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Having a roommate is tough. It’s even worse when said roommate is part coworker, part fellow cult member and also a deranged clown. (Spamton can imagine Jevil’s nonexistent nose wrinkle with distaste for the word, much preferring the term “jester.”) And it gets even worse when your apartment isn’t an apartment, but a void in some kid’s inventory. But Spamton can’t complain. Anything is better than living in literal garbage, and this place, although unfathomably terrifying on a level he can’t explain, has the benefit of being rent free.
And luckily for him, said deranged clown is a self-proclaimed expert in what he calls “code manipulation” whatever that means. Using this, He was able to turn a section of literal nothing into a cute little suburban house with a back yard. It is shockingly normal, but Spamton guesses that even someone like Jevil craved normalcy now and again.
Spamton is face down in bed in his room (which was just a little bit smaller than Jevil’s room. He knew Jevil designed it this way just to fuck with him.) It’s been about a week since the whole “Neo” thing, and Spamton has spent a huge portion of that time sleeping. He had about a decade of sleep to catch up on after all. And the more time spent sleeping was less time thinking about that time when killing three teenagers seemed reasonable. God he’s messed up!
Suddenly he feels something hit the back of his head. Spamton reluctantly turns to face the distraction, the right half of his face still buried in his pillow. Jevil looms over him with a bag of popcorn, and without hesitation, throws another piece at his face.
“Jevil what the [[@$@!]]” Spamton cries, sitting straight up.
Jevil’s cat-like eyes stare at him as he throws a handful of popcorn in his big toothy maw.
“Are you ok, ok Spamy?” he says while chewing.
Well… that is unexpected.
“Why should you care?” Spamton mumbles in response, crossing his arms.
“Well, I dunno…” Jevil returns.
Spamton notices that Jevil only does his whole cryptic rhyming schtick when he wants to intimidate someone. When it’s just the two of them he talks more or less normally. But it’s not all just a put on. He’s still genuinely insane.
“I’m just kind of worried is all…” Jevil continues. “You’ve stayed in your room for a whole week, week? Are you sick or something?”
Spamton stares back and his deranged … friend? Does this mean they’re friends now? He mumbles back a reply.
“Just with [[ Did you know that 1 in 5 adults suffer from mental illness?]]
Jevil starts to laugh but then abruptly stops when he realizes it isn’t a joke.
“Well… shit.” Jevil says, throwing the popcorn bag in the air. It disappears with a loud pop.
“You know what makes me feel better.”
Spamton’s eyes narrow.
“The place I’d go when I feel blue, blue...” The clown continued.
“Don’t you [[[$!$!]] dare.” Spamton whispers.
“It’s the…”
Spamton sighs, closing his eyes tight. Preparing for the teleportation.
“Carnival!!!”
Spamton, falls to the ground with a painful thud. His bed disappears, or more accurately, he disappears, because he is now surrounded by a huge crowd of other darkners.
He slowly gets up to his feet and finds that he was no longer in the void, or Cyber City for that matter. He is surrounded by creatures he has never seen before. Strange little denizens shaped like puzzle pieces, and snake-like creatures in blue and white intermingled with the regular Werewires and Plugboys.
He half-remembers Jevil telling him something about his Queendom and Jevil’s Kingdom fusing together, but he assumed that it was some sick joke on Jevil’s part.
But here it is, his painfully small emulation of the world has magically grown bigger. It is not true freedom, not the sacred land above he longed for, but it was something. This little carnival with its garish lights, sickeningly sweet fried food, and death-trap rides seems like a glimpse into something better than what came before. It was more than he deserved.
While looking around he sees that the two of them were surrounded by a large fence. They are both on the wrong side of the ticket booth.
Spamton’s head swings back towards Jevil
“Jevil! we snuck in without [[Proof of purchase required.]] That’s illegal!”
“Sure Spamy, like you are the perfect law-abiding citizen, what with the breaking and entering and the attempted child murder, murder.”
“You tried to kill them too…” he whispers, shame creeping into his voice.
