King Kartél I
—Somewhere in the Future
In a large Eastern European city, an unsuspecting young woman is walking down the street. She works as a cleaner and is on her way home from work. She is single, has no girlfriends, and no family. In an alley stands a white van. When the woman walks past the alley, she is grabbed by a couple of men wearing pig masks. She’s thrown into the back of the van and strangled until she loses consciousness. Then the white van slowly drives out of the alley and disappears into the chilly night.
The luxurious Killinstyle hotel is secluded in a wooded area in northern America. Every year, world leaders and businessmen gather there for a weekend to "catch up". Security is everywhere. Fast sports cars, armored limousines, and black helicopters come and go.
When it’s night and calm reclaims its place, there is one room where a light is still burning.
King Kartél is wide awake, lying on his bed, staring at a framed poster depicting the red planet Mars. He always sleeps badly in hotels, and every year he has to spend a few days in the Killinstyle, "Damn conventions!"
Because Kartél is a king, he has the entire top floor of the hotel to himself and his private security guards. No one enters the top floor unseen or unwanted.
He walks into the bathroom when there is a soft knock on the door. A little voice sounds, "Your Majesty, it's Jordy; are you awake?"
Kartél shouts from the bathroom, "I'm just taking a piss!"
A minute later, the door opens and the butt-naked king lets the young boy in.
The night passes, filled with groaning sounds and loud screams.
In the morning, when Kartél has showered and is dressed, a security guard comes to get him: "Your Highness, everything is ready; your guests are waiting in the lobby."
Kartél rubs his dark blond, greasy locks back and, in his pinstripe suit, he looks exactly like a mafia boss from a very bad movie. There is a dark blue travel bag next to the bed; it’s half open. The zipper is caught in a white bath towel that has dried up blood stains all over it, and a couple of fingertips are sticking out of it too. Kartél looks at his security guard and points to the travel bag, "You’ll clean up Jordy?"
The security guard responds icily, "Of course, Your Majesty."
Kartél walks calmly to the lobby, where his guests are waiting for him.
A very large silver Mercedes is driving along the main road. Inside the car are Beau and Monique Bilieux, and the chauffeur who drives the pair to their destination. Monique is looking out the window at a large shopping center: "That's where I want to go!"
Beau smiles, "You and your shopping; okay, when I take my break in the afternoon, I'll come get you, and we'll go together."
"Why can't I stay in the hotel with you?"
"I’ll be busy with meetings, honey. I picked another perfect hotel for you. It has everything: a beauty salon, a sauna, a massage parlor, a big pool, and you're in the most luxurious room it has."
"Yes, but it hasn’t got you!"
"That's true, honey, that's true; well, you can show me how much you missed me when we drive home tomorrow." Monique starts to blush, and they kiss as the Mercedes enters the grounds of the Killinstyle Hotel.
Beau is a man in the prime of his life. He has bright blue eyes and thick, blond, wavy hair. He comes from a good family and went to the finest schools imaginable, but much to the disappointment of his parents, he didn't become a lawyer. Beau’s passion is politics, and he’s a very promising politician.
His ultimate dream is to one day become president of the United States. He’s here for one day and one night. The purpose is to get personally acquainted with several like-minded people and also to meet the most powerful king in the world, who has, much to his surprise, set up an informal meeting with him.
Beau and Monique are sitting on one of a dozen huge leather couches in the lobby of the Killinstyle, waiting for the king.
Monique asks if Beau is nervous, as she lays her hand on his.
"Honey, you have no idea. The king is the most powerful figure on earth."
“Just keep breathing, honey," encourages Monique: "This is your day."
"I know, but if the stories are to be believed."
"They're all true, I'm afraid," shouts a smiling, lip-reading, sarcastic Kartél through the lobby as he walks up to the couple: "How was your trip?"
The Hand You’re Dealt
After the introductions, the king leads them into the adjacent restaurant. They feast on various sandwiches, croissants, tasty snacks, and champagne. Beau and Monique talk at length about their lives so far.
