My Kingdom Will Always Be At War-A Kaw Novella

Turkeyface lived in a studio apartment in a small complex in the suburbs. The complex was called Cardinal Downs. He didn't know his neighbors. Not really. He did sort of grunt a greeting here and there at this one blind old man who lived in the unit next to him, but this was about all. Most of the other residents were elderly people. Not ancient old...still functional in their dotage, but barely. They were all about 5 years out from being transferred to convalescent homes.


Turkeyface figured the apartment complex had been constructed in the 1970s. It was run-down and drab...but safe and quiet. Perhaps in the 1970s there were more cardinals back then. In his 5 years living there, Turkeyface never really saw many cardinals darting about the place...even in the scrabbly patch of woods that formed a barrier between the apartment units and the back of a Long John Silver's fast food seafood restaurant.


Turkeyface loved Long John Silvers. He ate dinner there at least 3 times a week. The 6-pack of fish tenders with coleslaw and a side (usually hush puppies)...was his to go-to entree. As such, he would regularly mosey through the scraggly bramble of woods to Long John Silver's.

On one of these short jaunts, he actually came across a cardinal...the carcass of one. It was buried in brush laying by some rusty beer bottle caps. Turkeyface noted the dead bird as a male of the species...vibrant red plumage still evident though withered to dry rot and mummified into a brittle husk. He deduced that a tomcat had somehow managed to successfully stalk and bat the bird down out of the air...sink claws into it, and penetrate the bird's fragile skull with its incisors.


He briefly imagined the bird's pained, feeble shrieking...frenzied at first and then gradually fading into silence...as the tomcat licked up the cardinal's brain...disinterested mainly in the task...meaty flecks of nacreous thalamus residue adhered to wiry whiskers.

The abject sight of the slaughtered bird did not dissuade Turkeyface in the slightest from continuing on his way to the restaurant that day. He was hungry and had been looking forward to these fish tenders all day. Once there he ordered them with coleslaw and two sides of hush puppies.


An obese clerk with a puffy face and desultory manner served Turkeyface his tenders. Turkeyface noticed the clerk's name tag read “Thad.” The tag was faded and the “T” could have been a “C.” Turkeyface asked the clerk if his name was Thad or Chad, but the clerk was already waddling to the back to dip some hush puppies into the fryer oil. He didn't hear Turkeyface, or if he did...he pretended not to hear him. Besides, Turkeyface's voice lacked force...masculine resonance. It was adenoidal and weak.


Turkeyface took his meal tray and sat in his customary spot...a booth at the far end of the restaurant next to the entrance to the female restroom. He enjoyed his fish tenders and tapped his feet off-rhythm to the music they were playing faintly on the speakers. It was Party in the USA by Miley Cyrus. Turkeyface finished his meal before the song finished.

Turkeyface only liked his fish tenders plain. There were options to get them Oriental Sweet & Sour or blackened Cajun spicy. Turkeyface couldn't stomach spicy food. It agitated his digestive track. Turkeyface was naturally spindly, an ectomorph.. but a lifetime of poor eating habits...created a bit of a gut. He had womanly hips and gynecomastic, sagging breasts. Much of this was due to a host of unfortunate genetic anomalies that ran through his bloodline, but a good bit of it was on account of the processed, hormone-laden fish parts that he consumed with such consistent avidity. It may also be mentioned that this nutrient poor diet contributed to Turkeyface being afflicted with an acute case of Crohn's disease.

Turkeyface needed to defecate..on average...14 times a day. He kept a meticulous journal most of his adult life detailing each and every bowel movement.


Prior to this point, he plyed his trade as a section manager in the home appliances area at Best Buy. The constant bathroom breaks made it near impossible for him to perform his duties. His coworkers resented him for these frequent breaks...and the staff unisex bathroom was a small, dirty nook scarcely larger than a standard broom closet.


