King of New York (45 page)

“For example –
The
Scream
painting by Edvard Munch. Maybe I should see such a painting as
human universality instead of fun. Have you ever felt so much anguish that you want
to scream into the depths of Hades? I feel it plenty of times. I want to scream
and let the whole of New York hear my anguish, my pain and my misery. I want for
my city to hear my cries of torment and mental torture. The eternal scream that
poisons my body and being. I want to share it with my city like the artist
shares his depiction of the world he creates within his painting.

“So why then do
I denounce art and poetry for such a trivial thing as fun? Why do I not choose
an epic poem by Homer, undeniably one of the greatest poets in the ancient
western hemisphere and, significantly, an original pioneer of literature as we
know it today? Someone that is, and was, so revered that even the great
philosopher Plato acknowledged his influence on ancient Greece. Why then do I
not choose a work by him that is still alive today, thousands of years later?

“Let me tell you
why, Sierra. It is because fun is not mimetic of anything or anyone. It is
originality, because it reveals itself in all things. Do you know why Sebastian
manipulated us? It’s because he was having fun with the idea of mentally
torturing us. When a warrior is fatally injured on the battlefield but still
summons the courage to laugh at the blood that flows from his wounds. Is it not
because he is having fun with the idea of death and making a mockery of his
enemy’s blow? Yes, fun reveals itself in all things, even the most sinister of
things.

“The blind, deaf
and mute may not be able to hear, read or see a work by Homer or Munch, but in
all their deprivations they can still have fun. Fun is a sensation felt by all
humans. Tell me, is that not universality?”

Sierra stares at
him, with a slightly confused look in her eyes, but clearly awed by his
philosophical words about fun.

“My enemies want
to see me blind, hear me deaf and speak me mute. But a king will forever have
fun. This city is my playground and what does one do in a playground? We have
fun! I will have fun till it bleeds from their orifices as they speak of it.”

Chad pushes the
chair back violently and it shatters from his might. Sierra seems afraid of the
man that she loves. His eyes move erratically like the waves of the ocean. He
screams a loud and thunderous cry of passionate anger.

“THEY WILL NOT
SEE ME FALL!

“FOR I AM KING!

“THEY MUST ALL
BOW TO ME! I AM THE FUCKING KING OF NEW YORK!

“ARRGHHHHH!” He
screams angrily.

Chad’s voice is
filled with anguish and a deep sense of revenge. He knows that she is still
numb from the pleasure he’d given her earlier, but she still manages to get up
and hug him. They move to the living area. The handsome well-built frame of
Chad Perry invades her living space. He looks majestic and regal. He senses
that it intrigues her and makes her love the rage-filled Chad even more.

The veins in his
body protrude as if opium has been injected into his body. He looks like a
monster and a man synthesised together, creating the physicality of man but the
mentality of a beast. Outwardly he is human, but inwardly he is an untamed
creature that desperately seeks revenge on those that tried to have him killed.

He is
dangerously handsome as he stands in the room, with eyes of steel and a body
that even a bullet cannot destroy.

Chad’s anger is
not only for him being left for dead, but also the corruption and manipulation
of Sierra; the fact that they used her to get to him. He rages like a beast of
the wild, igniting a deeper passion for revenge within his heart.

“They will pay.
Their blood must run deep into the gutters of the city. Only then will they
know that I rule the Big Apple.

“They must pay!

“Terror will be
wreaked on all those that conspired to kill King Perry. They will see the grave
consequences of their treason. This is not fucking England, where the queen is
a puppet of the land. In my kingdom, if you plot a coup to kill the king you
will pay in fucking blood!

“This is New
York where only the brave and ruthless survive, and I am the bravest and most
ruthless.

“Call me the
phantom king, because to my subjects I am dead. But I shall rise, and when I
rise, all hell will break loose.

“This is war!

“They will pay!

“Let the battle
commence!”

His last words
are soft and poetic, but his eyes brew with fury and hate.

He roars
majestically like the king of the concrete jungle.

****

She is in deep awe of the man
that is consumed with anger before her. She loves him more as she sees the
fearless and dangerous man that he truly is. Instead of being afraid, she is
awed and deeply in love with how he proclaims himself king without a crown. She
loves the desire for power in his eyes. For a second, Sierra thought to
persuade Chad not to seek revenge, but the darker side of him also creates darkness
within her and she wishes for him to truly expose how dangerous he is. Although
she does not want to say it out loud, she’d always felt that there was a
dangerous streak in her, especially when she allowed her father to dispose of
Tom Winters. But she never wanted to admit that she had a bad side to her until
Chad Perry began to expose all her dark and sordid impulses. Now it seems she
is falling in love with the dark side.

Like a moth to a
flame she is drawn to the most dangerous man in New York City. The truth of her
dark impulses scares as well as excites her as she stares at the beast that is
Chad Perry, silently looking down upon his city. She stares at the priceless
diamond ring he gave her and it shows her just how flawless he is in her eyes.

CHAPTER 37

Sebastian has decided to stay permanently
in New York. He likes the beauty and aura of the magnificent but ruthlessly
ugly Big Apple. During the time he’d spent looking for and capturing Sierra,
the city had intrigued as well as enticed him to become a resident in it. He
had for a long time craved to be a New Yorker and now he finally is one, not by
naturalisation, but by migration. He had become inexplicably tired of the
malignant and somewhat boring city that his previous, and birth city, London
had been.