They are married, both in their late twenties, and would like to start their own family. Kartél is an eccentric single man in his early thirties who would prefer to colonize Mars in order to enter the history books as the most famous and beloved king. That’s his dream.
Kartél appears sincere, friendly, and willing to listen. He invites Beau, after lunch, to talk further, in private, in his suite.
After breakfast, the chauffeur drives Monique to her hotel a bit further down the road for the sauna, the massages, and whatnot.
Kartél and Beau walk to the king's suite to talk in a more private setting.
The king closes the door, "Sit down, Beau."
"Thank you, Your Majesty." Beau sits down at Kartél's work table in an armless chair and looks at the framed poster on the wall depicting the red planet.
Kartél sits down across from Beau: "Beautiful, isn't it?"
"Certainly, Majesty!"
"That's Mars. As I said before, I hope to set foot on that planet someday. I can already see the headlines: "King Kartél, the first king to set foot on another planet!" With both hands, Kartél grabs the frame, which hangs above his head, and he kisses the glass, "I will succeed, Beau!"
Beau can't help but smile at the King. It's very surreal to see a king kissing a framed poster so passionately, "Do you think this is a realistic goal, Majesty?"
"Absolutely! We, that is, humanity, are going to move; we will travel from planet to planet, each time a little further, because space is always changing and so is the livability of planets. "
Beau sits up straight: "That's very interesting, Majesty, but I get a feeling that you didn't ask me in here just to talk about Mars?"
Kartél didn’t ask Beau to just talk about Mars; what Kartél is really up to is about to become extremely clear.
"Okay, I'll be blunt, there's no turning back for you."
Beau calls out in amazement: "Your Majesty?"
"Not so naive, young man, that doesn't suit you at all! I’ve had my eye on you for some time now, and I always pick the best. You have potential, son. You’re up and coming. I see success in your future, but trust is everything in our branch." Kartél leans forward and whispers, in a super creepy way: "You do understand?"
Beau is stunned by the king's u-turn—what the hell is this?
He turns a little pale and replies with an automatic, "Yes, Your Majesty, I understand."
"Very good, Beau," shouts Kartél, while he smiles.
At that moment, five security guards wearing pig masks come storming in. They grab Beau and drag him into another room. It is a bare room with gray walls, and a large piece of transparent plastic serves as a carpet.
A young woman is tied to a chair in the center. She has no clothes on and her mouth is taped shut. Under the chair and the plastic, on the concrete floor, a circle with a Star of David in it has been drawn with chalk.
All or Nothing
Beau sits on his hands and knees. He's completely perplexed by what's happening to him and stares a hole in the ground, trying to get a grip. "What the hell is this, Kartél?" he asks, his voice trembling with fear.
Kartél seems to enjoy the adrenaline in the air: "This is the hour of truth!"
As Kartél snaps his fingers, one of the security guards pulls out a camera and starts filming.
Even before Beau can respond, Kartél puts a razor-sharp knife in Beau's hand and makes it clear with a head gesture toward the woman what its purpose is.
Beau looks at the woman, the knife resting limply in his hand, then he looks at Kartél. He begs, "No, please, not this."
The ice-cold king frowns, takes a phone out of his pocket, and dials a number: "Is everything ready [...] Good!" Then the king hangs up and takes a step forward. "Let me tell you this: you have two options: either you cut her throat, or the hotel room your wife is in right now blows up: gas leak or something."
The king shouts a rhetorical question to his pig-mask-wearing security guards as he looks around with raised shoulders and questioning arm gestures: "Those things happen, don't they?"
Beau has lost it and stands completely rigid. He says, "I can't do it. I refuse. Goddamn it!"
Kartél remains extremely calm and puts even more pressure on it, "Beau, if you don't do this, you too will have an accident, and your parents, your sister, and even her goddamn dog; you will cut her goddamn throat!"
Beau shouts out, "What's her name?" In a desperate attempt to make these people realize that here is a real human being strapped to a chair.
The king can't believe his ears; "What difference does that make? This here is just a piece of meat; don't throw away your bright future for something like that."
