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Spamton had begun exploring everything TV has to offer with Tenna. And unfortunately for the loud, proud, family-centric CRT, Spamton took a liking to TV Slop the most. As much as Tenna loathed that, out of EVERYTHING TV had to offer, Spamton preferred slop; he could never pass up the chance to be the puppet’s personal TV. Although, once in a while, he could break up the monotony with something educational. Spamton seldom protested once he gave it a shot.
It had become a nightly tradition at this point. Tenna would lie on his stomach with his head propped up in Spamton’s lap, as the puppet would embrace his chassis and press against his screen until the static wholly consumed him. His favorite shows, sometimes, purely an afterthought.
However, as a result of the slop consumption, Spamton had picked up new quirks. Quotes from these shows and iconic sounds tied to a moment that boiled Tenna’s blood littered the Cyber Darkner’s modern speech. And once he learned these quirks could get under Tenna’s skin, Spamton did nothing to minimize their frequency.
The CRT’s annoyance truly brought him such glee.
Tenna shoved the front door open as if it had looked at him funny. His expression twisted into a frown. It had been a hell of a day at the studio. A day worthy of a drink. But before Tenna could even make it out of the living room, Spamton intercepted him with an all too familiar shit-eating grin.
“WHAT DID THE [Ding-Dong] DO TO [Brace for impact]?!” he snickered, to Tenna’s disgust.
“NOT now, Spamton,” he grumbled, attempting to pass him by.
But Spamton stood right in his way.
“[It's not] NOW [It’s...] THEN WHEN?”
Tenna stepped over him, entering the kitchen, and made a beeline for the too-high-to-reach cabinet storing his good whisky. Then he retrieved a rather large glass, even for him, and popped the bottle open.
“WHY ARE YOU [Is this thing on?] [MicrophoneFeedback.mp3].” Tenna winced, curling his antennas and spilling some of the golden liquid on his glove. “HEY HEY HEY [CATHODE] [LaughTrack.wav]. [EYE] CANT [Real eyes realize real lies] I RISKED MY [BIG SHOT] LIFESTYLE TO MAKE A MOVE ON [CRT]S!”
“Spamton!” Tenna boomed, furiously scrubbing at the faint stain on his glove. “STOP. I am NOT in the mood! Just STOP or else-”
Unable to back down, perceiving his annoyance as a playful invitation, Spamton puffed out his chest and challenged, “OR WHAT?”
Disregarding his stain, Tenna downed half of the glass and slammed the cup down. It was a miracle it didn’t shatter. Yet, he was silent. Restraining himself despite every fiber, every internal wire, screaming that he should lash out… That Spamton deserved that for being so inconsiderate.
“[Karma is a wild animal... And she won't be caged!] WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT [IT] THEN?” Spamton snickered, his grin only widening as Tenna’s screen burned red.
“DO YOU EVER KNOW WHEN TO STOP? OR DID YOU LEAVE THAT PART OF YOU IN THE DUMPSTER TOO?” Tenna snapped. “I’M SO SICK OF YOU, SPAMTON! YOU AND YOUR TV SLOP ANTICS!”
Tenna approached the other, who shakily backed away in response.
“I KNOW FULL WELL YOU CAN CONTROL YOUR LITTLE QUIRKS BETTER THAN YOU LET ON. AND. YET!” Tenna turned his heel and threw both hands into the air, as if the heavens were watching and sided with the CRT’s woes. “YOU CONTINUE TO LITTER YOUR SPEECH WITH THIS GARBAGE TALK! ALL TO WHAT? HURT ME?! TO SPITE ME?! HUMOR ME, SPAMTON. WHY?! WHY?! WHY DO YOU-”
Tenna clocked that Spamton’s dealmakers had completely drained of color. They appeared to be glazed over with a layer of static.
The silence that followed was palpable.
Spamton gripped his hands and stood as to not face his chest to the raging darkner, but to point his shoulder at him. To ready himself to turn and run at a moment’s notice.
Crack
“Spamton…” the anger completely washed away from his voice.
“I’M SO SICK OF YOU, SPAMTON!”
Whatever else Tenna spewed fell on deaf ears. It sounded as if the CRT were underwater, far away from here. He may as well have been screaming into a void.
“I’M SO SICK OF YOU.”
Sick of you.
That can’t be right, can it?
He wouldn’t be. He….
He doesn’t mean that!
As the foggy echoing grew louder, Spamton backed up until it regained that much-needed distance.
Could he REALLY be sick of me now?
Could he really be…
He’s done with me.
