All was quiet outside of Northampton Grove Castle. Or, to be more specific, the war was still over, and had been for three years now. Children ran around the hedges giggling, merchants shouted at the top of their voices trying to sell their products, and the rest of the townsfolk mingled with one another in glorious camaraderie. This new way of life had become normalcy ever since King Leonard had put an end to the oppression experienced by the residents of Northampton due to the infiltration of a neighboring country. Indeed, the endeavor had been expensive, and the loss of life heavy, but such is the cost to win a war.

Leonard was a King unlike anything anyone had ever experienced. Brilliant with his own finances in his youth, he’d applied his tried and proven strategies to his area of rule and brought about the first sustainable economic structure that not only greatly benefited his own country, but also his allies. His compassion toward those of lesser stature was genuine, his love and appreciation of the natural world was beautiful, and his generosity toward others was unmatched. He truly was the King that the country had always hoped for.

“Ahhhhhhhhhh!! Ahhh! AHHHHHHHHHHH!!” It was early morning. Though the sun was breaking through above, a thick fog still blanketed the rolling green hills of the castle grounds. A myriad of different colors splashed onto the walls in Leonard’s room, the sun piercing through the stained glass windows. Leonard had hand crafted those stained glass inserts himself because he loved waking up to a colorful room, which helped him start each day on a positive note. “Positivity is the basis of success,” he’d always said.

“AHHH! AHHHHHHHH!!” the blood-curdling screams continued.

Several housekeepers in Leonard’s employ rushed up the spiral stairwell. He preferred to identify them as his housekeeping employees, rightly feeling like it was a more dignified position. “Surely, that cannot be the King,” one of them said. “If it is, then something terrible has happened. It sounds like the man is giving birth!” he continued under his breath so no one else could hear but the ones he was with. They heard the sound of glass shattering and covered their heads before realizing that they weren’t in any danger in the stairwell.

King Leonard threw all of his furniture across the room in search of something else to pitch through the stained glass. He ripped the door off of one of his cupboards. Inside, dozens of ceramic mugs sat waiting to be put to use. Leonard grinned, then screamed at the top of his lungs in the direction of the mugs. He grabbed one in each hand and more glass shattered as they flew through the windows.

“Your Grace, what is it? How can we be of service?” a housekeeper asked urgently.

The King was breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling. He turned very slowly to face his housekeepers. “How can you be of service? How can you be of service, you lowly servant?”

The ego-bruised servants looked at each other nervously. A few began inching their way back toward the stairwell. This wasn’t the King Leonard that they knew. No, this was someone different. Someone scary, and dangerous. Leonard calmed down and smiled. He began chuckling as he walked toward the servant who’d asked how they could help. “You must think I’m overreacting,” he laughed. He patted the servant on the shoulder with a large hand, then turned his face into a scowl, violence burning in his eyes. He lifted the servant off his feet and threw him through the last glass window that hadn’t yet been shattered.

Leonard cracked his knuckles and looked at the remaining servants in the room. “Here’s what you’re going to do,” he said casually but with authority. “You’re going to round up all of your filthy servant friends, and you’re going to fill it with corndogs.”

The servants put their heads down in shame. “Look at me, look at me,” Leonard said, then repeated, “You’re going to fill it with corndogs, and you’re never going to stop.”

The servants looked at one another, entirely unsure of what the King meant. Reading their faces, Leonard graciously clarified, “I’m going to say it one more time. Fill it with corndogs. And. Never. Stop. And if I need to repeat myself again…” without finishing, he merely pointed at the window he’d just thrown the servant out of.

The servants ran at full speed down the stairs, one tripping on the way down and breaking an arm but unable to tend to it because of what the King had just ordered. In a matter of minutes, they’d gathered every servant employed in the castle. The first thing they did was set the kitchen servants to work on the corndogs. They then designated other servants to ensure than an adequate supply of ingredients was flowing into the kitchen at all times so that there weren’t any breaks in production.

The kitchen servants worked hard while the remaining servants stood around brainstorming what the King actually wanted. Sure, it was great that the corndogs were being made, but what were they to do with them? The King had commanded them to fill it with corndogs. Fill what with corndogs? No one had any idea where to start, nor did anyone have the courage to ask the King for clarification. Tension built as barrows full of corndogs began coming out of the kitchen but didn’t yet have a final destination.

