The King intended to rent a jester from his neighbouring king just along the coast.
“What’s your name?” roared the King to his potential property as it was dragged into the holy royal presence.
“Langley.”
“Langley what ?”
“Just Langley.”
“Well, Just, what can you do?”
Langley surveyed the rich trappings of the palace’s interview room, the centrepiece of which was a large clock with two moving circles of numbers instead of the more conventional hands.
“I can make you laugh about something you never thought you would laugh about,” he boasted.
The King almost smiled.
“Make me laugh about Death, Just.”
The interview room took on an awesome hush. The courtiers stopped whispering to each other and stared at Langley as if taunting him to come out with a joke about death, of all things.
“See that clock, Kingy, that’ll stop at the precise moment of your own first edge of death.”
A breathless courtier hustled forward and hissed something or other into Langley’s lug. It may have been a warning about the lack of etiquette in calling His Majesty “Kingy”.
Either through speechless rage or an abrupt fit of laughter , the King was glassy-eyed, dazed with death.
For the clock could never stop, nor the King die. The revolving numbers were directly geared to the ineluctable turnings of Time itself and its unavoidable protocol.
The rest of the story is thus lost in the workings-out of an unreachable future. And it is against etiquette to tell lies about Royalty. The punishment for which is tortured death, at least.
(published ‘Black Mole’ 1990)
Posted at 03:16 pm by Weirdmonger
