King For A Day

Picture an idyllic storybook town, technicolor-vivid blue sky overlooking verdant trees and placid lakes. It's the kind of place where bad things happen only in the horror stories kids tell each other over a campfire, where people leave their doors open at night and greet their fellow citizens in the street with genuine warmth; the tranquility of their lives never being interrupted by thoughts of lurking danger because there is none. Now go further and visualize this town as having no poverty or a single unhoused person, in which none want for food or water, and where disease, crime and inequality exist as mere abstract concepts. If you're now having trouble envisioning such an eden, don't worry, it's not due to an imagination deficiency, but because nobody outside of this place has ever seen it. This town exists in our world but doesn't belong in it, you might pass right beside it and not perceive it, for there are mists that shroud this paradisiac landscape away from prying foreign eyes. It is a place of magic called Obermont and, as this story starts, it was where Lucas Bronfield was about to make the most important decision of his life.

He was standing in the town square finding himself, for the first time in his short and hitherto uneventful existence, to be the absolute center of attention. Thousands of townsfolk had come to watch him perform their most sacred rite, so, naturally, all those present forgave him his visible nervousness, though none guessed at the full extent of the panic that now engulfed him. For as long as he could conceive of his own identity Lucas had longed for the admiration of others, to be recognised as someone of exceptional talent (what, specifically, hardly mattered), worthy of greater respect than the average man. Now that the moment presented itself and he had nearly the entirety of Obermont's regard Lucas wasn't feeling the euphoric thrill he had envisioned; sweat-inducing, breath-stealing anxiety was all he could feel instead. Perhaps this was due to the fact he knew he had done nothing to deserve this attention, or, most likely, because he was weighing how badly he was about to disappoint everyone.

They were gathered around the Wishing Well, the source of Obermont's supernatural prosperity. At the beckoning of the town's current chief, Lucas walked ahead to the front of the well, turned around and showed the crowd the little piece of paper he held in his left hand; then the coin he had in his right one, before taking a bow as tradition demanded. After the appropriate, appreciative nods from the audience, he turned and faced the well. He knew what was expected of him.

For centuries the people of Obermont thrived under a common pact. It was not enforceable (no form of tyranny existed there) and yet the unique conditions of their existence depended upon it. For reasons that would remain eternally a mystery (though many cults, religions and systems of belief had risen and fallen over the eras to explain this phenomenon) there was, and there had always been, an immense hole in the center of this region that could grant almost any wish to anyone who placed an object within it. It was hard to distinguish myth from history in a place where the two could often be the same, but the official foundation narrative went that one of the first settlers of Obermont had discovered this magical occurrence by accident, when he built a well around the hole and sent a coin spiraling down it wishing for an abundant crop, as a simple gesture of good luck, only to wake up the next day to find that a veritable effervescence of greens had sprouted from the ground.

The man shared with his community the miracle in his backyard and unwittingly ushered in an age of chaos without which the current peace couldn't have existed. Over the following years the Wishing Well would become the central preoccupation of every person in Obermont and their actions, from the kind to the barbaric, became the foundation of the system that now governed the town. Through the trials and errors of generations past, all citizens now knew the rules: wishing for eternal life, mind control or resurrection was useless, and the Well's supply of wishes was finite, just one per year. Likewise, it had a limited range, one couldn't, for example, be given control of the entire planet, the powers granted by the Well only worked within the bounds of Obermont (that being the reason why someone long ago wished for the town to become invisible to the outside world, believing, wisely, that the existence of such a resource would make Obermont and its people vulnerable to exploitation).

The most important lesson learned from the history of the well, however, was not to do with its mechanics but with the effect it had on people. The first few wishes, as one might expect, were reflective of the usual buffet of human folly; people wished for riches, beauty, power and, naturally, all to themselves. Whatever happiness this gave them, however, was surely short-lived, for all invariably discovered that these classic objects of desire are of little avail in a small world they can't control. Those who wished for money sooner or later found their back spiked by a sharp object and their treasures vanished; the newly beautiful couldn't use their gift to achieve romantic or sexual success since everyone now resented them and, because “power” was too vague a word, most who desired that ended up with some leadership role in a bureaucratic system that robbed joy instead of granting it.

Thus, the signature Obermontian selflessness was born from a pragmatic realization: it was better to wish something for the common good than to satisfy a personal craving and become a target for everyone else. So was the collective well-being achieved, with wishes such as the eradication of disease for all, abundance of food for every citizen in perpetuity and fair weather that each could enjoy equally. Wish by wish, the Obermontian people created together over the following centuries the utopic society they now lived in, and it was expected that whoever had the honor of making the year's wish would respect the tradition. Because the issue of who had the right to make the wish was a source of much violence and strife in those early years, they had established a system: the name of every person in Obermont was written on a piece of paper and randomly selected by the chief in view of all to avoid suspicion of treachery.

When Lucas heard his name spoken his brain didn't entirely assimilate the information; he understood what was said but it was as if each individual word existed in a vacuum and held no collective meaning when put together. Even when he read his own name on the paper and was congratulated by others, those warm smiles and back pats felt more like a strange pantomime than a concrete indication of a shift in his reality. Only then, frantically twisting the coin in his hand was he able to face the reality within himself he had been trying to suppress: he really couldn't care less about the common good.

Agonizing over his predicament, Lucas had a déjàvu; he realized he had once witnessed this same situation from the perspective of a spectator.

