shoot anyone who tried to escape. Fifty lives lost, to save tens of thousands. All this, with not a drop of gratitude in return.
A selfish monarch would have left his people to die. Blamed it on their own infirmity and lack of morals. A selfish monarch would have given an ineffectual warning, knowing full well it would do nothing to stop the spread, but would allow him to keep his own conscience clean, and be praised for his wisdom and foresight. A selfish monarch would have allowed just enough death, just enough misery to remind his people how infirm their happiness was, how truly doomed they would be without his help. No one praises the hero who stopped a disaster from occurring. There is no glory in the road not taken.
It amuses me to think that if anyone ever reads this, they will probably think me mad. Which is just as well, I do not expect you to understand. The morality of a man with limited perspective cannot compare to the morality of a man who can see what I have seen. By the standards of ordinary man, I may be a monster. By mine, ordinary man is as ignorant of the consequences of his myopic morality as a moth rushing towards the nearest flame, drawn to the purity of the light with no thought for the future. He can not judge me. It is I who must judge him.
I have killed traitors to our realm. Executed those who plotted against me and sought to steal the wealth of our people. Sometimes their treachery had begun to manifest and the proof was apparent. Other times the first steps had yet to be taken. To my eyes, both were equally guilty. A man willing to murder is no less of a murderer if you stop him just before his blade reaches his victim’s heart, if you arrest him at the moment the anger arises in him causing him to plot the deed, or if you snuff him out in his crib before he can enact his future. He remains a villain, capable of vile things, and the world is better off for his loss. A fact which I am uniquely equipped to judge.
The captain is beginning to look impatient. He knows he’ll need to explain the delay to his superiors, and he’s worried as to whether I will produce. He’s telling me to make sure I write about the hills of Samaria. Very well. I burned the fields to stem off an invasion, the spies present in our kingdom only carried back reports of a mad king seemingly intent on destroying his own country. The consequences of war would have been far worse. Outlawing the fishing trade? Piracy would have destroyed their profession, at least this way they at least got to keep their capital and their lives. I could go on. I am equipped with an endless record of my virtue they can not seem to comprehend. I am the greatest leader in our country’s history, by all measures the kindest and most generous king who ever lived.
I still think back to the day I was captured. If only I could have reached the poison in time. If only they had decided to kill me then, rather than leaving me locked up for an interminable span of time for reasons I cannot fathom. My capture is the one mistake I have no power to undo. And so I live this day over and over again, with no record of my thoughts and life other than these words I write for myself before I wake up in chains again.
It occurs to me that this might never end. I might simply be forced to repeat these same moments forever. With no means of escape, no way to prolong or enjoy what life I have left. I may remain locked in chains and cut off from time, dreaming of my final moments in an endless cycle. It now seems that this is all I’ve ever known, and my entire past life was just a dream I awoke from. Recording these words is the only means I have for maintaining my own sanity, giving form to the world inside my head, making some part of the reality I’ve experienced exist outside my own mind.
Perhaps I meddled too far into the affairs of the gods and this itself is blasphemy. Perhaps no one was meant to know the things I know, to have done the things I’ve done. Perhaps a life free of danger would have suited me better, until I became an old man, too addled by my own infirmity to be cognizant of a looming recurrent death. Perhaps this is why the gods do not share their gifts with ungrateful men.
The captain is motioning for me to wrap up and hand him back the scroll. I know the route from here better than he does. Ten minutes to the executioner’s block. Ten seconds of sight before I plunge down into the next life.
Today is one of the days that I die. We shall see if this one takes.
Signed,
King Enoch, the benevolent tyrant.
Initial Classification: Recorded by Celeste Verent, ten years prior to the events of The Library of Eristat. Outermost ring, bottom shelf, 180 degrees.
Reason: First, the rare nature of this title clearly warrants inclusion in the library. This unusual document may be the only surviving prose produced by the mad King Enoch, offering insight into a secretive ruler who was both feared and revered for his cunning, until the coup which ended his reign.
The placement I have chosen straddles the boundary between propaganda and myth. The claims in this document are clearly fantastical. For all the legends surrounding the mad king during his life and beyond, including claims of witchcraft, there is no evidence that contemporary sources saw this confession as anything other than a list of implausible excuses to a series of well-known crimes.
And yet, some claims give me pause. It is indisputably true that around the time of these events, a plague hit Aeolia’s naval trading partners while Aeolia was spared an outbreak, and gangs of pirates began to grow more aggressive. It is unclear how King Enoch could have known of these risks, or if he even believed his own claims. This document remains at the borders of outright myth and disputed history as a concession to how little we know about this unusual man.
Updated Classification: Recorded by Semote Verent, during his stewardship of the library during the events of The Library of Eristat. Outermost ring, bottom shelf, 270 degrees.
Reason: I must respectfully disagree with the previous entry. (hi mom!) To be called propaganda or even myth, I think that there should be some evidence that someone, at any point, believed this story to be true. This title is fiction. Fiction written by a historical figure offering a supernatural interpretation of his life that may be of interest to readers, but fiction nevertheless. I also see no reason to amplify an apologetic from a man responsible for so much death that his body count likely exceeds that of any non-state actor.
To state the obvious, the events of this narrative are inconsistent with all known science, and possibly in contradiction with the existence of this document itself. I agree that the title is noteworthy, but I think that it is better left classified in the north-west quadrant, for the sake of a credulous reader.
We may have yet to reveal all the laws of the universe, but I see no way for any law that can be rendered in mathematics to make allowance for the author’s claims. The flow of time, like a meticulously organized library, admits no exceptions.
Updated Classification: Recorded by Semote Verent, two years after the events of The Library of Eristat. Outermost ring, bottom shelf, 45 degrees. Reclassified as a forbidden title.
Reason: (left blank)
Update: The next major story set in this universe is now being serialized here.
