Cole and Ben: A Tragedy In Several Paragraphs

Curtis Burns sat on his gilded throne, resplendent in a flowing pink gown, looking down at the two serfs kneeling before him. They were always kneeling, coming to him, for he was their liege lord, wanting this or that, usually justice or one of his world famous mix CD's. He preferred giving out justice.

To either side of him stood his personal bodyguards, lanky six footers he called Left and Right. Their real names were Javier Something Something and Jeremy Ventuso, and they looked vaguely similar. Both wore looks of grim consternation,or maybe it was hunger, or maybe it was gas, Curtis Burns could not say. He was a lord yes, but not a mind reader. Or am I? he thought, wondering. He tried reading Jeremy and Javier's minds. With a sudden start he realized he could read minds!

"Approach the throne," Curtis Burns called in an airy voice, beckoning the two commoners forward with his fingers, which were covered with all manner of gaudy rings. "What seems to be the problem here?" he asked no one in particular.

Everyone started talking. Curtis Burns slammed his fist onto the arm of his throne, "Silence! You, the one with the grease in his hair, state your case. What is your name?"

"Well your honor-" the greasy one began...

"Your Grace," Jeremy corrected angrily, "You will address the Duke properly, or you'll wish you had." He was smoking. He had a lot of gumption for a guy his weight.

"Well your Grace, lookie here, my name's Cole, and I weren't wanting to disrupt any of your plans, I know youz real busy with running the Duchy and all. I'm just a regular devil-may-care swaggering rockabilly dude and I don't take no guff from no one. Want to see my knife?"

Curtis Burns leaned forward intently, eyes gleaming, "Oh, would I!" Cole showed him the knife. The Duke put his hand to his mouth and gasped an effeminate gasp. "It's so long! Is it sharp?"

Cole smiled rougishly, "Sharp as your wit, Your Grace."

"Oh, I fear for the life of your foeman!" Curtis Burns began constructing his newest mixtape in his mind, it would be a themed mix, focusing on every aspect of the day, and he definitely thought he had a place for some Rapture and Interpol tracks, as well as some Turkish songs he pulled off a compilation he got in the mail.

"That would be me Your Grace," the other commoner raised himself, looking oddly familiar though the probably gay Duke couldn't say why. "My name's Ben, and I'm a card carrying member of the Cherokee nation. Want to see my new Blood Brothers album?"

"Would I!?!" Curtis Burns said, excited all over again. "It's so round! Does it play music?"

Ben smiled rougishly "Music as your wit, Your Grace."

Jeremy and Javier exchanged a glance over the throne, eyebrows arched.

"Now what seems to be the problem here?" Duke Curtis Burns knew these two serfs hadn't come all the way to the castle to show off their respective prized items! He knew that cause he read their minds.

"It's all this Yankee serf's fault," Cole said very loudly, smiling and swaggering as he said it, thinking about rockabilly and other anachronisms, "See he tried to take what weren't his. My three hogs Your Grace. He tried to steal my hogs."

"Listen bro, first off, they weren't your hogs, and secondly, I'm using bro in an ironic sense. Those hogs passed to me in my grandfathers will. I also got his peace pipe." As if he needed to prove it, Ben started smoking out of the peace pipe. Then he tossed it aside disdainfully and started smoking regular cigarettes, they were damn smooth.

"Don't you go and tell me they weren't my hogs, they was my hogs sure as my name's Cole, and sure as my grandfather did leave them to me in his will, I be willing to bet my entire stock of palm-ade on that, I saw his will, even though it were torn in half!"

Ben looked like he was about to say something when Curtis Burns interrupted him, as it was his wont to do. "I have heard the testimonies. Frankly, I find them quite boring indeed! Jeremy, feed me some grapes, plump and green, if you would be so kind. Javier, fan me." Javier began fanning Curtis Burns with an enormous pink boa fan.

"You," the Duke pointed at Ben, "You are a hipster, are you not?"

"What?! I hate hipsters more than life itself." Ben declared, the newest !!! album falling out of his back pocket. He hastily picked it up and dusted it off.

"And you," he said to Cole, "You are obviously of the rockabilly persuasion."

"You bet I am, yeeeeeehawww!" Cole did a weird dance that culminated in him clicking his ankles together in the air. It was supposed to be impressive, Duke Curtis Burns supposed, but it was merely disquieting.

Suddenly, unbidden, a thought came to Curtis Burns. It was something his old wetnurse had whispered into his ear so many years ago. He remembered her weathered features dimly, a windbitten face and gnarled hands, veins like crisscrossing blue rivers.

Her name was Angelique Goodrow, and this is her story:

She was born in a small port town and became a teacher, she was a chipper youth and had a go-getter attitude. Later she became a wetnurse. And this is what she said: "One day, two men will come before you. One will embrace his nature, the other deny it. But know these men are brothers. And that they must unite, for a great darkness is awakening in the kingdom, a great plague is about to spread over the land. They must know that they are the Ones. And that together, in tandem, they can defeat the great beast that seeks to destroy our kingdom, and all the kingdoms of men. Promise me when this day comes, you will tell them."

Curtis Burns said, "I have reached a verdict. Trial by battle. Ben, Cole, choose your destiny."

"What do you mean?" Ben asked, looking suspicious, holding an eclectic sampling of CD's in his hands. And some video games too. He could fit a lot of stuff in those hands, he could!

"Yeah, what you mean there?" Cole asked, smiling and laughing, looking at his knife, wistfully.

"You are to fight to the death, at my command. I command." Curtis Burns waved a languid command and the lights dimmed as Ben and Cole circled eachother. Javier and Jeremy threw them weapons. Cole caught a short Thracian sword and small shield and Ben caught a pitchfork trident type thing and a long net. They fought for what seemed like several minutes, but it was more like several seconds.

Ben took a fatal wound, but would not let it end this way. He pried Cole's heretofore forgotten dagger from it's sheathe and buried it into his rockabilly gut. They fell together, arms entangled, their life blood oozing out of them in slow pulses.

They stared at each other as they lay dying.

"Could this be the end of Ben Cole?" Ben asked rhetorically.

"But Cole Ben is my name..." Cole said earnestly.

"I thought I was the only one."

"So this is what it's like. When doves cry." I'm pretty sure they both said that, with a lot of moxie for guys their respective sizes (dying guys their size no less!).

Curtis Burns watched them lay still on the floor of his throne room when suddenly...

Curtis woke up in a fright, cold sweat draped across his brow. He was in his own bed again, in modern times, but he still felt wrong. "What a horrible dream..." he said, crestfallen. "I dreamed I was an effeminate Duke who made two brothers fight to the death and my wetnurse told the future and there was something about me being able to read minds...Thank God I'm back to the real world."

"Honey, are you okay?" Curtis turned to smile at Mark Braatz, tussled hair and braces and everything that went along with it. He put a reassuring hand on his bare shoulder.

"I'm fine Mark." He looked outside at the raining donuts and sighed in relief, "I just had a bad dream. Everything's fine now."

Then Mark woke up from his bad dream, but he was in the gutter.