Quinn Garcia: The King’s Soliloquy

I hold the entire room in the pools of my irises. Light fills every part of me, brushing the backs of my knees and caking underneath my fingernails. I am the ruler of this kingdom, pushing us onward in the never-ending march towards curtain call. I have the power to make you laugh, cry, sing with joy or groan in misery. The breaths I take are not my own, but some other entity’s with whom I merely share a body. I am possessed with song and dance, touched with laughter and tears. My power is that of the collective, bestowed upon me by the audience from the moment I stepped onto the stage. I am your humble servant, a mere jester, I am an omnipotent king, a god amongst men. transcendent, universal, tethered to this world only by your applause.

Oh, how the roar fills me! As the stars fill the sky or the water floods the ocean, I am filled by your tears and your longing, your gasps and your cheers. Under your attentive eyes and clapping hands I am shaped anew, a perfect monster of your adoration, unblemished but for the traumas I fashion myself. I wear the character like a crown upon my brow; you can kiss my hand as your eyes linger upon it but it is mine, mine alone. The latest queen in a long line of helm-bearers, with those actors who wore the character before me being the crown’s inset jewels. Soon, I will be one of those jewels. I will glimmer like a star.

When I was born I cried, and it sounded like a melody. From that moment on my single purpose in life has been to perform, or in other ways entertain. I grew up singing, lying, molding my words until they were reality, and molding reality until it matched my words. The benevolent dictator I was called, and I wore my title with grace and pride. I taught myself to read when I was five, taught myself to write soon after. I was voracious, I wanted to consume the world and spit it back out, changed. I played in the mud, dirt and dreams scraping at my fingerprints. As a child, I learned how to use my words in ways that would make you feel something. Her majesty; the dictator, the ruler, the king. Speak to me once and I will burn myself into the backs of your eyelids so that whenever you close your eyes, you will see me. I want to leave an aftertaste on your tongue, sweet as first love’s kiss, bitter as coffee, sticky as caramel. The ruler knows how to paint worlds and tear them down with nothing but a syllable. Words like weapons, barbs cutting your skin, words to heal and help. Words to awaken tears from your eyes, dribble down your chin, ring your collarbone like a necklace. I leave you tokens of my grief and ecstasy. Whenever I stand up there and recite a monologue to a crowd of nine or nine hundred, it’s a sweet and intoxicating rush of something. Your eyes are my nectar of eternal life. Listen, watch, see me but know her. These moments are yours, ours, hers, theirs. I command you, I plead with you, I worship you, and then I bow.

I achieve my most ultimate state of presence when I am someone else. My mind can quiet, for it is no longer mine, but theirs. I relinquish control, I let myself reside in the beautiful black of a conscious limbo as the character fills the gloves of my fingers, puts on the glasses of my eyes. If I do my work correctly, there is no need for me to exit that state until the curtain falls, the lights bloom and fade, and I am left stripped of an hour or two of my life. But I am not sad, I never mourn the time lost when in my hyper-present limbo, for I am fulfilling my divinely-bestowed role. It is my purpose to entertain, to bear the crown of many, to be the jester and the king. I perform to fulfill, and be fulfilled in return. I act, I write, I breathe so that I can touch you with my words.

Under the fresnels I am transformed. A monster, a cow, a goddess, a girl. A king. I hold you in my hands, and I decide our fates together.

About the Author:

Quinn Marley Garcia (she/her) is a cowboy trapped in the body of a teenage girl. She has been telling stories since her hands were strong enough to hold a pen, and has been published in multiple literary magazines, such as The Word’s Faire, Right Hand Pointing, and The Drama Notebook. She was also the first youth playwright to have a piece virtually performed at the Little Fish Theater in Los Angeles. She is constantly filled with a yearning to ride off into the sunset, and hopes that comes through in her art.