“What? No! We were just playing, playing! Kris loved it!”
Spamton doubts that they actually loved it.
Spamton’s thoughts are broken by an overly excited screech. A noise he had never heard Jevil make before. “Look Spamy, A ferris wheel, like the one in Cyber City. Let’s go, go!!!”
Jevil’s hand clasps onto Spamton’s a little too tight.
He pulls him through the crowd, the sheer level of external stimuli makes his head swim. Then suddenly fear strikes the disoriented salesmen. What if they are here. The other Addisons. After a few moments of sheer panic, he was met with a wave of pure relief when he notices that all the carnival games and food stalls were manned by the denizens of Jevil’s world, and it was impossible for an Addison to be in the crowd of tourists. Cyber City would freeze over before an Addison would take the day off.
All of this is forgotten when Spamton sees something amazing out of the corner of his eye. It is a carnival game, one where you throw baseballs at bowling pins to win prizes. The booth is ocean themed. stuffed animals of dolphins and colorful fish hang from hooks. The top prize is a huge stuffed animal of a white clam, mouth open, revealing a blue pearl. Spamton comes to a dead stop causing Jevil to look back at him with concern.
“Pipis” Spamton whispers under his breath.
There it is. A sign from his patron. No, he corrects himself. He needs to get over this whole “I am the messenger of an otherworldly being so powerful he is basically god, so anything mildly convenient for me is divine intervention.” Complex he has. It’s probably just a coincidence.
“You want that weird oyster thing Spamy?”
Spamton scoffs and crosses his arms in indignation.
“Me? Want a toy? I am a fully grown [[ Adult supervision.]] I don’t need [[Fun for the whole family.]]
Don’t worry Spam, I’ll win you your freaky toy, toy.
“No Don’t!” Spamton called out. “Carnival games are all rigged. Those [[Pinball wizard]] are stuck to the table, probably with magnets [[ How do they work?]] or [ Sale on super glue two for one today only!]]
Jevil looks down at the little salesman, his eyes suddenly becoming serious.
“Of course, I know that. I used to perform here before I was hired by the king's court, and no one has won that game, game the entire time I was here. But luckily for you Spam, I can do anything!” He whispered this last part, like it was some kind of inside joke. Spamton just rolled his eyes in response.
Jevil approaches the carnival worker with all the grace of a seasoned gymnast. The worker is one of those snake-like things. Spamton sees a handwritten sign leaning against the stand. It reads “I am a Rudinn. Stop asking!” A small glimpse into the dynamic between two isolated societies that were fused together over night.
The Ruddin in question is reading a newspaper, actively trying to ignore her potential customer.
“Greetings shop keep!, Shop keep! I desire to take your challenge, so the grand prize I may reap!”
“Hey Jevil, how was prison?” The Ruddin asks, not even looking up from her paper.
A myriad of expressions dances across Jevil’s face, before landing on pure confusion.
“How?” Jevil sputters out.
The Ruddin turns the newspaper around for the two men to see, revealing the headline. “Violent Criminal Escapes Prison.” Underneath is a black and white photo of Jevil floating in the air. He is small in the frame and blurry. He looks like a new species of cryptid.
“There’s a big bounty on your head too. You must have pissed off the wrong people, man.”
Jevil tries his best to reclaim his flippant devil-may-care attitude, but his rhyme scheme is lost in the process.
“Oh? Does that mean you will turn me in, in?” Jevil asks.
“Nah.” came her reply. “The article says you’re probably the most powerful and dangerous Darkner of all time, so I'm staying out of it. So, you want to play or not?”
Spamton stares at Jevil with awe and a hint of respect. He is no longer the most wanted criminal for once. It feels refreshing.
Spamton snaps out of his thoughts as jevil slaps some Dark Dollars down on the table.
His face breaks out into a bone-chilling smile revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth. “Prepare to witness the birth of a legend. One that will haunt your establishment until oblivion...”
