Lo and Behold

Once upon a time, in the distant Kingdom of Almost-Humans, two brothers—Lo and Behold—lived happily together as princes, chasing each other around the castle grounds and racing each other home when their almost-human butler called them to dinner. As the brothers grew older, they never concerned themselves with the line of succession—which one of them would become King of the Almost-Humans—until one fateful day when everything changed.

"Hey, brother," Lo said, "where are the carrots for today's feast? Father is planning to introduce me as his rightful heir to the throne of the Kingdom, since I am thirty seconds older than you."

Behold, who well knew how valuable carrots were to the succession ceremonies, had dug them all up the previous night, tied them into a tight bundle, and punted them into the forest. He shrugged. "I do not know, brother. Maybe some squirrels got to them."

"You mean rabbits?"

"No, I'm pretty sure I mean squirrels."

"Hmm. I will deliver the news to father." Lo said this unaware of his younger brother's treachery and jealousy, wanting the throne for himself.

Lo departed from the field where they were standing, and after consulting with his father, he agreed to wait another year to assume the throne, so that they would have a plentiful carrot harvest in advance of the proceedings. However, during the interim year, Lo departed on a dangerous mission to rid the Kingdom of Almost-Humans of a band of reported usurpers—Humans. He declared that species "pea-brained" and "incapable of unity" and he was right. He was gone for a month, and then three more, and after a while, the royal family began to fear that he had died. Behold volunteered to take his place, feigning grief while grinning inwardly, as he had hired the usurpers to lure his brother from the safety of the castle, and he had promised them a hefty sum of money to kill his older brother and dump the body in the Big River. Months later, with the carrot crop nearly ripe and the older brother still missing, the twins' father King Errant resolved to begin the proceedings to crown his younger son. But then Lo returned, and wanting to surprise Behold first—for he had missed his brother most of all during his months away—he hid in his brother's chambers while he slept.

Suddenly, Behold awoke, and seeing his older brother hiding ineffectually behind his favorite potted plant, said, "You want to know something, brother? I keep having these weird dreams of meeting you in this room, and then I'm in the throne room, where I'll be sitting because I sent you off to your death at the hands of the wretched, despicable Humans I hired to kill you. But I don't feel guilty. Power corrupts, am I right?" He yawned, then continued, "Also, it's a good thing that this story takes place in a time before small recording devices were invented. I'd be in a lot of trouble for admitting all of this and not feeling bad at all. Imagine the scandal!"

"But that's not what's supposed to happen," Lo said, dumbstruck, stepping out from behind the potted plant. "You tried to have me killed? You're supposed to unwillingly take the throne because you think I'm still alive."

"You're real?" Behold recoiled in faux-shock, but quickly recovered. "No, you fool! I wanted the throne to myself, so I stole the carrots and delayed your ascension, but you somehow escaped the ravenous maw of death. You will not escape so quickly now!"

Lo cast a fleeting look of helplessness at me, the narrator, who was watching this interaction occur from the comfort of the Royal Couch. "Hey, nothing I can do," I said. "This is your story, I'm just telling it. Nobody guaranteed it would happen just like it did with Sugreeva and Vali. And anyway, you'd still end up dead, dude."

"Dead?" he asked, and would have said more had not an arrow pierced his heart at that very moment. He looked down, and then back up again, seeing his still-pajama'd younger brother smiling evilly and holding a bow, its string still quivering. "Ouch," said Lo. "I think you've killed me."

Behold simply cackled as the older brother began to cry. "That was not very honorable, younger brother," said Lo.

The younger brother sneered. "Ha! I know! Honor is overrated. Sucks to be you! I will be the King of the Almost-Humans!" And Behold stuck his tongue out mockingly and feigned picking his nose. "You will make great fertilizer for the next royal crop of carrots, brother. The carrots for my coronation! Carrot-nation! Ha! And I'm sure the narrator loves that symbolism or irony or whatever."

"I do," I remarked quietly, but neither brother was paying any attention to me.

Staring at Behold, Lo opened his mouth to retort, to beg for a reason, to ask forgiveness, to inquire why, why kill me, to remind his brother that they were brothers, they always would be, that he loved him even though he shot him, that he always would love him, and all of this was because of carrots, how silly, but he had no time. Lo died and defecated on himself—the ultimate embarrassment.

Behold walked over to me and clapped me on the back. "Now, I need to hide the body," he said, "though I don't look forward to handling that messy bit." Behold hefted his brother's corpse onto his shoulder, careful to keep his hands and shoulder from touching the brown stain on his dead brother's pants. "You done good, narrator. Good... narrating." And he left me alone on the Royal Couch.

I wasn't sure if I agreed with him, but I was just the narrator, anyway. Like I said, it's their story, not mine.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I used the story of Sugreeva and Vali—their friendship followed by estrangement and eventual conflict, leading to the death of Vali—and I changed the structure a lot, making it a satiric fairy tale. I didn't like how Rama was able to justify the cowardly murder of Vali in the Ramayana, so here I made the intent explicitly evil. Though Narayan prefaces the scene with a note on Rama's cowardice, I still felt like the actual dialogue and justification Rama gives were weak and not befitting his character. I feel like Rama gets this pass too often, like when he tests Sita; that said, Brahma's intrusion into the narrative of the Ramayana is an interesting device, not unlike the meta one I am about to describe, since Brahma is a sort of 'author' of the situation, as a supremely powerful god. Also, the meta part was fun to write. I really enjoy breaking into the story as the narrator, becoming a character. I think it gives an interesting perspective into the nature of narrative and the writer's place in his or her own story, and I will probably be intruding into my own stories more than once in this Portfolio. And in terms of the impression of this ridiculous story—hopefully the story wasn't boring, but whether it was funny or not is entirely up for debate. Personally, I'd call it "laughable"—and you can decide what I mean by that.

Bibliography: Narayan, R.K. The Ramayana.

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