The king sat upon his throne.

He was not a king in the usual sense. He had never led an army. He had never won a battle. He claimed no castles and owned no lands. Neither was he even a king in the metaphorical sense. He was not some king of heaven, or hell, or even rock, sports, shoes or sofas.

He was however a king in the more definitive sense – he was an experienced older man who possessed something vast in the world and had absolute power over this thing.

The king’s throne was a large custom XXXL golden velvet auto-reclining Stratolounger chair. His vast kingdom was an enormous floor-to-ceiling wide screen television with a new Xfinity cable box connected to a forty button remote controller. His absolute power was the ability to choose and change from amongst 5000 channels, on-demand movies and shows, and an integrated DVR with 1000 hours of recordings.

All day and all night, for years and now decades, the king sat upon his throne. He adventured bravely through the strange stories of other people’s lives and he wandered boldly across the foreign lands of other people’s fantasies. He would lose himself into these other ways of being and other times and places. He would forget himself just enough to forget the pain of his existence. For you see, his kingdom had also become his prison.

It had not begun this way. As a thin youth, he loved nothing more than reading a book on a quiet bench in the park. He would lose himself into the pages of yet another novel, often squinting through the dawn, then later the dusk, and forgetting to ingest any food and water in between. His mother bought him a red leather diary on his tenth birthday. “You can read during the daytime, but nighttime, that will be our time and our time, that will be for writing.” Each night, as they sat together at the kitchen table, she would open up his diary and uncap his pen. Then she would pour a cup of hot cocoa and set it beside him. In this way, side-by-side, they were exuberantly quiet together, both writing, and both sipping thick hot chocolate, all for a few evening hours which would speed by before each bedtime.

But this lucubratory bliss was ended by his mom’s promotion. “Sweetie, I will need to work afternoons and evenings now. Here’s our latch key. You’ll have to be a big boy and let yourself in after school, then do your homework, make dinner and get yourself to bed.” Mom kissed him on his forehead and held him in a big hug, with his red leather diary squished between them. “But I’ll be back here every night to give you a kiss in your bed. And I’ll still be here in the mornings to make you breakfast and see you off to school.”

The quiet at night that was once warm and inviting – it was now cold and scary without mommy there. At first, the young prince would sing to himself, then he turned on the radio, louder, more frequently, until it was always on. He needed background noise to hide the foreground of his loneliness. The breakthrough came soon after, when his mom bought a television set, and it was even color! Soon he had all sorts of friends and family right here on the screen to greet him when he entered their apartment. Later they would get cable, then a VCR, a DVD player, more channels, on-demand movies, DVR recording, surround sound, picture in a picture, each iteration with a progressively larger and flatter screen to enjoy.

He was his mother’s son, but now too he had become his television’s child and those channels and networks taught him everything he needed to know about life and living. Nickelodeon taught him how to be a tween, MTV, how to be a teenager and VH1, how to be a young adult. The ABC Afterschool Specials revealed how to endure teenage angst and hardship. The regular networks – ABC, CBS & NBC – showed him how regular police, lawyers, teachers and doctors supposedly lived their lives. The premium channels – HBO, Showtime, Cinemax –  explained how to adventure and how to be a hero. BET taught him how to be black. CBN demonstrated how he should pray and to which god. From ESPN, he learned how to cheer for a sports team. The Food Network showed him how to eat (though it was EBT payments that showed him what he was allowed to eat…). The PBS, Discovery & History channels taught him how to study and learn. The Cartoon Network and Comedy Central taught him how to laugh. The Playboy Channel and Cinemax Afterdark revealed the basic mysteries of sex, helped him discover what he found sexy, and mostly – with the help of autoplay instant remind – assisted his daily masturbations. The Hallmark Channel explained how he should love a woman and how he should romance her, and also, for some reason, that this was all most successfully completed during the Christmas holidays. Finally Fox News Network would later comfort him when he grew old and bitter, and then became poor and scared. TV taught him everything there is to know about life without the burden of actually having to live it.

Mom was busier and busier and had less time to prepare any meals. All the prince knew how to cook was pizza and french fries. And all he liked to drink was orange soda. His weight ballooned as if he were some Tongan royal instead of an African noble. He missed his mommy but eating and watching television numbed his sadness. Mom said that the neighborhood was becoming more dangerous so he had to come straight home and stay home after school each day. His new size was husky, but maybe he was just big-boned and puberty would rescue him from his fate. Puberty came and left but for him, more and more fat just kept coming. By high school, he was too large to enter the bus so he quit going to school. “I’m going to be a writer, so there’s nothing more for me to really learn there. I want to write stories and novels and screenplays. My education is right here at home. Everything I need to know I can learn from our television box.” They had planned to attend a ceremony for his GED but then discovered that the prince could no longer fit outside the exit door of their apartment.

