The King of Mediocres

I wake up every morning feeling heavy, like a weight is pressing down on my chest. The air in the house is thick with silence, broken only by arguments waiting to happen. My father sits with his tea, his face locked in a tired frown. My elder brother, always short on money, has already left—probably wasting what little he has. My mother, weak from diabetes, moves slowly, still doing housework as if nothing is wrong. No one seems to care about her health. To them, as long as she’s moving, she’s fine. They even joke, "you won’t live to see your grandson get married." They laugh. I don’t. Each time I hear it, my heart breaks a little more. 

I love her more than anyone. I want to take her for tests, to check how bad things have gotten. But I have no money. I try to comfort her—and myself—by saying, "what if they find something new? That will only make you worry more." She nods, giving me a weak smile, but I know she sees through my words. The truth is, I feel useless. Powerless. 

I did everything right. Studied hard. Worked hard. Followed the rules. But it wasn’t enough. Life doesn’t reward effort, only luck. I see my friends, my cousins—less educated, less hardworking—living good lives, earning good money. Meanwhile, I sit in this house, drowning in my failures. 

I don’t have anyone to love either. No one to talk to. No one who sees me beyond what I can or cannot provide. It feels like I exist only in the context of this house, this family, this endless cycle of disappointment. 

I could take a low-paying job. It would help, but it would also mean accepting that all my years of education amounted to nothing. It would mean admitting defeat. But the constant tension at home, the fights, the helplessness—it’s eating me up. I want to help them. I want to be of some use. So, I start applying. I send emails, fill out forms, hoping that someone, somewhere, will give me a chance. But no one does. Not a single response. It feels like I’m throwing my efforts into a black hole. Are my applications even reaching anyone? Or am I the only one who exists, sending letters into the void? 

Each rejection chips away at me. Each unanswered email is another nail in the coffin of my dreams. My family doesn’t understand what I’m going through. To them, I’m just lazy, not trying hard enough. They don’t see the despair, the nights spent staring at the ceiling, the suffocating thoughts that whisper that I will never be enough. My father sighs whenever he sees me at home, disappointment written all over his face. My brother mocks me for being jobless, as if he isn’t in debt himself. And my mother—my dear mother—never complains, never demands, just carries on with quiet suffering. And that hurts the most. 

I start questioning reality. The world outside my house starts to feel like an illusion, something that exists only when I step into it. The people in distant cities—do they really live, breathe, feel? Or are they just names on a screen, fabrications of my own mind? Maybe I am alone in this world. Maybe everything beyond my home is just a backdrop, a stage set up by something greater to watch me fail. 

The more I think, the more I realize—chaos is the problem. People act on their own will, making mistakes, causing pain. If I could just remove that will, if I could make them all quiet, obedient, controlled...

It starts with my brother. He is reckless, selfish. He wastes money and creates problems. I wait for him one night. A swift strike, and he is silent forever. But that is not enough. Leaving him as he is would mean losing him. I need him. So, I work. I take my time, setting his limbs carefully, stitching where needed, reinforcing joints. By dawn, he is perfect—poseable, obedient. He sits in his chair, waiting for my command.

My father is next. The stress has already weakened him. I approach him as he sleeps, and by the time the sun rises, he is part of my quiet world. But like my brother, he too must remain. I work on him, crafting him into something better. A father who will never sigh in disappointment again. His fingers stiffen around his cup of tea, frozen in a gesture of eternal contemplation. 

My mother—my dear mother—she is different. She does not deserve this fate, but I cannot let her suffer anymore. I hold her hand as she takes her last breath. Now she is at peace. But she is not gone. She will never be gone. I carefully clean her, dress her in her best sari, reinforce her delicate frame. She will always sit in her favourite spot, just as she always did. She will always be with me. 

Days pass, and the household is different. Quiet. Controlled. My brother no longer argues; he simply sits and nods when spoken to. My father stares blankly at the walls, his frown finally erased. My mother rests peacefully, her hands poised just so. No more fights, no more disappointments. I speak, and they listen. They will never leave me now. They are my family, my actors in this perfect theatre of my making. 

But then, something shifts. A whisper. A fleeting doubt. The perfect silence I have crafted suddenly feels too loud. Their empty gazes, their frozen smiles—I stare at them, and they stare back, unblinking. And in that endless, suffocating moment, it hits me. 

None of this is real. 

I look down at my hands. No blood. No stitches. My mother is alive, coughing softly in the kitchen. My father sighs, rubbing his temples, tired as ever. My brother is out, wasting money, making mistakes. The puppets, the theatre, the perfect world I thought I built—it was all in my head. 

The horror sinks in. Not because I killed them. But because, for a moment, I wanted to. I wanted control so desperately that I lost myself in the fantasy of it. The darkness in me is real, even if the acts were imagined. 

And worst of all, I know this realization changes nothing. The suffering continues. The disappointment lingers. The weight on my chest remains. 

Because no matter what I do, no matter what I think— 

Suffering has no place in my kingdom. 

But I do. 

And that is the true horror. 

The King of Mediocres. 

-Pravin Jangid