The king spits on the woman and emphasizes the urgency of their being together; "There are no other options, son: you either win everything today, or you lose everything today!"
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“I know your kind, Mister Bilieux. You won’t quit; politics is your passion; it’s in your blood, and you’ll be a success in your line of work, and I’m not about to let you or anybody else draw up their own plan.” Kartél looks at Beau in anger: “I need control!”
Beau thinks about Monique, his parents, and his sister—I have no choice.
He wonders how he got into this situation and how on earth he could live without his family if he could flee, or if he could choose to die for this woman who, even if he didn't kill her, would die anyway. He imagines how he flees this room, this hotel, and how he then explains to the FBI that the most powerful man in the world blackmails people by having them ritually murder a human being while filming. He knows that no one will believe him without concrete evidence.
He knows he doesn't stand a chance—Kartél is right, today I will win it all, or lose it all.
Under inhuman pressure, Beau caves and gives in, "Alright, I'll fucking do it!"
He can barely hold the knife from the stress, and wants to fall to the floor in the fetal position to imagine himself in his mother's womb again; away from all this crazy madness.
The woman, who speaks a little English, understands that her last hour has come.
Her big, pleading eyes seek Beau's, but the latter refuses any eye contact. It's like driving past a truck full of slaughter-cattle; you never look aside through the air holes through which eye contact with those who are about to die is possible, and one look stays with you forever.
"Excellent, Beau. I knew you were the right candidate, and rest assured, no one will miss her. May you find comfort when I tell you that what we do here happens to everyone who enters a certain step up our ladder."
In Nomine Satanas
Kartél lights a cigarette, takes a puff, and hands the cigarette to Beau, who anxiously puffs the cigarette away within a minute.
At less than two meters in front of the tied up woman, Kartél instructs Beau with words and literal air-gestures, "You will stand behind her and put your hand on her forehead, then you will put your knife on her throat, with the point slightly towards you, but don’t (!) cut until I give you my sign; it's a razor-sharp knife, so if she bleeds a little before you get my signal, don’t worry about it," he reassures Beau, "Anyway, first we, my guards and I, say the Lord's Prayer backwards; you don't have to do this now, because it takes quite a bit of practice; then, when I lower my arm, you force her head back and you pull the knife from left to right in one go, understand?"
Even before Beau can nod, he sinks through his knees giddily and throws up his entire lunch.
"Never mind, son, soon you will belong with us; then nothing can happen to you the rest of your life."
A security guard places two black candles to the left and right of the chair and carefully lights them, while another turns off the light. The candlelight gives the entire room a dark atmosphere, and the shadows of everyone present dance hysterically on the walls, like spectators from another dimension.
Another security guard stands at the front and films the ritual.
Beau moves unnaturally, like a robot, and stands behind the woman, plants his hand on her forehead, and puts the knife to her throat, with the tip pointing slightly towards him. He looks at the security guards one by one. The pig masks make this scene even scarier and more uncomfortable, if that’s even possible, and it feels like he has literally landed in hell. The woman feels the cold knife pressing on her neck; she feels her blood being pumped through her carotid artery past the razor-sharp blade; like a gazelle in the clutches of a leopard, waiting, almost yearning, for it to bite her to death, she pees herself.
Kartél makes a sniffing sound and quotes an alternate version of a famous quote from Apocalypse Now: "Do you smell that? I love the smell of urine in the morning!"
The king is the only one who sees the humor in this, and his bellowing laughter dies an early death.
Everything is ready now: the camera is running, candles are lit, Beau is ready, the victim is ready.
"Oh, Beau," Kartél says as he points to his mouth, then to the victim.
Beau is far too nervous to understand what the king means and shrugs his shoulders questioningly, "The tape, take the tape off her mouth; I want to hear her scream; that's the best part of all this, that last cry of death."
Beau cannot believe that the king and his security guards possess even a shred of empathy or are even human beings, but he carefully rips the tape from her mouth.