“Uh huh” came the Ruddin’s unimpressed reply. She tosses three baseballs on the table.
“You have to knock all three pins over for the grand prize.”
Jevil picks up the first ball and makes a grand show of carefully aiming at the pins. His throw is weak, causing the ball to fall to the ground.
“Aw, rats!” he sighs, turning back to Spamton, an over exaggerated frown plastered on his face.
Spamton just squints his eyes in return, knowing something is up.
Jevil’s second throw hits the back wall of the stand, somehow missing all the pins.
“Well...” The Ruddin cuts in “If you hit one pin you could still get a clown fi-”
She was interrupted by the sound of a slide-whistle. Jevil had thrown the last ball and now it was doing loopty loops in the air, whistling as it goes.
Spamton and the Ruddin both stare up at the physics breaking ball, mouths agape.
With a snap of Jevil’s fingers, the ball comes down and knocks down all the pins at once. The after math reveals a huge chunk taken out of the table the pins were on. It turns out one of the pins really was glued to the table.
Jevil calmly floats up and grabs the oyster, tossing it to Spamton. Spamton, still shocked by the sudden turn of events, is hit in the face with the soft toy. It is almost as big as him, so he has trouble holding it.
“Well... onward! Jevil calls out to seemingly no one in particular, rushing off to the ferris wheel.
“Umm...” Spamton starts, looking over to the Ruddin. “Sorry [[ No Refunds! ]] about my … friend.”
The last word felt weird coming out of his mouth. But weird in a good way.
The Ruddin didn't respond, still staring at the damage left behind.
“I hope I don’t have to pay for this.” She whispers to herself as Spamton walks away.
Before he knows it, Jevil and Spamton are both squeezed into one of the ferris wheel’s gondolas. “Squeezed” being the key word. Spamton’s new stuffed animal takes up the middle, so the two Darkners are pushed off to the sides. As they slowly rise into the air, Spamton puzzles over what just happened.
“Hey Jevil, why did you do that?”
Jevil is pulled away from excitedly looking down at the people below.
“You wanted that thing, so I got it for you,”
“No, I mean... why did you wait for [[Three strikes, you're out!]] to win. You could have won with the first ball.
“Easy!” Jevil smugly says, sitting back in his seat. “It’s the same reason I didn't poof one into existence for you. It would have been boring, boring! When you can do anything, anything, nothing is really worth doing, ya know?”
Jevil laughs at this, but there is something harsh behind it.
His laugh stops abruptly. “You know spam... sometimes I think you’re the lucky one.”
“But...” Spamton cuts in. “You’re free! Free from this prison that’s our [[World Wide Web]]. You’ve reached [[HEAVEN]] You know more about what’s real then any [[customer]] here.”
Spamton gestures to all the people below.
Jevil gazes down.
“Sure, but knowing doesn't change anything. Knowing you're in a prison doesn't make you free, free. Knowing how to manipulate the code of our universe doesn’t put you outside of it. Sometimes I think I’d be better off if are mutual patron didn't tell me anything in the first place.”
“I know how you feel...” came spamton’s weak reply. a tear slowly slides down his face.
“Hey Spam... look at me”
Spamton sheepishly looks up.
“As shitty as everything is, you are better off than me. Sure, your head’s kind of messed up, but you have nothing on my lunacy, lunacy. I don’t think you’ll ever go back to how you used to be, but at least you haven’t changed fully. You’ve severed your ties to him, but I’m tied to him forever.”
Spamton thinks on these words as their gondola reaches the top. He looks out onto his minuscule world, The darkness that he could never truly escape from. But the festive lights below paint the night in beautiful vibrant colors.
“It might be all [[a scam]] but at least it’s one [[Hell]] of a view.”
Jevil nods in agreement.
“Hey Jevil...” Spamton continues. “Could we come back to the [[ Local county Fair this weekend ]] again.
“Yeah...” Jevil smiles. Not with a maniacal smile or cryptic smile, but with a soft, genuine smile. “Yeah, I’d like that a lot.”
END