kingsley gold }} capitol

Kingsley Gold was named after the sun. The gentle shine of a pure dawn, the ones he so loved to watch every morning on the street corner he called home. He was named after what they were meant to be- royalty. That's what she told him every night, pulling him into her chest and promising that one day, they'd have it all. It was them against the world, his mother and he. They were the the pauper in their own fairy tale.

Until they weren't. Until they became him and the young prince was left very much alone. What happened? The boy doesn't remember. It all seems a blur of guns and blood, of shouting and screaming and oh it kills him because he should know. After all they had just celebrated their seventh year together- she even brought him a candle and the sweet cakes he so loved. It had all been okay- she had sung to him in the voice of an angel and then-

"Ms. Meyers, you're under arrest for the kidnap of-"

"Run, King, run!"

"Catch the boy!"

She was dead. His mother was dead. Kingsley went back to check, after the sun had sunk below the horizon and the men in white coats had become nothing but ghosts and her golden blood ran crimson along the pavement. Dead. And all that was left of her was the wrapper of that sweet cake, one so soaked that it ripped when he tried to hold it to his chest. The blood took far too long to wash away, dripping from his fingertips like the tears off of his cheeks.

He was so happy, once upon a time. Even if he didn't have one of the home or a dad. All he had was her, his mom. Until he didn't.

The wind hardened a broken soul, stitched it up with frozen sutures and turned to ice. He was a golem, pieces of his body chipped away with every indifferent eye to fall upon him and his blanket and his little red cup. Sure, some took pity on him. Who wouldn't? He was a seven year old left orphaned by a cruel trick of fate.

(Orphaned by choice- his mother always told him about his birth parents. The ones she took him away from in the dead of night. The ones that left bruises upon his small bones and shook him when he could not even lift his head off of his shoulders.)

Sometimes, he thinks it was his fault she died. He sits with his back to the wind and chokes upon the guilt which takes the place of nourishment in his empty gut. Anger and jealousy are what kept him alive, watching every child embraced by their mother and idiots who shout and scream at the women they take for granted.

Every star he wished upon was for her.

"If there's a god- if there's anything up there. Can I have her for one more night? Because it's cold and I'm scared and it was a misunderstanding when you took her away." She didn't kidnap him, she saved him. That was his real mom, even if they shared no blood in purple, swollen veins.

Did she have those anymore? Because she used to to trace his, smiling as his head drooped upon her shoulder and she told him stories about the royal blood that crawled through his body. He came from wealth, birthed by evil greedy parents that would have cast him away with his other siblings. (They had about ten, they probably don't even know you're gone, King.)

She was wrong.

A mistake that cost her her life.

He needed to be stronger, to leave his tears in that empty red cup. He got a job, sure- the boy was ten and useless and small but he managed to pick up a few pointless tasks. A kindly old lady named Miranda paid him fifty dollars a week to mow the neighborhood lawns. A man with a beard that reached his waist gave him a hundred to look after his twenty-one dogs (each one Kingsley could recall by name. Red, Jack, Fifi, Butterscotch...)

It was good.

Then there was the man with the bald head and the crooked teeth. Whose eyes traced his body in a way that made his heart crawl into his throat and sweat slip down the back of his neck. There was just something so wrong about him that Kingsley tried to flee every time dark eyes found the bit of ink that always stuck out of his collared shirts.

And one day he said it. "I'll give you a thousand dollars if you let me fuck you."

Well, he really needed the money.

By his thirteenth birthday he was no stranger to being used. It was a lucrative business, he found. Filled to the brim with desperate men ready to throw dollar bills into his lap for a mere fifteen minutes out of his day.

He bought an apartment on his fourteenth birthday.

By his sixteenth year he had steady job. Even bought himself a sweet cake with a colorful candle. He sang himself a birthday song and wished upon no star- he didn't need to anymore. Perhaps his mother would have hated what he's become- a dancer and a whore for hire. A prize to be auctioned away on nights when the music is loud and the red wine stains the dance floor but it all he can do.

To survive, he swallows a lump in his throat- ignores the eyes of a disappointed mother hiding up in the clouds because this is what he knows. Boys like him do not fall in love- small, quiet boys. With loud clothes and loud hair and loud smiles that break a silence that threatens to swallow him whole.

He can go weeks without uttering a single word, sorrow sewing his tongue to the roof of his mouth. There is no reason to speak when he is an object- a toy to be played with. No one seems to notice anyway.

And so the king was a whore all along.