In the 23 years Lucas had been alive only one person had used the wish for personal gain; Alexander Novak, a painter, so singularly obsessed with his work that he took the opportunity to wish for the inspiration required to create a masterpiece, the one that would define his career. His desire was granted: that very day he returned home and started sketching the painting that would eventually become his final statement. Predictably, however, Novak's selfishness caused him to be shunned by the Obermont people, none of whom bothered to admire his masterpiece (or admit that it was good, if they did look at it) and, because outside of Obermont the painting couldn't exist, he had no other audience who could appreciate his accomplishment. He eventually moved into a cabin in the outskirts of town, never to be heard from again. Lucas had always wanted to ask him if it had been worth it.

The consensus opinion was that Alexander Novak had wasted both his own life and a precious year for the community, but Lucas never saw it that way. What everyone else perceived as a shameless act of narcissism Lucas understood as honesty, even bravery, a man choosing to defy expectations of politeness in pursuit of his own personal truth. He believed Novak was a kindred spirit, in that sense, and wondered whether he would have the man's courage if he ever found himself in the same situation. Well, Lucas' mind now screamed at him, do you?

Of course none of them would understand. How could they? Everyone seemed nauseatingly content with their own smallness. In his quieter moments of introspection Lucas had enough largesse of spirit to imagine that other people also had internal struggles they didn't necessarily share publicly, even in Obermont. However, when he looked at his peers, he was genuinely incapable of detecting the slightest hint of the angst that was his perennial companion. People ambled along their friction-free existence without displaying any wish for more, any inclination to do something special, to be someone special. Lucas simply refused to accept mediocrity as the status quo of life, the thought of living as a nobody was agony. But, could he face the ostracization that was to follow if he did use his wish on himself? And what would that wish even be, anyway? He knew very well he couldn't wish for people to worship him, since that would be mind control, and whatever talent he granted himself would be rejected in Obermont and nonexistent outside of it.

Perhaps it would be easier to just acquiesce to the majority and wish for a new delicious type of drink or something. And yet. Amidst the suffocating self-doubt, as Lucas kept hesitating and perceiving the growing uneasiness of the crowd around him, a feeling arose that was stronger than the rest. He suddenly knew, with certainty, that if he didn't fulfill his deepest desire that emotion would linger, stillborn within his soul, festering and rotting forever. Staring at the deep darkness of the well was like gazing into his own future; a black hole of nothingness stretching out into infinity. He would trade whatever common fate he had for just one moment of exceptionality.

And then it came to him. Lucas closed his eyes, thought of his wish and threw the coin. “One day”, he thought. “Just give me one day where I can be the person I've always wanted to be.”

When he opened his eyes again Lucas was alone in the town square, where a second ago thousands were gathered now there was none. But that wasn't the most startling change to him. He felt it before he could see it: the very mass of his body was unmistakably different. He looked at his hands and feet, noticing how much larger they were and ran to the nearest fountain. He had to restrain himself from screaming at the shock of realizing that the stranger reflected in the water was, in fact, himself.

His whole life Lucas had been a short, scrawny kid who nobody looked at twice, or paid attention to for longer than absolutely necessary. The hulking, artfully sculpted man staring back at him at that moment was as far from that as could be: handsome, tall and with a scintillating smile. All this he glimpsed in a few seconds, however, for he barely started gazing at his new complexion before a female passerby started screaming.

“Lucas Bronfield!”, she yelled in disbelief. “Everybody, Lucas Bronfield is here!”

Her impassioned announcement attracted the attention of others around and within minutes Lucas was once again surrounded by his fellow citizens, but this time with a marked difference: they were fighting each other for the most minute scraps of his attention, their eyes giddy with adoration. One man managed to distinguish himself from the mass by wielding his guitar.

“Please, sir, would you do us the honor?”, he said, embarrassed, while offering Lucas the instrument. “We've none of us ever seen an artist of such caliber perform live.”

Though the man's words were nonsensical something in Lucas that he couldn't explain knew exactly what he meant and, more importantly, he knew what to do. He picked up the guitar and brandished it effortlessly, the hand and body posture required came to him as second nature. The music he produced from the cords was as surprising and sublime to him as it was to his raptured audience. When he finished and saw many teary-eyed people clapping Lucas had to hold himself back from shedding a tear as well.

He understood then that his wish had been granted beyond anything his meager imagination could've conjured up by itself. Here it was, at last: a taste of what it was like to be the best at something, to command respect from a crowd and tower above them both with his talent and his superior physical appearance. He was surprised by the extent to which his desire had been fulfilled, down to having people adore this alter-ego of his, which he would've thought would be against the rules. But just as he knew when he picked up the guitar that he could play it, something inside him let him know with absolute certainty that there would be a price to pay: this was only temporary, and by tomorrow everyone would remember the trance he had invoked upon them. A day was all he had asked for, after all, and it was what the Well would grant, any more than that would be against the rules.

For the rest of that magical day, Lucas oscillated between euphoria and despondency. For the first time in his life he could sit among other men and share a drink without feeling inferior to them, for the first time he walked among women knowing he was desired by them. He tried to savor these sensations, to be fully present for these unique experiences so he could remember and relive them later. But later was precisely the problem. Mixed in with the giddiness of living out his dream was the apprehension of what was to follow. Already he was asking himself the elemental question: would this be worth it? Would one perfect day be a good trade over a lifetime of quiet discontent?

He tried to shut his mind and simply enjoy the moment. Tomorrow he would find out.