Powerless!
He jumped to his feet, but the cement block weighed him down so that he stumbled forward and banged his knee against the sharp edge of the concrete. Pain in his knee, but nothing next to the panic, nothing compared to the awful pain in his head.
He whimpered like a scared child.
With all his strength he lifted the cement block. It banged against his thighs, but yes, he could lift it; he could carry it.
But not far. He set it down but missed the table, so that it slammed onto the floor, bending him over into an upside-down U.
Had to get a grip. Had to not panic.
Had to figure out…
He was at Penny’s house.
Penny.
No.
Sick, terrible dread filled him.
He looked up as well as he could and there she was, walking toward him. She stopped just inches from his bowed head. He was staring at her feet.
“Do you like it?” Penny asked.
She held an oval mirror down so that he could look at it and see his face. His head. The streams of dried blood that had run from the crown she’d made of aluminum foil and then stapled to his head.
“Can’t be a king without a crown,” she said. “Your Highness.”
“I’ll kill you, you sick, twisted maggot.”
“Funny you should mention maggots,” she said.
He saw one then. A maggot. Just one. It was squirming up out of the concrete block. Only it wasn’t coming from the cement; it was coming from the skin of his wrist.
He stared at it. She’d put maggots in with his hands!
A second one was coming out now. No bigger than a grain of rice. Eating its way through his skin, coming out of…
No, no, it was one of her illusions. She was making him see this.
They would burrow into his flesh and—
No! No! Don’t believe it!
It wasn’t real. The cement was real, nothing else, but he could feel them now, not one or two, but hundreds, hundreds of them eating into his hands.
“Stop it! Stop it!” he cried. There were tears in his eyes.
“Of course, Your Highness.”
The maggots were gone. The feeling of them digging into him was gone. But the memory persisted. And even though he knew absolutely that they were not real, the sense memory was powerful. Impossible to dismiss.
“Now we’re going on a walk,” Penny said.
“What?”
“Don’t be shy. Let’s show off that washboard stomach of yours. Let’s let everyone see your crown.”