He knows his
feelings towards London and New York are absurd as both cities are in some ways
similar, but because he is so familiarised with London and its tedious ways he cannot
clearly see the absurdity of his views. However, he did not care for all that; all
he now knows is that he is in the city of dreams, and his dream of having
Sierra in his life became real, even if it was only temporary, and it all
happened because he was in New York. Although his dream of winning Sierra came
violently crashing down, his love for the city and its way of life still
remains.

Before he came
to New York he’d spoken with a surgeon friend of his who practices and owns one
of New York’s most sought-after clinics. After he came to the Big Apple, before
even pursuing Sierra, his surgeon friend had pulled some strings and organised
a meeting for Sebastian with the American Board of Plastic Surgery. He tried to
get a certified licence to practice his profession. He had been successful
because the board of cosmetic surgery had looked at his former licence and all
his achievements as well as his university statuses and were happy to grant him
a renewed licence to be able to practice in New York. He’d confirmed to them
that he had the most sought-after clinic on Harley Street and it was his own
practice, booming with success and good reviews from its clients. The Americans
were definitely impressed and interested in the British surgeon with good looks
that weren’t a product of the nip and tuck of surgery but from nature.

Now, sat in his
new office, he is quite happy in his work life, which began just a few days
ago. However, he is far from happy in his personal and social life. He has
detached himself from people, especially those he works with because he feels
he doesn’t really have enough in common with them apart from the fact that they
are all earning big bucks by doing something that’s quite immoral: changing
what God had created into what man wants it to look like.

He sits in his
office solemnly as he thinks about all the decisions he has made in his life.
He regrets some, but the one he truly regrets is falling deeply in love with a
woman who loves another, and it deeply pains him that he can’t change that. He wishes
the subject of his affection would have been someone that had the same feelings
he had for them.

He reminisces about
his practice at Harley Street in London and remembers how miserable he had been,
even with all his money and prestige among his fellow surgeons, and he knew
that such things were not the things that would make him happy. It was the idea
of Sierra loving him that made him feel happy. He wishes that she would come
back and tell him that she loves him and not Chad Perry, that he was the sole recipient
of her affection. He knows that he is asking for too much, but he can’t help
wishing for it to come true.

He pours himself
a glass of vodka. The unfriendly liquid has become a part of his daily regime
each day after work and the dosage only gets heavier with Sierra on his mind.

He drinks
slowly. His green eyes darken with sadness, and for the first time since she
left he sheds a tear. He tries to hold in his emotions but he is unable to, and
he begins to cry uncontrollably. The more he cries the more he drinks, until he
is no longer able to stay within the four walls of his office. He decides to
drive home. The drive is shaky as the effects of the vodka start to take effect.
However, he is lucky enough to get home safely.

 He gets inside
his home, and like any alcoholic, he goes straight for the drinks cabinet and
drinks some more wine.

“Why don’t you
love me, Sierra Malcolm?” he cries drunkenly. “I gave you all you wanted. I
gave you love, care and affection, yet you still refused to love me. Why?” He
shouts angrily as he wipes the tears from his face. He wobbles across the room
with the liquor bottle in his hand, tripping over and cursing the day he met
Sierra.

“How the fuck
can you love a dead man, Sierra, huh? You can’t love a fucking dead guy, you
crazy woman,” he shouts, laughing eerily as he finishes. “Chad cannot give you
what I can,” he stammers, and he slumps to the floor and accidentally spills
all the contents of the bottle. He puts his hands to his face and cries with
profound pain. “I loved you Sierra but all you caused me was pain,” he says, as
if she were in the room with him. “I love you, why can’t you see that,” he
whispers sadly. “Why couldn’t you see that? Now you’ve made me hurt you.”

He remembers the
letter he received the day Sierra left, and it immediately changes his mood from
love to that of hate and regret. “Fuck you, Sierra. You can’t leave me broken
and not expect to pay. I’ll get you back just when you think your life is
getting back to normal. That’s a promise!”

He
falls asleep from the effects of the alcohol he has consumed. He starts to
dream. Suddenly, before him, he sees a distorted image. It looks scarily
enticing, dressed in a cloak of dazzling colours that he’s never seen before in
his life.

Alcohol
is deeply immersed in his bloodstream so he doesn’t know if he is dreaming or
not. But his mind tells him that he’s definitely imaging things. He knows that
he has stepped out of reality and into a world of hallucination where the weird
and ungodly creatures of his mind lurk as he tries to force himself to wake up.
He starts to sweat in his dream, and in reality he is also sweating. The image
starts to come closer to him in his dream and he flees from it into his reality
as he wakes up, sweating and breathing heavily.

He opens his
eyes and realises that he hadn’t closed his front door. He believes he sees
Chad walk across the outside corridor, but the rational and intelligent side of
him tells him that it must be the effects of the alcohol. He gets up and goes
to the bathroom to take a cold shower in the hope that he will forget the dream
and that he’d seen Chad outside his home.

CHAPTER 38

While sat in her finely decorated
office on Wall Street, a soft breeze wafts through Sierra’s hair. Her thoughts
are filled with images of Chad Perry and the night he had pleasured her in the
most sublime way possible, and then showed her the beast in him. A part of her
is worried about his safety, but another part screams bloody vengeance as she
wishes for her man to get revenge. She misses him so much that it infuriates
her.

Sierra has only
been away from him a few hours, but being away from her lover feels like an
eternity.

The office is
hot even though the air conditioning has been running on full power all day. Her
pencil skirt is now wrinkled as she constantly shuffles in her seat in an
attempt to feel cooler. She gets up from her seat to go and open the window. The
sun blazes in and she quickly closes it again. New York City, down below the
skyscraper, looks beautiful.

Chad rings.