He’s finally realized I have NOTHING to offer him.
…
He’s done with me!
Spamton grasped his hand in a bid to soothe himself.
It was a fruitless attempt.
He’s going to discard me again!
I…
I’ll have to go back to the dumpster…
I have nowhere else to go. I have nowhere! No one!
His eyes were glossed over with static until all he could see, all he could hear, was his approaching reality he wished to deny.
He doesn’t… love me anymore.
Something sharp tore through his chest. A shattering he had not felt in years. Not since his recruitment. Not since his reunification with Tenna and reconciliation with the Addisons. Not since those long nights of being discarded and distorted.
“Spamton…?” A voice tore through the fog.
The puppet’s eyes struggled to focus on the glow of Tenna’s screen. His vision was dull and blurred, worsened by beads pooling in the corners of his eyes. As the looming presence’s warmth grew, the only viable option seemed to be to back away from it. Away from it and into the painfully familiar cold. The cold he knew all too well, as much as he loathed it. For the warmth felt so threatening in this moment.
Throat tightening, heart pounding, his face felt paradoxically numb as his frame was overcome with a panicked rush. The flurry of questions circling his mind never froze long enough to materialize. Each one, fleeting, left to die on every hitched breath. Every breath which only pierced his chest, collapsing on the shards of his broken heart.
But despite the pain, despite the shame, he had to know. He had to know. He had to know if…
“You're sick of me…?”
Spamton was coherent. For the first time in a long time, he spoke in his old voice. Not his proud treble, not his raspy screech, not any of the voices Tenna committed to memory. The soft, broken voice he hid. The one after a threat or after a phone call. The one that slipped out during the breakdowns of a turbulent reunification.
It was dreadfully rare. Like news of an illness with no cure, in Tenna’s mind.
Panic drenched the CRT. Regret veered directly into his gut. A cold sweat materialized along his chassis as he struggled to maintain his height. Shrinking as he gave in to the dread, only to force himself back to his usual fifteen feet, he lunged at the puppet. Short of grabbing him, he knelt down before the smaller darkner and angled his screen every which way for a glimpse of his eyes past the static-filled dealmakers. As if seeing his eyes beyond the haze held some sort of an answer. As if it would really ensure Spamton was listening.
“No! NO! NO! Spamton! No, I DIDN’T mean that! I didn’t mean that! No!” Tenna gestured wildly.
But the other didn’t respond.
“Hey! Please! Spamton HEY!“ he desperately boomed, shuddering when Spamton winced. “Please listen to me! Please! Spam! Spammy!! LOVE LETTER! I didn’t mean that! I could NEVER be sick of you! I meant the QUIRKS, not YOU! Oh! Oh, I shouldn’t have said that! Hey!”
All hell broke loose the moment Tenna laid a hand on Spamton’s shoulder.
“NO NO NO NO NO!1! N0 NO0NONO! PL3ASE!”
With one slight shake, the smaller darkner lurched back, slamming square into the wall, overcome with a rapid, full-body glitch tearing him in and out of reality.
“LET GO LET GOO GO G0 LET GO!”
Tenna whipped his hand back; his focus deadlocked on the other. Yet he was paralyzed. Helpless to aid the puppet.
“PLEASE NO! NO STOP [Help me! Help me!] [ANGEL] FORGIVE ME DON’T [LEAF] ME FOR FOR [4.99$] [Sunday Pickup]!”
Tenna oozed with guilt.
His terror was raw.
His perceived helplessness left him frenzied and deaf, unable to comprehend Tenna’s corrective apologies.
There was nothing Tenna could do to deescalate the other. Even as he tensed to the point he couldn’t breathe, there was nothing that could be done beyond letting the fit run its course. As the puppet strained to expand his diaphragm, clawing at his throat in vain, a click echoed through the room.
Tethered to his beaded leash, a cyanotic little heart with a golden expression burst from Spamton’s chest cavity. It lunged at Tenna, full throttle. As the CRT raised his arms, barring his face, he clicked off his screen, anticipating a barrage of bullets when…
Nothing happened.
Clicking his screen back on and peeking through the space between his forearms, Tenna observed the little heart-shaped object crash to the floor with a stomach-churning shatter.
His little heart tended to be violent when Spamton was in danger. Even in moments of tenderness, it was wild with a mind of its own. It did as it pleased despite how Spamton reacted… Tenna had never observed it give up. Never.
