Our Kingdom of Dust Read Online Free PDF

in his main hallway. Obviously this had to be rectified, but not before I’d peeked into each room. Every one was filled with an astounding amount of Disney crap. Just a massive collection of trinkets, dolls, lunch boxes, statuettes, Mouse Ears, music boxes, records, books…. It was like a fucking museum! I had no idea whether it was all a bunch of junk, and Jay was a crazy pack-rat, or if everything was ultra-rare and collectible, making Jay a shrewd millionaire. Either way, the dude had a hardcore Disney obsession.
    As I was closing the door of the last room I caught sight of a really old-looking metal contraption on a stand, rust and peeling white paint covering it, with a crank on the front and some sort of viewfinder on the top. I couldn’t resist. I walked into the room and up to the device, which said “Mutoscope” on the inner ring of the viewfinder. I looked into the viewfinder, turned the crank, and the screen filled with light as photos on a reel flipped past fast enough to turn them into a movie of W.C. Fields playing golf. It was just like the little cartoon flip-books I used to draw as a kid! Now this, this had to be worth something.
    I tore my eyes away from the viewfinder and examined the exterior, wondering what the hell it had to do with Disney. Attached to the top was a little frame that presumably held a title card for the movie. But in the frame was a wide shot of Jay with one arm around this very machine, the other around a young girl by his side, standing inside a wide, ornate entryway. Above the entrance was a sign that read “Penny Arcade”. I recognized it immediately as being from Main Street at The Magic Kingdom. The Penny Arcade had been long since replaced with a regular store that sold standard Disney merchandise, which was complete bullshit.
    I wondered who the girl was… a daughter, maybe?
    I turned and scanned the room. On top of a table that looked like it’d been made from fake tree trunks, and was likely a discard from Frontierland, sat a photo album. I looked around. Should I open the photo album? Was I this big of a snoop? Did I really want to risk getting caught red-handed?
    Yep.
    The album flew open. Young and skinny Jay with a wife and one kid, no tattoos, at The Magic Kingdom. Pages turned. Two kids, same wife, slightly fatter Jay, still with no tattoos, at EPCOT Center. He looks miserable. Jumped ahead a few more pages. A newspaper clipping. “Drifter Arrested for Attempted Convenience Store Robbery” shouts the headline. A picture of a man from the back, a Snow White tattoo on his shoulder. We can’t see his face, but who the hell else can it be? Turned to the next page. “Drifter Sentenced to Ten Years in Jail”. Damn. Next page. Jay, a totally different kid, totally different wife, at MGM Studios. Jay’s shoulders covered in tattoos. Flipped through just a few more pages. No wife, same kid, older, maybe twelve, Jay, kinda fat, both arms covered in tattoos, at Animal Kingdom, in front of some big tree thing. Turned the page. Nothing. Empty.
    I slammed the book shut.
    What. The. Fuck.
    I hightailed it out of the room and jumped back onto the couch, covered myself with the Lion King blanket, and spent thirty minutes trying to sort out the timeline in the photo album, before Jay finally came back.
    “How’re you feeling, champ?” he asked, even more chipper than before. “The stains all came out of your shirt!”
    “Yeah, man, that’s awesome. Thanks so much for that. I’m feeling good. Almost normal.”
    “Even better,” he said, “the urine smell came out of my upholstery!”
    “Thank God for that!” I said.
    I digested his cherubic expression like an antacid. It quelled the sickening feeling I’d had since looking at the photo album. It felt like a fist pushing into my gut, telling me that maybe something was off here. But his sweet, innocent, glee-filled expression stopped that fist cold, and I guess I felt like everything was going to be okay.
    How did