Death of a King

He’d taken his shower. He walked out, smiled at her, and started towelling himself dry. Most people of his stature wouldn’t do it by themselves. Most people of his stature got other people to clean their ears for them, even. But he wasn’t like them.

He did his own bathing, and his own drying, and it didn’t matter if really expensive help was sitting a few feet away from him. He wouldn’t like to ask, and she wasn’t going to offer. They were both ok with this arrangement. It wasn’t just her. People tended to treat him like this. 

He towelled himself dry, wore a pair of boxers and walked up to the bed where she was sitting, standing near the foot. She watched him. She wasn’t sitting in a sensuous pose, like she would be doing for other clients. He didn’t like that. He didn’t like for his girls to be overtly sexy. He didn’t like them to flutter eyelashes at him, he didn’t like them to give him come-hither looks, he didn’t like ‘all the faf’, as he said it. He liked them to act uninterested, in fact. He liked to turn them on. With his dancing, of all things.

For God’s sake. Others may like his dance, but she, personally, didn’t. In fact, she couldn’t understand what made the others swoon when he danced for them. Half the people she knew didn’t even have to act, which was a lot to say for a prostitute.

But it wasn’t sexy, even if it was good. It was crazy cockroach-in-my-pants dancing which looked good only on the stage. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes when he started dancing. She just continued to stare at him, a direct, expressionless stare.

He continued to dance as he slithered towards her, expectation building, reaching the climax where he would slither into bed with her and make sweet love.

She thought of all the controversies that had happened over his sexual preferences. She almost laughed to think of the little kid that had once sued this man for – what? – molesting him? This guy had been in love with that kid, he would never have hurt him. That guy – or rather his parents had just wanted a piece of the huge cake this man ate on a daily basis.

And who didn’t? Everyone wanted a piece of it – they had a right to. She’d wanted also. There was nothing wrong with it. It was almost his social responsibility to help strugglers. And it wasn’t like she hadn’t given him anything in return. In return, she’d almost fallen in love with him in an effort to make him happy. She had a right. He should have helped her. He should have given some of what she’d given him, back to her. And what had she asked of him? That he make her big too. Wouldn’t that be profitable to him too? Having a successful singer at his side, as opposed to a nobody?

But it hadn’t happened. She blurred the rest of the memory in her mind and pointed a mental finger at the man dancing in front of her. He was responsible. He should have helped her. He should have. He should have done something. Something. The rage threatened to take hold of her again as she stared calmly at him. Something. But no. He’d left her, and in such a miserable condition, she had become a prostitute.

Yes. He was responsible, and today, he was going to pay for what he’d done.

He slithered closer to her, looking at her with that expression. Oh, she knew this expression so well.

He was a good lover. Not great, good. But the profession she was in didn’t see that many good lovers and she knew many people who would give a lot to be in her place right now. He was one of the rare good ones, and one of a kind in that he was considerate, gentle and loving. He wouldn’t dream of letting her go without making sure she enjoyed herself too.

Knowing this made the dance easier to bear. She was intensely turned on, not only because she knew what he could do to her, but because she knew what she was going to do to him.

A pang of regret hit her for a fleeting moment, at the same time that a thrill ran up her spine and she shivered. This man – he was almost God, the way he played with his music, the way he enjoyed his life and art, even though to the people on the outside it looked like his life was demented and weird. He was a nice enough man – no, cancel that – he was a really nice man, true to his heart and believing, deep within, with such a conviction that the other person would believe it too, that each and every one was good inside. And that was why he found it so easy to forgive when someone wronged him.

Which meant his spirit wouldn’t haunt her, she mused as he slid into bed with her as he’d planned, and she stuck the injection straight into his heart. His spirit would find it within itself to forgive her. It was, after all, always at peace.

He gasped at the pain, looked down with horror at what she’d done, and rolled off her, falling with a thud onto the ground.

She watched him struggling, and writhing, and couldn’t believe it. It belied the state of his soul, which, she was sure, was at peace; it always was.

There was no vengeance, still, in the way he looked at her, childishly, mutely asking her for help. She watched him calmly, waiting for him to relax.

When he did, she grimaced at the grotesque expression on his face. She couldn’t leave him looking like this. That would be an insult to a great man. She reached down and adjusted his features so they would look calm and dignified whenever he was found.

He was found half an hour later. No one knew what happened to him, and they all thought he’d had a heart failure, until the coroner’s report came out and they found out he’d died of an overdose of Propofol.