Brighter Than Stars

I.

A comet tore through the sky when the Boy-Emperor was born. “That will be you one day,” his mother told him. “Brighter than stars.”

II.

Upon ascension to the high throne, the Boy-Emperor decreed that no subject from the Atlantic to the Nile would be permitted to keep their face. For faces, the Boy-Emperor declared, held the essence of beauty, and beauty was treacherous in the manner of politicians and land-owners. Only the Boy-Emperor, with a face like the sun, and spring, and a thousand blooming orchids, could be trusted to wield such a deadly weapon.

And so it was, in the first days of his reign, that cumbersome stone masks were distributed among the populace. They were the most grotesque complexions imaginable.

III.

The Boy-Emperor’s decree was enforced with utmost impunity, and within the first year of his reign, not a single subject—be they slave or senator—ever removed their terrible masks. When the Boy-Emperor addressed his people, he addressed crowds of drooling cyclopes, hissing gorgons, and fork-tongued satyrs, and in turn, they saw the sole example of human beauty the land had left to offer. He was their light, their God, and oh how he cherished it.

The Boy-Emperor’s rule was defined by his pleasures. He held lavish banquets amongst masked aristocrats, he oversaw bloody duels between masked gladiators, and at the end of every day, he would retire to his bedchambers, beckon forth his harem of the most virile men of the empire, and engage in one great, masked orgy.

IV.

It was at one such orgy that the Boy-Emperor’s decadent reign came to an end. He was naked save for his onyx crown, his rectum filled by a beaked harpy’s length and his lips pursed around the dripping head of a grinning ghoul. The Boy-Emperor had drunk more than usual, and decided that this man before him, with his puckered prick and sculpted arse, might be the finest specimen he had ever bedded. So, swallowing the ghoul’s ejaculate and shoving the harpy away, the Boy-Emperor vowed at once that he would break his sacred rule—he would unmask this handsome stranger, and the Boy-Emperor would be his bride.

Giggling, the Boy-Emperor reached below the ghoul’s chin to exhume his true face. Yet, to the Boy-Emperor’s horror, he felt only flesh, and the ghoul’s grin widened, for his mask was no mask at all. The Boy-Emperor yelped and fell back, back into the arms of the harpy, of the cyclops, of the satyr, of the gorgon, of the hungry things with gnashing jaws and buzzing cocks, of the beasts of his own design.

V.

When the servants entered the Boy-Emperor’s chambers, they beheld no beasts, no lovers, no festivities. All they saw was their regent tangled in satin sheets, his eyes frozen in abject terror, a dribble of crimson glistening from his lips. In the days to come, the people would shed their masks. They would tear down his statues, they would free their cities, they would reach forth to greet a new dawn.

In the outer reaches of space, a great cluster of frozen debris dissolved in a polychromic flame. But for a moment, the Boy-Emperor burned brighter than stars.

© 2021 Perry Ruhland

About the Author

Perry Ruhland is a writer and filmmaker based in Chicago, Illinois. His  work focuses on grotesque terrors, gay masculinities, and cosmic despair.