“I was only trying to be what you wanted father. I wanted to be like you. You whom the doctors claim are mad.” she sat looking out the window, not daring to look at him, at the glazed eyes and the drop of drool on the side of his mouth, at the pale dead skin. The only thing betraying life was the faint twitching of the open mouth and the rising and falling of his stomach. “You who commanded every room you entered. Who ensured loyalty with a kind word. who held the world atop your shoulders and never faltered!” She stood and raised her hands up. “you were magnificent!” She exclaimed and turned round to look at him, the sight cut her breath off and dropped her hands. Tears involuntarily came to her eyes, there was no one else in the room, so she let them fall. “I never saw you tell a lie, so I don’t know where I learned it.” The pain broke through her voice, her usually smooth tone replaced by a breathy, trembling whimper. “I cannot be you, I cannot be the ruler that you were. The king that you were.” she said sinking back into her seat, now sobbing. She fidgeted with her hands. “I cannot be you. But how dare you! How dare you not be that king anymore! How dare you lay there in that bed and disappear from the world! How dare you make my mother sit beside you every day and watch as you decompose before her eyes! How dare you let her rot with you!” She hissed careful to make certain no one outside the room could hear her. “I wanted to be like you but I am nothing, I am no queen, no daughter, I am not even an orphan because you will not make me one. Instead I come here and I speak to your corpse and pretend that you hear me because you will not make me an orphan in my own right! Live! Or Die father! But stop this. Stop this dead life. Stop making mother and I look for signs of you in this void only to come back disappointed.” She clutched the blanket at his feet. “Father.” She whimpered. His eyes moved, he looked at her. “My girl.” He said and something like a smile came across his face, then just as quickly as it had come it left, and his eyes glazed over yet again and his mouth resumed that disturbing twitching. She stared at his once powerful hands, his voice echoing in her mind. The glimpse of the living man in the tomb, the glimpse that made one hold on to the corpse.