Out of the blue, I received a summons from the palace. It said I must appear at court to discuss a commission to write a history of Zenia’s ascension to the throne here on Earth. There were specific requirements for attire: I was to wear tight shorts and an unbuttoned, white silk shirt, shirttails tied above my navel. Sandals, turquoise earrings and a fedora. Now, I am a balding, middle-aged, pot-bellied man, of a retiring disposition. But I bought the clothes, and preened in front of a mirror in my basement. I felt like a Tenderloin streetwalker, but what was I to do?
So I showed up at the appointed time, in the appointed garb, at the palace reception room. After some formalities, I was led into the Queen’s presence. Zenia was lying in a nest of velvet cushions, alert, and with the eyes of a tigress.
Everyone has seen her pictures, but in life sometimes a woman’s presence is not constrained by her physical body. Her face was lambent ebony, and she wore a diaphanous gown that clung to her otherwise naked body. There was something truly other-worldly about her.
She rose from the cushions, and drew near me. I tried to avert my eyes, and stared at the serpent bracelet on her wrist. I had prepared a hand-written draft of the first chapter of the proposed history, clutched between my elbow and my side. She took it from me and leafed through every page, very quickly. Angered, she seemed to grow in stature, and the manuscript literally smoldered in her hands. She threw it down, and beckoned me.
Trembling, I approached, though she was already quite near. She put her arms around me, and drew my face up towards hers. She kissed me with a violence I had never experienced, and my soul melted - I can find no other way to describe it. A sexual ecstasy burned with joyous anguish in the very core of my being, and I was drawn out, as she was drawn in, and our souls twisted in a conjoined hiss of live steam.
I have only fleeting wisps of memories from the next few days. I lived with the Queen’s consorts in the palace, and on some advanced, steam-driven typewriter I wrote the entire history that you are about to read, without making a single revision.
Why was I chosen for this honor? I believe she had seen my self-published biographies of Nikola Tesla and Edward Snowden. They had received only a handful of downloads, and one anonymous three-word reader review (“Hack hagiographies, both.”). Truth be told, I made my living as a clerk in a thrift shop, and had never had much success as a writer. In my own work, I obsessively fretted over each comma and adjective, revising constantly to keep the tone neutral, academic.
All her consorts are given court names. Her pet name for me was the Latinate “Flatus”, which I believe is her humorous reference to the “flat” and relatively dry quality of my writing. I eventually grew fond of the name, but the other consorts mocked me, said I was putting on the airs of a Roman emperor.
The book I produced has nothing of dryness about it. The history that follows is written in the first person, but I do not presume to speak for the Queen. I saw and recorded her story through her eyes, and she speaks in her own voice. I have not re-read the manuscript, and I truly do not consider it my work. If there remain any infelicitous remnants of my prose, I beg her forgiveness, and yours.
The bottled lightning you hold in your hands, if I have performed my duty, is a gift from my Queen.
J. Gallagher
Garberville, California
December 31, 2024