THE HAUNTED KINGDOM 3 by CHARLES E.J. MOULTON (ereader that reads to you .txt) 📕

/> Another was feeding him grapes.
A third was playing music.
Beata Maria on the throne next to him, she a tanned woman with long brown curvy hair, dressed in a blue toga, with heavily painted lips.
She was his own.
They, Alexander and Beata, sat on a golden marble throne with a baldachin over it.
The ceiling of this huge room had a very fancy painting Zeus and there were pillars everywhere.
On the floor below him, about thirty feet away, lay a man.
Alexander knew instinctively that this man was a deserter.
Beata spoke:
”Punish the man!”
He looked at her and she cocked her head to the left.
“Punish him for me!”
She let her toga drop and now she was naked.
Alexander smiled, but there something here that was familiar.
Where was he? Why was he emperor? Wasn’t he …
“Face down, deserter” he heard himself say. “Take off your clothes!”
He walked up toward the man and circled him.
He lay lifeless on the ground.
He felt himself smile, but he knew not why.
Where had he been prior to the balcony experience?
What had he done before making love to Beata?
He did not know.
He just knew that he order the slaves to hold the man down and place hot coals on his naked back.
He just knew that he laughed when he did so and did it twice.
He just knew that when Beata walked up, naked and willing again, she sounded like Lucinda.
He just knew that what she suggested he should do to put out the coals went against everything he believed in.
He just knew that when he stood there, head against the wall, he was looking himself in the eye and fighting with himself.
“No, I don’t want this. Stop tempting me!”
He stepped away from Caligula’s body, as it slumped to the ground, bloody.
He shook his head, wiped his hands off on his naked legs.
He stepped away from the body, as if he had been bitten by a bug, touched by unclean hands.
He looked out toward the balcony.
Now he did not only see white silk draperies swaying in the breeze.
A woman in a blue toga stood there and smiled.
She dropped her toga and stood there naked, hoping he would come and experience it all again.
Instead, he ran. He ran as fast as he could down a corridor of chequered floor of black and white marble tiles. Statues on each side. It looked like his own palace.
Suddenly he saw a man there, dressed to the nines. Who was that?
Was that Rolf there?
Was it Rolf at the end of the corridor?
Yes, it was him.
He was screaming at the top of his lungs, his mouth open.
As Alexander approached him, he realized he could not stop running.
The scream grew louder and louder and the mouth grew bigger and bigger.
“I can’t stop running!”
He saw the mouth close in on him.
He saw that Rolf was slightly unshaved.
He saw the inside of his cavities.
He saw …
He ran …
There was whirlwind and he was thrown around the palace and the from palace to palace.
Then he was in his own home.
Suddenly, things were changing and thru the walls of the palace he saw an army of soldiers. And as before he became part of it.
“I have to get out of this nightmare, God!”
This was the future.
A future.
Now, he was in Turkey and was a soldier in the service of Prince Vlad Dracul The Impalor.
It was 1493 and there were bodies everywhere. Screams and calls for help.
Clang-clang. Cling-cling-clong-cleng-clyng-clang.
His uniform was something he was more accustomed to than the roman version and the clanging of steel was ear deafening.
Clang.
He was fighting a Muslim and it ended with Alexander winning.
“Please, Michael, do something. What can I do to get out of …?”
There were people impaled everywhere . Bloodcurdling screams as the bodies shook on their poles . Then he was all alone, suddenly. No one anywhere .
“HELP ME!”
The whirlwind swept up Alexander again and landed him now on a fancy mahogany chair by a big table in Prince Vlad's castle of Tirgoviste. He was in a friendly conversation with the man and was eating something very delicious. There was an open fireplace and many paintings in a grand hall. Suddenly, the table was out in the open fields again and they were dining to the view of people being impaled on poles. They shook in their death and as they did, Prince Vlad laughed heartily. He looked at Alexander and with his eyes turning into cats eyes he said in a Transylvanian accent: "Good entertainment, huh ?" and laughed.
Alex bent down under the table and vomited. Then a plate came and there was nothing he could do (oh no please not that how ghastly how horrid and how disgusting and how awful). There was a head on the plate garnished with vegetables like a meal and it was talking and talking.
Alex screamed and shook.
"Fancy some lunch?" It said.
He screamed the Lord's Prayer now.
All of his might was needed to get himself out of this nightmare.
“Get me out of this nightmare, dear someone, please …”
(Mother Mary help me in my need and most desperate and depraved hour.