Following the leash, Tenna laid eyes again on Spamton, curled tightly into a ball and frantically whispering pleas for… mercy. He, otherwise, seemed stable. He appeared to be breathing and glitch-free, short of the occasional hitch. But he made no other movement as he shut out the world around him… with his entrails quite literally splayed out before him.
Tenna lowered his arms, resting his hands on either knee, and somberly stared at the other.
What could I say to make him believe everything is okay?
The more he tuned into those whispers, the more it sank in that there was nothing he could say. There was nothing Spamton would be able to hear. Not in this state.
After months of progress and regaining mental clarity, it felt as if they had taken one giant step back. All of that growth… crumbled under a few careless words. And it was devastating... No. No, devastating was not grave enough to capture how truly shattered Tenna felt in that moment. As much as he swore he wasn’t “that darkner” anymore, there he was. Making the same mistakes he always did. There they were, threatened by uncertainty. It filled the CRT with a cold, nauseous panic that tore open his wounds of abandonment. Wounds entirely avoidable, damn near self-inflicted by his ignorance. Wounds with worlds more of an impact on those closest to him and ever on himself. Clouded, desperate to wallow in his own woes, something unforeseen in the television refused to let him off the hook... To rewrite the situation…. To act as if he knew best, knew exactly what to do.
He, and he alone, had hurt Spamton, and he had to repair it.
Acting purely on impulse, Tenna scooped up the only thing remotely open to him. Spamton’s heart. Despite what just unfolded, he found himself baffled at how dead it appeared. How slack and cold it felt in his palms. While it had always been cracked, for as long as Tenna had known of its existence, there was something off about its entropic stripes. The pattern was not what he remembered.
As Tenna intently traced a claw along the cracks, a signal reached his screen. A signal akin to reading a tape. Furrowing his brow, he fine-tuned the claw within a hairline fracture until his expression clicked off and his screen projected a memory. Following along its shape, the memory played. A memory of the pair fighting in the TV World. A memory where Tenna struck his costar across the face. He shuddered as he recollected that fight, and deviated from that fracture onto another the moment his claw hit a crossroad.
Another fight. This time, Tenna had repeated something rather vile to the Addison that he deeply regretted and would rather not listen to again…
A gift. He couldn’t recall what it was, but in the memory, it was clear as day. Some sort of drawing. A drawing he refused to acknowledge, preferring to scold Spamton for slacking off…
…
Exiting the fracture, his claw slipped into a larger crack.
The fight with the Lightners. His raw desperation for freedom… and the anguish that even cutting the strings would never be enough…
The Addisons turning their backs and slamming the door on him. Then proceeding to pretend he never existed. As if he wasn’t one of their own for decades before meeting Tenna… The only thing he remotely had to a family.
His claw sunk into a crevice so deep it slipped into the heart.
The phone call… Those garbage noises were indecipherable to Tenna, even from Spamton’s point of view. But his terror was substantial.
The puppetfication in more detail than Spamton had ever been forthcoming with… The cracking, the screaming, the gargling cries for help.
His abandonment by the Addisons following the fall…
His hopeless prayers for Tenna to find him, only for nobody to come to his aid…
Then there was this moment. A sizeable crack overlapping the others to the point that a small portion of his heart shattered into hundreds of little shards. Some sizeable dust coated some of Tenna’s fingers. The CRT’s internal wires twisted at the revelation. Dust was never a good sign among darkners. The layer completely rendered his mechanical heartbeat into overdrive. Nonetheless, Spamton never responded. There wasn’t even as much as a break in his susurrous prayers.
“That’s what caused you to break…” the television mumbled, focusing on Spamton as he held the heart perfectly still. “I mean…it REALLY shouldn’t have been a mystery to me…honestly…”
“I still remember the night I met your heart for the first time. You were so…frenzied. Upset about something when it BURST out. I remember holding it and…” Tenna swallowed harshly. “…promising to never break it again. And...well… here we are. It’s…” he looked at the heart. “…more broken than ever.”
Comforting Spamton in this state was a puzzle, but he had to do something. Leaving him alone would only fuel his fear of abandonment, and there was little Tenna thought to do by staying.
He recalled how the Addisons would seamlessly go about comforting Spamton. Shortly after reunification, the puppet’s episodes baffled the presently well-meaning CRT. It was always as if he could never do anything right to soothe him…but the Addisons always could. Being made of code, Spamton had enough residual for them to read. To decipher exactly what was going on, even when he was too worked up to speak.