The woman immediately responds by frantically begging for her life in some unknown Slavic accent. Kartél walks up to her and slaps her in the face, grabs her hair, pulls her head back and screams in her face, "I’m a fucking king; you do not speak unless you are spoken to!" The king lets her go when the woman nods and stays silent. Beau feels as if he could keel over from stress at any moment as the ritual begins.
Kartél grabs a golden bell and hits it nine times with a steel tube.
Then the king sticks his arm up in the air and, together with his guards, begins to say the words of Our Father backwards.
Beau now holds the knife so tightly that his entire hand has become completely numb. As strange as it sounds in his head, he wants to do this right the first time—imagine if it's not deep enough and then having to do it again.
He can't handle this thought, or any other thought for that matter, and braces himself, waiting for Kartél's sign.
Over and Out
His family runs through his head. Beau tries to mentally save himself—there is no choice; I'm doing this for you.
The woman softly begins to cry, so still that you almost can’t hear it through the heavy demonic-sounding male voices echoing through the room. She has black hair that is cut at shoulder length. She is frail; she trembles as if she is in a tub of ice-cold water and every muscle is tense, as if she could burst at any moment. Across the room, the last words of the alternative Our Father ring out: "nevaeH ni trA ohW, rehtaF ruO." Then there is a deafening silence. The prayer is finished.
Hearing the prayer backwards, it feels as if the words of Jesus Christ have literally been taken away from this world, at least from this room. A chill takes possession of the room, as if they’re all standing in a refrigerator. Everyone looks at Beau. Beau takes a deep breath, pressing his hand firmly against the woman's forehead, and Kartél lowers his arm.
—The next morning.
Beau stands in front of the open closet in his hotel room and closes the doors. He feels like an empty closet. Drawn empty, there's nothing left in it. He has already packed his suitcase and stares down the empty hotel room—how can I ever live with what I’ve done?
A second later, Monique knocks on his hotel room door and walks in.
Beau sits on the edge of the bed: "Good morning, dear."
"Good morning, honey; it certainly went well yesterday, didn’t it?"
"…..."
"You were going to take me to that huge mall on your break, remember?"
"I'm sorry, honey, I’ve been so tied up in business here."
"Oh, you poor thing." Monique sits next to Beau on the bed and hugs him with both arms.
Beau's mind slowly returns to earth and the void he felt just now is being filled, little by little, every second Monique is with him.
"Did you guys just talk about business?" Monique stands up in front of Beau with her legs wide apart and her hands on her side.
"Yeah, what else?" responds Beau a tad suspiciously.
"Well, what about the stories?"
Beau raises a smile and makes a throwaway gesture, "Ah, that’s all poppycock, honey; that only happens in movies." Beau's second lie within one minute.
After breakfast, Beau has already put his suitcase in the car and checked out of the Killinstyle Hotel.
As they leave the hotel, King Kartél walks outside to say goodbye, "Well, son, good luck to you, and if you ever need anything, just call me, alright?"
Kartél takes Beau aside for a second, grabs him by the arm, and whispers in his ear, "Don't worry, son, I’m the only one that has the recording." He waves a USB stick in front of Beau's nose.
As if Beau didn't feel bad enough already, Kartél confronts him with the facts about who he’ll really be working for from now on: "Thank you, Your Majesty, goodbye!" Beau calls out, notably unobtrusively, as he walks back to Monique.
Monique is impressed and looks at Beau with big eyes: "Well, you sure made some powerful friends."
"Yes, dear, that's all part of it, I guess!"
Kartél calls out to Beau when they’re about to step into the car: "Hey, Beau: Diana, her name was Diana; have a safe trip home."
Monique suspiciously looks at Beau: "What was that all about?"
Beau swallows, takes a moment and lies to his wife as if it were his second nature: "Oh, just an old missing person case, honey; no big deal."
Monique is driving, and Beau is in the passenger seat; she looks at him for a moment, as he silently stares out the window—he must be so tired from all those meetings, the sweetheart!
They ride off the Killinstyle grounds, and safely make their way home.
TO BE CONTINUED