The smell of freshly battered corn bread rose through the ceiling and through the floor of King Leonard’s room. His jowls quivered and his eyelids fluttered as he breathed in, and, in a brief and isolated moment of vulnerability, he truly appreciated his servants’ obedience to his orders. Of course, Leonard was very well-known for demonstrating how much he valued the people around him, but Leonard had no recollection of those memories. He was a completely different person, somehow, and he didn’t even know it.

The aroma in the air soon stretched his patience thin to the point that he began screaming. He stomped his feet so hard that dust and pieces of loose cement fell into the batter being made in the kitchen beneath him.

One of the servants alerted the others to Leonard’s approach. They straightened up as he stepped off the stairwell. Leonard looked around. Seven wheel-bounded barrows sat in the corner of the room, corndogs heaped so high that they were spilling onto the ground. Leonard froze with a deep scowl on his face, then he slowly started trembling, his face turning red as the trembling strengthened.

A few servants got the hint that Leonard was unhappy, so they began tossing handfuls of corndogs at his feet and all around the room. They stuffed vases with corndogs. Cups. Bowls. The fireplace. Holes in the walls. Soon dozens of servants were throwing corndogs through rare and expensive canvas paintings. They opened the windows and shoveled them out onto the ground below. Anywhere that a corndog could go, a corndog was placed, and the kitchen kept producing.

Leonard’s trembling eased up, which relieved the servants abundantly. But what the servants didn’t know was that Leonard’s trembling hadn’t stopped because he was satisfied with their efforts. No, he’d simply grown confused at what the servants were doing. Filling the fireplace with corndogs? The bathtub? What?

Leonard’s screaming from earlier that morning resumed, this time in the deepest pitch possible. Some servants fell to their knees as their chest cavities vibrated violently. Leonard began pointing in all directions, screaming, “FILL IT WITH CORNDOGS!! FILL IT WITH CORNDOGS!!” over and over and over.

Servants started wailing in fear, but continued throwing corndogs until everyone in the room was standing on a foot and a half of battered bread and blended hog. A few hundred servants wheeled dozens of barrows into the fields and started lining the fields with corndogs, destroying all the crops in the process.

The servants continued to fill every square inch of land and home in Northampton, but still King Leonard’s screams persisted. By the next morning, Leonard had issued a Royal Decree that if the servants didn’t fill it with corndogs, he’d start executing one servant every hour. And so he did. Soon, the fields were covered in beautiful golden brown corn bread, but spattered with the dried blood of servants who’d given their lives serving the King.

Thousands of servants died in the months that passed. In fact, every servant would end up losing their life and rotting in the field. All except one, a mid-twenties peasant called Simon.

Simon stood facing the King in the same place that it had all started, in Leonard’s bedroom. All of the kitchen servants had been executed, and there was no one else in the castle but the two of them. In his left hand, Simon held a plate of fresh, piping hot corndogs. The final batch made before the last kitchen servant was taken to the field. Simon, who’d already accepted that his death would undoubtedly come in the next hour, suddenly sparked an idea in his spoiled pudding brain. He looked at the corndogs, then at the King, then back at the corndogs, then at the King. He took a step toward Leonard. And another. Leonard eyed him the entire time, almost as if daring Simon to take the risk.

Simon came within a foot of the King. He took a scalding corndog in his hand and had to endure the second degree burn without wincing. Bringing the corndog slowly toward Leonard’s mouth, Leonard continued eyeing him suspiciously. Seeing that the King was not resisting, Simon touched the corndog to Leonard’s lips. Leonard began making soft noises to himself; mutterings of delight. Simon inched the corndog further in, Leonard allowing it by opening his mouth wider. The entire corndog slipped in. “Yes,” the King whispered.

Simon wondered how his King was able to say anything, then noticed that despite an entire corndog sitting in his mouth, the King could fit five or six more without difficulty. Simon set the plate on the floor and grabbed two more corndogs, giving himself a new burn on his other hand and worsening the first burn. He dropped the corndogs into Leonard’s mouth and watched as the King guzzled them down his throat like a pelican. Leonard looked at Simon peculiarly, then asked calmly, “What’s your name?”

“S…Simon, Your Grace.”

“Simon. My Diamond. My Diamond Simon,” the King stated in sudden adoration. “More,” he commanded.

Simon took to the kitchen as quickly as he could and made another batch of corndogs. My hands, is the only thing he thought during the entire process.

Once the corndogs were ready, he lifted the plate to Leonard’s mouth in an attempt to let the corndogs roll in and prevent his hands from burning even more, but Leonard rejected the offer. “No, my boy. One at a time, but still quickly. And get used to it, it’s just you and me from now on.”

Diamond Simon did as he was told at that moment as well as the next sixty years.