25th birthday story

This time I’ll tell you the sto­ry of my 25th birth­day, it was one of the most epic ones.

I had just moved to Eu­rope last July and was liv­ing in Ger­many. Be­fore this I had worked at a sum­mer camp, teach­ing chil­dren wilder­ness sur­vival through LARPing.

One of my cowork­ers, tech­ni­cal­ly my boss there, was in­volved in a project in Poland called Col­lege of Wiz­ardry. I had vol­un­teered for a LARP that this friend made in the USA and re­al­ly want­ed to go to a cas­tle and see peo­ple pre­tend­ing to be wiz­ards. So I signed up for a role as an Non Play­er Char­ac­ter, since tick­ets were re­al­ly expensive.

I wait­ed for months, hop­ing that I would get cho­sen. I even flew over to Copen­hagen for a CoW meet up be­cause I want­ed to meet the or­ga­niz­er and ask her per­son­al­ly. This worked and they picked me.

When there I met a ton of fan­tas­tic peo­ple, work­ing be­hind the scenes to make a mag­i­cal game. We were tasked with dec­o­rat­ing the cas­tle – mak­ing some of the rooms seem as if they were po­tion class­es or places to study mys­ti­cal animals.

There was even a dun­geon. I jok­ing said that it was too bad that I wasn’t a play­er, and that get­ting tor­tured in this per­fect lo­ca­tion would’ve been fun. Get­ting every­thing ready was in­tense and we con­cen­trat­ed on scenog­ra­phy for all of the first day, then all of us re­laxed in the tav­ern afterwards.

I met up with my friend I had worked with from the US, who was also there volunteering.

They taught us how to be goblins.

The next day, the start of the game, was also my birth­day. I spent this day in a very in­ter­est­ing way. For one of the first scenes, the char­ac­ters were do­ing a sum­mon­ing rit­u­al to cap­ture death and ask it some ques­tions. I thought this was an iron­ic thing to do on my birth­day. Me and an­oth­er NPC played the two dif­fer­ent sides of death, like a left & right brain thing. She was light heart­ed and pos­i­tive while I was cold and log­i­cal. One of the play­ers was even fool­heardy enough to ask us to go to the ball with him!

I signed up for more shifts, has­sled stu­dents as part of a pair of cor­rupt mag­ic po­lice and gob­lined around the cas­tle. A shift showed up at 1 a.m. where some­one was need­ed to tor­ture a play­er down in the dun­geon late at night, and one of the oth­er NPCs re­al­ly want­ed me to sign up with her. I did so, think­ing I could at least give some­one the gift of the ex­pe­ri­ence that I wanted.

Over­all It was a fun day, but I re­mem­ber feel­ing pret­ty iso­lat­ed and alone be­cause while I knew it was my birth­day – there was not much of a per­son­al ac­knowl­edg­ment of it. I qui­et­ly cried in a sauna for a few min­utes and kept my com­po­sure. Promis­ing my­self to live in the mo­ment and not re­quire too much per­son­al at­ten­tion to be hap­py. A friend of mine was work­ing as a fae in the tav­ern at this time, and I told her that I was hav­ing a bad time. She was very coy and cryp­ti­cal­ly told me, wait and see – things get better.

Lat­er that night, when it was com­ing on 1 a.m. I got dressed in a cos­tume, and head­ed down with the oth­er NPC. We walked down to the dun­geon, and wait­ed – get­ting ready for the play­er to show up for the scene. OR SO I THOUGHT.

Once we ar­rived, a French NPC lift­ed me up – and pushed me down on the tor­ture ta­ble. I had not no­ticed this be­fore – but a huge group of peo­ple was stand­ing around the dark dun­geon in black robes. My hands were bound to the wood­en ta­ble. The leader of the gob­lins, a scary Pol­ish man named Boru­ta – took off the hood of his robe. He was still wear­ing his gob­lin nose but he ripped it off saying,

“So Car­nelian … you know what we do here for the stu­dents is all pre­tend … but did you know … there is real mag­ic with­in this cas­tle. It’s with­in the walls, the stones itself!”

He had an amaz­ing as­sis­tant – a tall im­pos­ing French woman. She hand­ed him the huge knife.

As I was strapped down to the ta­ble in the dun­geon of this Pol­ish cas­tle. They cut open my chest. All the while I was scream­ing, “No don’t! I don’t need to be magic!”

But de­light­ing in the experience.

Boru­ta went on “Yes, we do this to all new re­cruits. Take a part of them, and re­place it with a stone from the cas­tle. So they will al­ways have to come back.”

At this point he breaks my ribs – reach­es into my chest and pulls out my heart – which he holds above my body drip­ping with blood. The French as­sis­tant licks the blood from my face as the oth­ers stand around chanting

“ONE OF US”

re­peat­ed­ly. They take a square shaped stone and place it in my chest where my heart once was – and Boru­ta crude­ly sews me up. They slather some sort of heal­ing balm on me as I strug­gle not to hy­per ventilate.

My chest feels much heav­ier. The man who owns the cas­tle comes in and puts his arms over my shoul­der. We all go out of char­ac­ter qui­et­ly as we walk over the bridge to the tav­ern. I am still shak­ing be­cause the blood was wet and it made my body very cold.

When we ar­rive at the tav­ern, a per­fect song is play­ing, A Lit­tle Par­ty Nev­er Killed Nobody 

and some­one has dri­ven over the bor­der to Ger­many to get me some ve­g­an cake.

I ex­hale and en­joy the crazy fae birth­day par­ty af­ter nev­er hav­ing to wor­ry about ever falling in love again – since my heart now be­longs to LARPing.

We danced un­til we drop.

Here is a pho­to of the love­ly amaz­ing peo­ple who made this possible.

Se­cret­ly plan­ning this all day, with­out my knowledge.

So much love to them.

—car­nelian king

Flom­mist Car­nelian King is a per­form­ing artist, prod­uct de­sign­er, toy mak­er and non­bi­na­ry clown cur­rent­ly liv­ing in Berlin. Copy­right © 2018 Car­nelian King.

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