It was located right next to the lunch-break room. Needless to say...as his coworkers hurriedly ate their lunches...they couldn't help but be repulsed by the stench of Turkeyface's voided feces mingling with the odors of their steamed microwaved quickie meals and cold-cut sandwiches.

Turkeyface's colon condition became so severe..that his doctor fitted him with a colostomy sack. The sack was a little girl-ballerina-pink-tutu color and constructed of a diaphanous plastic material. His excrement swirled and bulged around inside the sack like some sort of molting, brown colony of jelly fish. This sack was unsettling and repugnant to customers and to the staff at Best Buy. As a result...management had a meeting with Turkeyface. They decided to stick him in the stock room as part of the loading crew.

Of course.,this did not pan out...for it was a busy store that sold a great number of refrigerators, stoves, and other heavy appliances. Turkeyface was weak and feeble. He had great difficulty lifting the merchandise. He failed miserably at this position and Best Buy fired him.

In addition to the Crohn's disease...Turkeyface suffered mild schizophrenia...though this condition was not at the time of our narrative..entirely evident or diagnosed. More of a schizotypal disorder. And of course...as his name would suggest...Turkeyface's face/head...was well...not just an ugly, small and pink reddish face..but the literal face and head of a turkey...complete with a wattle, beady black eyes, and a snood inflamed with rosacea acne patches. And to add insult to injury...his crisped-up face morphed into a vascular sponge of tissue flushed a deep vermillion hue whenever Turkeyface encountered a woman he found alluring...or whenever he felt his fragile psyche received an affront. Both these scenarios happened frequently as Turkeyface yearned deepcore for feminine affection...and he was an intensely paranoid and lonely individual.

The only real good that resulted for Turkeyface from this slew of maladies...was his receipt of a monthly disability check from the government. A modest allowance...but enough for Turkeyface to eek out a simple life of quiet and impotent desperation.

The disability allotment afforded him ample leisure time. It was also enough to buy a new cell phone. He had owned the same flip phone for 8 years before one evening smashing it in a cataleptic fit of rage when he discovered that the antennae on his television set would not work. Turkeyface's favorite show was Wheel of Fortune. He was going to miss his favorite show and looking at Vanna White. He thought Vanna White was kicking-sexy and he harbored recurrent fantasies of her beating him in Indian Leg Wrestling. He also firmly believed he was infinitely better at the game then all of the contestants...and hence more intelligent. This made him feel good about himself. He had applied to be on the show numerous times, but never received a response back.

Turkeyface considered just doing away with a phone, but during his tenure at Best Buy...he couldn't help but notice that all his coworkers owned the latest model Iphones..especially some of the young, tangy female specimens.


He was 38 years old and in these years..never once did he obtain even the most basic scraps of amorous attention from a sexy ladybabe. This being the case, Turkeyface perpetually concocted delusional schemes so as to seduce one of these co-worker Best Buy babes and perchance trick the girl into becoming his soul lover.

Turkeyface purchased a gleaming phone with a huge touch screen. He bought it with a portion of his initial disability settlement. He did not have enough money to buy an Iphone...so he purchased an Android device. The salesman at the cell phone store informed Turkeyface that this phone was just as good and that Apple was more or less...at this point in time...just a brand name.

It took Turkeyface some time to adjust to the technology...but after steadfast persistence and call after call to the customer service people for the phone..Turkeyface successfully opened up a few applications. He toyed around with them. During one of these sessions...Turkeyface discovered Kingdoms at War. It was a find that would lead to his ruin...but at this point..Turkeyface was elated.


The game featured images of castles and the graphic of the woman on the loading screen gave him the tingling rush he felt during a sex phantasy mania. The sight of the woman gave him great pleasure.


He frequently visualized women like this Kingdoms at War Valkryie in his nightfever dreams. Bellicose and fierce ladybabes clad in chainmail or in scant barbarian pelts. Strong women. Women that gnashed at raw flesh by the victors' bonfire like maenads. Women that growled in guttural, harsh languages with savage carnality. Sardonic, dusky women with throaty laughter...mocking his fate and the lump of sickened insect meat that represented his manhood. Capricious necromancer babes possessed of the elemental demonic agency...to telewarp his mind...nurturing it like a swaddled, drooling infant one minute and then turning it into a nightmare apocalypse of humiliation the next.

