byJ.C.White – 2025

Josh and Bubba ran from the lot in the night. The man they’d sold the Buick to was after them with a wrench, and the Buick itself had died on the corner of Vine and Broadway with steam in its throat like a slaughtered calf. The men cut across the road, bellies loaded with beer and fear, and the sound of the ambulances pulled at them like dogs to meat.

The emergency clinic loomed with its glass doors gaping. Inside, light bloomed sterile and white. They staggered in and were struck by the reek of disinfectant and vomit, by the coughs of the damned lined in rows. Nurses moved with masks tight on their faces like executioners. Josh shouldered Bubba through the hall and down a stairwell marked CLOSED.

At the bottom they found a door unlatched and beyond it a room not meant for trespassers.

There lay the court of King Covid.

A bed on wheels had been dragged to the center. Upon it was set the King himself, a paralyzed doctor in hospital linens, crown of latex gloves bound with IV tubing about his skull, lips blue as bruises. He reigned from the pillow like a carcass dreaming it was God. Around him gathered his company, black coats and veils and gloves, the stink of I.V. medicine and mildew about them.

One woman shrieked from a corner, her skin gone pocked and blotched with sores. She clawed at her throat and cried, covid, covid, though every eye knew it was syphilis that kept her in thrall. A tall mortician-like fellow with spectacles cracked down the middle bore a clipboard and shouted figures into the stale air, the numbers running like water and meaning nothing. Beside him sat a woman with a bird mask fastened to her face, who clutched to her chest a rat in a shoebox and kissed it through the holes.

They drank from a single Chinese gaiwan passed from hand to hand, its rim thick with the smear of mouths and the dregs of cheap liquor. Bubba gagged to watch it. Josh only laughed and took it when it was offered him, for there was no refusing in that place.

The King raised one trembling finger. “Welcome, dealers of broken wagons,” he said, his voice like wind swirls in a grave. “What debt brings you here.”

Josh bowed in a parody of grace. “We come fleeing ruin, your majesty. A man wronged by our wares seeks vengeance.”

The King’s eyes rolled in their sockets. “Then you are kindred to us. For all here flee debts, and none are paid, least of all me. I was promised a billion from the East for the birthing of this pest, and yet no silver crossed my palm. They poured their treasure into Arabs with bombs and left me broke. America for sale, gentlemen, and I the auctioneer unpaid.”

The court wailed its assent, a choir of coughs and moans. The syphilitic woman tore at her dress. The mortician scribbled debts on his clipboard, debts owed by the whole of the earth.

Bubba whispered, “Lord help us.”

Josh nudged him and grinned. “Drink, son. We’re kings now.”

They drank and the liquor was fire and filth both. The slew in the gaiwan circled. The party grew. They danced among the gurneys, their feet slipping on the floor slick with spittle. The rat escaped the shoebox and fled under a cot. The woman in the bird mask dropped to her knees to chase it, clawing at the tiles.

The King sang from his bed, his voice a ghastly hymn. None are safe, all are chosen, money is god and god is gone.

At this Bubba grew bold. He clambered atop an overturned cart and called for music. The syphilitic woman howled, the mortician beat time with his clipboard, and Josh drummed on the rails of a bed. They whirled in the pale light, a madness of cough and laughter, all debts forgotten.

But the gaiwan emptied. The last drops were licked by the bird-faced woman who still crouched on the floor. A silence fell, broken only by the rasp of the King’s breath.

Josh said, “We’re dry.”

The King’s eyes flared. “Then drink the blood of your neighbor. Drink your future. Drink America whole. For China will drink what you do not.”

At that Bubba laughed too loud, and the mortician fixed on him a stare. “What mirth is this,” he said. “Do you mock the King.”

Bubba spread his arms. “I mock death itself,” he said, but his voice cracked.

The woman with sores shrieked and lunged, spittle flying. Josh caught her wrist and spun her, and she toppled into a rack of IV bags. Clear fluid spilled across the floor like tears. The court wailed.

The King raised his hand. “Kill the heretics,” he said, though his hand trembled too weak to command.

The crowd surged, hands outstretched, masks askew, faces ghastly. Josh and Bubba shoved through them, fists flying. The gaiwan shattered on the floor. They fled up the stair, through the clinic halls where nurses shouted and patients moaned. Out the glass doors into night again, free men, laughing with terror.

Behind them the sirens wailed. Ahead, the lot still waited, the dead Buick cooling like stone. The man with the wrench might yet be there. Death behind, ruin before. They staggered into the dark, drunk on fear and liquor both, and did not stop; no, not yet.