Pink always managed to talk him down and helped his companion find his words before offering to hold him. Blue was silent, only there to listen. Spamton was left in control of how the interaction went down and if he’d ultimately want to be embraced. There was something remarkable about how being crushed in the blue Addison’s arms and allowed to melt into those feathers quieted the puppet the quickest. However, neither approach was guaranteed to work…
Orange opted to distract Spamton, pulling him away from the problem until he was stable enough to circle back. Most often, he took Spamton to the shop under the guise of needing a model or access to hair to practice styling. Then, finally, there was Yellow. The least emotional in the flock. He was typically called when Spamton was in a rage because his approach was to take the other somewhere isolated and let him go nuts. They’d punch the walls, crush the accessible trash, and wrestle with one another. Whatever it took to tire the smaller darkner out so that he’d talk with one of the others. Tenna had to admit, it horrified him how violent Spamton could become, but Yellow never appeared to mind. He suspected the Addison felt he deserved such a fate from his companion. Either way, it was nothing Spamton’s angels could fix….as soon as he was calmed down.
So, there they were once more.
Did he call the Addisons and face the shame of needing their help so far into the reconciliation? Or did he mimic their approaches…?
But Spamton… Spamton wasn’t talking.
He wasn’t moving.
He wasn’t responding whatsoever.
And he definitely didn’t want to be touched.
…
There was a program Tenna remembered him linking. Being too early in the day for his slop to be on, Tenna raced through the channels until he caught the signal he needed. On his screen, a Light World documentary about planes broadcasted. “Cungaderos that could touch the heavens,” Spamton once called them. The narrator’s voice was honeyed, low and smooth. Soothing on the weary ears. And the footage looked rather old. Desaturated. Easy on the eyes.
Tenna sat cross-legged on the floor at arm’s length, leaning down slightly to make his screen as visible as possible.
It would take an agonizing ten minutes for Spamton to peek out of his arms. Shortly after he was finally reached, the color on his dealmakers gradually returned. Heart still spilled out on the floor, Spamton then uncurled, his back and limbs aching tremendously from the constant tension. Although he refused to move closer, he had begun to move. Playing with his hands, pulling his fingers to crack the ball-jointed knuckles, he slowly pulled himself back into reality, eyes locked on the program.
It took the entire length of the documentary before the puppet uttered a woeful, “I’m sorry.”
Tenna clicked his expression back on. His lower lip trembled through a forced smile as he fought every urge to sob.
“No, no no,” he cooed. “Spamton, you don’t need to be sorry.”
It took every ounce of self-control to resist scooping the other up.
“I’M sorry for lashing out the way I did. I NEVER should have said those awful things to you. I LOVE you SO much. With EVERYTHING I have…” he scooted a little closer, pausing when Spamton grimaced. “I could…I would NEVER EVER throw you away! For as long as I live, you’re stuck with me!”
Spamton appeared to relax a little, but remained frozen on alert.
“I…I had PROMISED never to break your heart again…and…” he reached forward, handing his heart back. “…I broke that promise, and I will do ANYTHING to make it up to you!”
Shuffling nervously, Spamton gingerly retrieved his heart. As his fingers closed around it, his entire frame flinched when one slipped into the object. Turning it over, his expression sank. The shards that weren’t pulverized remained on Tenna’s glove. He swiped them off and desperately tried to put the pieces back into place, but they didn’t fit. None of them fit within the gap nor each other.
“NO...NO NO…” he muttered, shoving all of the pieces carelessly into the crater to create some semblance of repair.
They would fit by force, but it wasn’t painless.
“NO…NO.. N0 O NO,” his breathing trembled, and tears streamed down his face. “[EYE] C A N T FIX [IT].”
Turning away from Tenna, the puppet curled in on himself and wailed.
“I CANT FIX IT [EYE] I C@NT FIX IT! I CANT!”
Tenna couldn’t idle anymore. He shrank down to Spamton’s size and hesitantly embraced the entirety of him from behind… entirely on impulse. His embrace was tight and soul-centering. Although the puppet refused to uncurl, he didn’t resist this time. He allowed Tenna to hold him as an equal until his ribs ached and he was sufficiently tuckered out.
“[EYE] DONT NO HOW TO FIX IT…”
Tenna squeezed him gently and asked, “What about your angels? Could they do anything to help?”
Spamton held his breath until Tenna’s arms relaxed.
“THOSE [WORMS] CANT DO MUCH. THEY HAVE TO FUSE BACK [Alone, on a Friday night?]. IT LEAVES THOSE [Hideous] [Stars and stripes] AFTER…” he explained, his voice damp and crackling.