He needed help why would they not help him why why why why why)
Now he was on the pole shaking and screaming, his belly pierced.
At the bottom thru his prayers he saw Vlad holding up his glass of tasty blood-red wine saying with a friendly- little-buddy-twitch-of-the-head: "Cheers, my mate!"
His screams became a virtual reality-tunnel of a million lights as he challenged the doors of time, travelling thru the centuries.
BANG.
He was thrown to the ground by a quake. Where was he?
He was in a distant future and was wearing a strange sort of helmet and a green uniform. He was holding a very strange sort of long-rifle and was running. There were ruins everywhere and smoke and bangs and crashes and hellfire. Loud noise. Man-to-man-combat. Knives in the throat. This warfare was the worst yet. It was hell itself. He ran and ran and ran until he couldn't breathe anymore. They were talking some strange form of a language called German.
It was nasal, a more nasal dialect, more harsh. Everything was harsher. The whirlwind came again and swept him away. Now suddenly he was in a very beautiful room with a large fireplace and lots of treasures in gold and silver. There was a large desk with a chair there and a lot of flowers. This was the future, most certainly. He looked above the fireplace and saw a man who obviously was a leader of some kind. He had a beige uniform with some medals and a red, black and white sign on his arms. It was the swastika, the old roman symbol.
But this man had a greasy small haircut and a small, very silly looking moustache. He was wearing the same kind of uniform. The fire in the fire place spread its warmth across the room. He was holding a glass with some red-brown drink. He looked up at the painting again. Suddenly, in all of this luxury, he had a vision as he was looking at the portrait. The man's name was Adolf Hitler and the year was 1940 in the other reality. Alexander had slipped into the skin of one of his officer's, Josef Goebells, and Hitler was at the height of his fame. This was the Second World War of the century that would be the bloodiest of all. Hitler had already killed four million people and most of them were Jews. The aim was to eliminate the Jewish race and it was all because Hitler hated the fact that they were more successful than him. The world was at war. Hitler had created death-factories where they were executed. None but very few brave people knew. But in five years it would be all over and Hitler would commit suicide. Alexander puked into the fireplace at all this horror and was glad not having to live in this bloody time. The door opened and there he stood. Hitler. They shook hands and Alex could see inside Hitler heart. There was nothing there but smoke and hell. The whirlwind swept through his heart again and now Alexander was at the worst death camp and naked and about to die. He felt the fumes consume him .... and .... finally through his tear subsiding prayers he found himself back in the cave, crying for those millions of people that were to die. He cried until there was no turning back.
He had to at least save Belinda from hell. That was clear.
He was shoved back into Caligula’s throne room.
“You can escape all of this” he heard someone say, feeling his hands gripping Caligula’s dead skull and his own hands bloody. He looked toward the door and saw Beata in the toga again. Except now, it was not Beata. It was Lucinda. “You can escape all of this, if you only agree to my world.” She pointed to her own head. “All this can be yours. Sex in massive amounts, money in massive amounts, power, all the power in the world, food, oh, the best food you can ever conceive.” Her words were luscious, as luscious as grapes. Spit was dribbling out of her mouth. “You can have all the women you want for eternity, brother. Every one a dish.” But now he saw her for what she was. Her belly opened, at this distance he saw that, and it was full of worms.
“NO!” he cried. He felt his own voice echo in the cave. “No” he repeated softly.
He felt his arms and the weight in them. He was back in the cave now. Back in the calm cave.
The angel was still there, resting in his arms.
He looked up, talking to God. “Do something before it starts again. She is just trying to win time.
God, please help me get away from this woman.”
Alex nodded and stood up, kissing the angel on his forehead.
“I will save all of you, I promise.”
He laid the angel on his stone and flew up again, trying to find what it was he had to do next.
Mercutio was still there, thank God.
What about Adnicul?
No time for that.
Time to head down the tunnel.
Left was the place to go.
In the forest Adnicul was breaking out of his cycle, able to gallop into reality.
He knew that Lucinda was about to fool her brother.
One less lost destiny and he could at least live with the visions he had seen.
Lucinda would not win.
There was one part left and he would win that game, too.
Suddenly, there was someone close to him. It was Lucinda. She was beautiful, but dangerous. Like in a vision, he understood that she was the witch that Luicifer had wanted all along.
Of course. So logical.
She hovered in mid air, in a blue toga, brown hair falling across her breasts, lips red and full.
She was no longer Lucinda, but Beata. Her nougat coloured skin seemed to sing