Magpie Tales: The King of Everything

The day the King of Everything returned was rather odd. He first appeared to a bus of catholic school kids, who promptly laughed at him. An elder nun rapped the King with a ruler and threw him off the bus for disturbing the peace, pronouncing him a loon.

His next appearance was to the world leaders at a United Nations summit, where they were arguing percentile points in latest political popularity polls. Say that five times fast and you might begin speaking like they do. They gave him five minutes.

Truth be told, they only reason they gave him five was they were out of ideas to try and fix the mess we were in, everything they had tried before only ending in further disaster. Rumor even had it they would not be getting Christmas bonuses from their special interest groups if they did not do something soon, so they were desperate.

They called a global press conference and gave the King the floor. People around the world tuned in to hear what this strange man had to say. Pepsi sponsored the event, mostly to promote their new talent show that would be on later during prime time.

The King spoke softly, so even the people at home leaned forward to better hear what he had to say. He spoke only ten minutes, telling a story about a wedding. When he finished the sky opened and a beam of light surrounded the King. A hush fell over world, even flies grew still. The only sound was a lone phone ringing, the agent for a certain pop star with very expensive hair answered to hear his client ranting about the poor quality of their pyrotechnics and how he would stop touring unless the heaven's shined on him too

Within seconds, the internet was a buzz with blog posts and opinion polls and within twenty minutes, he was denounced a charlatan. He was too small. Too fat. Too old. Unless you were in Florida, where they decided he was too young to be King of Everything. Needless to say, he was nothing like what they expected, so the next press conference was preempted by Survivor, because people needed a healthy dose of reality to get back to living.

Fearing for their lives, the politicians abandoned his cause and for once, their popularity increased, even if only for a week. Figuring him hungry after such hubbub, and not wanting him to think they were heartless, the politicians dropped him at the Goodwill with a twenty dollar clothes voucher.

After several weeks, a child found him forgotten on a shelf and begged his mom a quarter to purchase the slightly used toy. To quiet him, the mom acquiesced and for many years, after being tucked into bed at night, the boy would listen as the king shared stories with him then close his eyes and dream of one day changing the world.

This is a Magpie Tale.