“Should we bandage it then? To keep the shards STILL?”
“WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?” Spamton shook his head. “I DON’T KNOW HOW MUCH MORE IT CAN TAKE.”
Tenna pulled back, staring at Spamton in disbelief, mentally screaming at him not to utter the words he dreaded most.
“IM WORRIED ILL [DeathKnell.mp3] IF IT CRACKS [3, 2, 1] MUCH.”
Tenna felt as if his mechanical heart was going to explode. Such a spike in stress pieced his cathode-ray tube with a throbbing migraine so intense he had both hands digging their claws into his chassis.
“No, no! NO, don’t say SUCH THINGS, Spam!”
Spamton’s lack of a response communicated more than any rebuttal could.
“That CAN’T happen! I WON’T! I WON’T LET IT!” Tenna smiled despite the stress, although it was clearly strained. “Just…Just TELL ME what you need! What your HEART needs! Spam!!” he yanked both of his antennas.
The puppet was at a loss for words, having accepted the grim situation for what it was quicker than Tenna liked.
“H-here! HERE,” the CRT boomed, releasing his antennas and pulling his shirt open near the collar in such a way that some of the buttons snapped off. He pulled a small compartment situated in his left pec open and withdrew his star-shaped object. “Take MY soul!”
Spamton flinched as the star was shoved into his hands.
“Maybe it can help! USE IT! Use it HOWEVER YOU WANT! I don’t even care if you TEAR IT APART UNTIL WE’RE EVEN! But you CAN’T DIE! YOU CAN’T YOU CAN’T!”
The puppet refused to react despite how beside himself Tenna became. The years of arguments left him suspecting his melodramatic husband was trying to twist the situation. So, he rolled his eyes and refocused on his heart, largely ignoring him. Yet, as Tenna was audibly composing himself, Spamton was curious to see his heart-shaped object lift up. The frail little thing mustered all of its strength to rise from his palm. It must have had more in store, as it began to move…towards Tenna’s soul.
The little soul nuzzled into the star before pressing the fresh wound into it. Both darkners lurched as a sizzle emitted from the objects and a faint orange glow dusted Spamton. Concerned, Tenna scrubbed his screen clean and looked over the other’s shoulder in awe. The loose shards of glass haphazardly shoved into the hole melted into one cohesive glop. And when the heart withdrew, the orange cooled into a warped, sickly cyan color roughly matching the rest of his heart. The scar was anything but pretty, but it was a far cry from being cracked. It certainly ensured the soul wouldn’t shatter anytime soon.
“I didn’t know it could do that…” Tenna mumbled.
“NEITHER DID I…” Spamton responded.
The pair watched as the recovered little heart flopped back into Spamton’s palm, followed by the star. Despite everything, the little pair nuzzled warmly into one another.
“Does it hurt?” Tenna inquired, scratching small circles into Spamton’s back.
“NO. NO IT DOESNT [It hurts! It hurts!]. IT FEELS… WARM.”
“Good…good. That’s good.”
“…[CATHODE]…”
“Yes?” Tenna hummed.
“THIS DOESNT FIX EVERYTHING YOU NO.”
“I know that…” he sighed.
Although plenty angry still, Spamton was even more exhausted. So he slumped against Tenna, pressing his entire weight into the equally sized CRT as their souls wrapped around one another, taking solace in the company. The world had finally come crashing down. Those glitches finally caught up to him. The puppet found himself unable to keep his eyes open and rapidly losing consciousness. As he slipped away, there were no slurred utterances of forgiveness…and there never would be, for the damage was done. The glasswork… merely a bandage to prolong his life.
True to his word, Tenna would be there regardless. So to ensure he slipped asleep as peacefully as possible, his expression clicked off, and the credits of the documentary resumed. The outro music was soft and followed by static, a white noise that never failed to silence the little darkner’s mind.
Once he was asleep beyond any shadow of a doubt, Tenna regrew and cradled both him and the souls. He carried Spamton to their shared bed and tenderly laid him down, making sure to adjust the pillows until his body, disturbed by the movement, relaxed. Beside him, the souls were placed to rest, Tenna’s star still comfortably wrapped in the heart’s leash and nuzzling in. Then the covers were drawn only over the puppet’s frame. Tenna smiled subtly as Spamton curled into the warmth and successfully dozed back off.
It was well into the evening, and neither of them had eaten since lunch. Spamton must have been unable to tell he was starving behind his stress. While Tenna would keep himself busy with household chores, he contemplated calling the Addisons for some Cyber World recipes to try for dinner.