He knew it was a phantasy image. Nothing more and nothing less..and figured this Kingdoms at War game was mostly played by glib college student creeps and other young types savvy with technology and acronyms. He correctly speculated that few females probably played the game...and those that did....would be so coveted by his repressed beta-male peers...that he stood little hope of snaring him a soul lover through this portal.

Nevertheless, Turkeyface decided he would enjoy building his tiny kingdom. He chuckled with smug glee as he successfully completed some quests. He made some gold. People seemed to be buying him somehow and giving him money at a rapid rate. He couldn't figure out why, but he felt wanted. He tapped some more...attacking the quests...until her ran out of troops. He built a few spy guilds...deciding he would be a spy and eventually steal from other players.


Turkeyface received a message on something called his wall from a guy calling himself Elestrial something or other to join his clan. The guy seemed friendly and sincere, but there were some acronyms strewn in the guy's message. He believed that this Elestrial was most likely a teen judging by his typed patois of English, near vulgarities, and what might be game jargon or current affinity group slang. Turkeyface felt vastly superior to this Elestrial guy, but he joined the clan.

To Be Continued....

 

Hello All!

Thank you for the insightful responses. I earlier posted this first chapter (I suppose it's a first chapter) as an alt. That thread degenerated into a vapid argument about the merit of Iphones as opposed to droids. It was sandwiched by posts stating...verbatim..."tldr" (too long didn't read) and "huh."

I revised this somewhat...and also clarified the device type that Turkeyface uses to access Kingdoms at War. Of course...anything posted in a forum is meant to be...more or less...a trifle. I kind of view this "writing" like the serials they used to publish in Newspapers and Magazines back in the day. Your responses and feedback enable me to actually continue...even if readership is severely limited. Quality over quantity. The aforementioned installment netted some 50 something responses...but mostly drivel. Y'alls' comments were inspiring and some of the suggestions may factor into the plot.

The suggestion offered as to having Turkeyface's love interest buy his allies and strip him...was brilliant. To be sure...Turkeyface will encounter his fair share of humiliation. Microcosm/Macrocosm. Real life (RL) cannot be prevented from oozing into game play...especially when one starts "socializing" with others on here. You start off as some medievalesque fantasy hero trope...and end up being the same repressed knucklehead you are at work, school, etc. Some people successfully perpetuate the charade...other of us..those like me...do not.

So...of course...there is an faintly autobiographic component to this...I have been humiliated and discarded on this game in a casual tap tap tap manner. This is either riotously comedic...something to be brushed off in just as nonchalant of a tap tap tap kind of emoji shrugging, or perhaps, a chilling testament to how we just cannot prevent ourselves from being human...from feeling tenderness, from groping for a sense of purpose and identity as we build fake tiny castles and accumulate fake gold. That said, I am not Turkeyface. Nor are you Turkeyface. Yet I have my Beatrice and my Inferno. We all do.

So comrades...I will do my best to post a 2nd chapter soon. I am greatly appreciative of your posts and welcome continued criticism. There are humans out there...with flesh, blood, and sentient reactions! You have provided me signs of life amidst the ruins...the insular WC banter, the beating of chests and clanging of shields re: CS, BFE, BFA, etc. I have developed a love/hate relationship with this game. I am compelled to play it...check my phone constantly...yet everyday...I tell myself, "Quit, man. Quit. There is no redemption possible here. You have sullied your dignity. Play fetch with the dog. Paint. Hike. Chew on a twig...anything. This is a futile and sterile endeavor that mocks true heroic action."

I am probably right...but like Turkeyface...I am imprisoned in hell. A man in hell has no time for reason. A man in hell can only fight.

Valor unto thee...my brothers and sisters.

-Robes