The Gorko Gazette

My Knight in Shining Armor

My knight in shining armor sits his fine white horse. He is tall. He is brave. He is handsome.

My knight in shining armor is valiant. He is bold and heroic—a hunk. He has baby blue eyes and flaxen hair, forget-me-nots and autumn wheat.

My knight in shining armor is strong, so big. And lo, his codpiece contains a mighty bulge.

My knight in shining armor takes my hand. He takes my heart. He seizes my soul. With gusto, my knight in shining armor takes my purity. He takes me often. He took my dignity long ago.

My knight in shining armor rides to war. He slays. He maims. He ravishes the peasantry.

My knight in shining armor sets a village aflame, an act independent of his warring. This is decompression. Stress relief. Fire purges the worst of his angst. It serves his sadism well.

My knight in shining armor receives a herald at dawn. He awakes to a bearer of bad news. Your castle, Sir, with your “swete hert” inside, has been seized by enemy forces. Rule of thumb: don’t kill the messenger. Too late, the messenger is dead.

My knight in shining armor is exceedingly wroth. He puts milkmaids and stable boys to the sword. He rides in haste to the aid of his princess, his paramour, his pride.

My knight in shining armor cleaves the road; an arrow shot from a noble bow. He waylays the wicked, splits the skulls of hags and farmers. He thrashes them all. The good, the bad, the ugly.

My knight in shining armor does it all for me.

My knight in shining armor disembowels first, asks questions later. He does not get many answers. He drives the pommel of his sword into a young shepherd’s face. Boy! He screams. Have you seen my true love? There is no reply issued from the young man’s mouth, only shards of teeth and a great font of blood.

My knight in shining armor slakes his thirst at a crossroads tavern, a reputable inn free of any patrons. He has the place to himself (unless you count the many corpses, the bowmen and soldiers who share his coat of arms; the tavern wench and her father, the owner; the minstrels whose intestines hang like tinsel above a hearth gone cold). And lo, the ale is good.

My knight in shining armor rides like a valor-stoked flame, a toxic gale. His keen vision frames a dark tower in the slit of his visor. A castle looms, his own home occupied by the nefarious horde. It rises from a cheerless, war-torn horizon, with sentries, cavalry, and lords—fodder for his sword. These are the souls to quench his brutal lust. Above, I await among the highest tower: a lily embrace to sate his savage hunger.

My knight in shining armor takes a wound in the eye —his baby blue beauty!— though, in time, a scar will cascade his lovely face to add a certain rugged charm. He weeps blood where the arrow is pulled free. But he is not crying. Lo, he is laughing.

My knight in shining armor slips beyond the castle ramparts, lurking to secret doors where slit throats work as well as any password. Past the bailey, across the yard, he kills and disembowels. He bludgeons and beheads at his whimsy.

My knight in shining armor ascends the central keep, slaying, smashing, spiraling towards his dearest love. Flight by flight, he deposits his hate: limbs, heads, the interior workings of man. They trail his advances—bodies wholesale, or piecemeal.

My knight in shining armor clangs outside my door. I can hear his hauberk rattle, his pauldron shake. He greets the final guard, Hullo!, braining him mightily against the stone. I decipher his bestial grunts, his heavy breathing among the muted pop of cranial destruction. I hear the joy, the chivalry in his tone, when he addresses the nameless corpse, Hu licaþ þe þas æppla, bicce? (How do you like them apples, bitch?)

My knight in shining armor breaks down the door. There is no need. It’s unlocked, with only me inside.

My knight in shining armor has a flair for dramatics, high adventure, rough sex, and crushing degradation. He discards his shining armor, and yet, all night, he shines. He takes me, heart and soul. He takes me each way a nobleman may, or any man, any way, might. I feel his pain —certainly, my own— weeping in the arms of my knight in shining armor.

Beyond the turret window, moans of the maimed and dying echo under the stars.

My knight in shining armor retires at dawn. I watch his body rise and fall. I peel a farm boy’s scalp from the pommel of his sword. I finger its hilt, run my palm against its tarnished blade.

My knight in shining armor dreams of peace, concord his lands may never know. I lift his sword, and, rising it high, I give him what he most desires.

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Image: Flowers of Fealty: Wilhelm Dilich’s Commemoration of the Christening of Elisabeth of Hesse (1598)