But what can I write about? What newness can I summon? The young prince was able to master characterization and settings, but plot, the links of the story chain, these were elusive to his pen. He continued to justify watching all the television and movies as research, a way for him to learn more and more about plot and pacing. He would write more in his red diary tomorrow, but not today, today was for more research, and then he surfed to another channel, and then another.

At some point along his hero’s journey, he had stopped writing in his red leather diary all together. He lost the habit. Then he misplaced the book itself. He was always watching television and movies. Always watching, never writing. The book was lost but it mattered not. He would write when he was done with watching, but he was never done watching… So too with life, he would live life again later, after he was done watching. There was more research to complete to find the best plots for his novel.

After he turned eighteen, the social worker was able to send a doctor for a home visit to certify him for SDI payments due to his morbid obesity. Money was tight living off these small payments, but soon enough the life insurance money from his mom’s death filled the royal treasury. It was a boon. He bought the largest and flattest television screen, spanning floor to ceiling over the wall of his little apartment, the largest lounge chair – a custom XXXL golden velvet auto-reclining Stratolounger – and the most extensive package of cable television and movie channels available – five thousand – several hours now to surf just one loop of the selections. His kingdom now founded, the prince crowned himself a king.

His fifth decade passed. As did his five hundredth pound. And his five thousandth channel.

The king rarely blinked in these later days. His old eyes would water, then glaze and dull, his pale mouth would fall open agape and his thin lips would dry, sometimes even the tip of his tongue fell out to stiffen over his lower lip. His concentration had long ago diluted and his attention was now forever distracted. His days and nights juxtaposed, then drifted over one another in a near continuous liminal trance in which waking and sleeping had long ago become indistinguishable. His sense of self, the walls of his ego, all had long since crumbled, and his identity was now whoever or whatever his screen displayed.

Then the king fell from his throne.

It was a typical day. And typically, he was almost ready to return to his writing. Just one more plot to watch and understand. He moves his thumb to change the channel, when – crack, boom, thud  – his chair broke and he fell prone forward upon his floor. His left arm and chest now throbbed with a dull ache. He clenched his left fist. His left hand was his channel-changing hand, and also his writing hand. He kicked with both legs and pushed with his right arm, and somehow then managed to roll himself over onto his back.

There it is! The king espied the cover of his red leather diary, lost so long ago, now tucked beneath the broken base of his custom chair. He was just able to reach forward and grab it. He propped it up and opened it upon his large belly, then he uncapped the pen tied to the binding – it still worked! – and so the king of stories began writing just where the princeling of stories had left off so many decades ago.

He would rewrite the epic of his own life. His would be a new hero’s journey. One where his mother never took that promotion. Where there was never a latch and not a key. Just a mommy who stayed home with him at night and smiled at his stories. This prince of stories stayed thin, he ran track in high school and earned a small scholarship to state college, later he even completed his MFA. He wrote long, hard and daily, and crowned himself the king of stories, completing over a thousand books. He lusted, dated, loved and married. They had children, moved to the suburbs, and grew old together. His life was balanced and successful, and he was happy. He died an old king surrounded by a loving court. This king of stories lived on forever in the hearts of his readers and the history of his people.

But that king of stories, the one on the floor who fell from his throne just now, he tried but in fact could not unclench his left fist. That dull pain grew larger and harsher and spread across his arm and chest. Throughout it all, the remote stayed tightly clenched in the fist of his left hand. The television was playing loudly just then, it was the rerun of an old sitcom, a classic scene from an episode he had watched a thousand times. I suppose there is always one last story and you never know which one will be the last, the king mused as he pushed the button on his remote.

That king of stories – the real king of stories – he died there on the floor. Alone, except for the presence of his TV kingdom. He yearned to rewrite his life, but could only change the channel. With. One. Last. Click.

Adam Strassberg is a retired psychiatrist living in Portland, Oregon. His work uses the intersection of psychology, religion, mythology and magical realism to explore the human condition. His stories have been published online via Fiction on the Web, Cafe Lit, and other literary portals. When he’s not writing or napping, he often can be found updating his website at www.doctorstrassberg.com/fiction. You can also find Adam on social media @AStrassbergMD.

Header image message from author:
We’ve loved many dogs and cats in our lives, but these two rescue kittens were our pets when we raised our family – they guarded our babies in their cribs, ran from them as toddlers, snuggled them as children and meowed for pets from them as teens. Both cats had wonderful lives into their own late teens. R.I.P. Rex and Sam – we love you!