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Spoke is Jamato's greatest creation.
From the way he curls his bangs, to the mundane way his eyelashes seem to flutter when the warmth of a cologne is around and finally, the way he plays with his fingers to exploit the childish binary of the code, everything seemed to revolve around the very voidling.
They are not brothers of the same blood, nor are they lovers, but they are one that shares a lineage of ancestors with a material of the dark and the light. They say that black is white under light, and white is black under the shadows. There is no difference—they are each other.
White was purity and hope, and black was despair and evil.
Mapicc was stupid for believing that the shadows were the light of his guidance. Black is not white without the sun.
His eyes scanned across the room, setting on each different guard that seemed to line the red carpets that rolled their way from the wooden chair to the huge gap of the entrancing door. He purposely ignored the swift of the messy black hair that seemed to wave right by his nose.
He could feel a cold trail drag from his nostrils, dripping down the skin of his upper lip and falling between his lower or his pearly teeth. Like a snail, the trail of red was slow in its wake.
Mapicc lolled his head to the side, his chin poking his shoulder before he forced himself upright, and stared down at his lap, to avoid the playful sneer of the devil leaning shy of his face. The drops of blood were not of a significant difference to his red hoodie.
..spotting, and eventually blending with the natural color of the woven fabric.
His fingers twitched over the numbness of the lack of movement.
Eventually, another set of fingers placed beneath his chin with unsettling gentleness, performative and unprecedented. That was not of the Spoke he knew, such a predatory action was not him. Yet, the minty breath of this shorter boy, who seemed to be purring in his ear, said otherwise.
“Dizzy?” He asked, his voice reverberating right through Mapicc's ears. Mapicc hissed at the strain of the interjection, he had appreciated the silence, even if the pressure was boiling at the edge.
The soft pads of the fingers pressed into his cheeks, and strictly forced Mapicc's head upwards, where a boy he had always seen so petite loomed over him like a thundering God giving his judgement to a disbeliever.
His eyes focused, as he weakly blinked repeatedly, to clear away the glassy lens of his hazy eyes. The fog cleared, and all he could see was the mocking red mascara, and those endless voids for eyes. Mapicc never liked looking into the void, he was fearful that he'd tumble from land to the consuming abyss where a leviathan would've lived.
Spoke's throat bobbed, as he grinned. “Finally! Mapicc is here. Thought you'd never wake up and stay as stupid as a guinea pig,” he remarked, his caging grip on Mapicc's face loosening over the confusion of the latter. This is but a dumb zombie, who thought brains were to be consumed—yet couldn't comprehend the one he ate.
Behind Spoke's idly swaying hips, Mapicc could see the swirly curl of his tail.
“But I wouldn't mind that, really.”
Spoke leaned back, his cheeks bunching with his skin as he smiled slyly, that ego was dripping from his flexed fangs. His thumb, those sharp nails that never seemed to be clipped until Mapicc scolded him were dancing around in his mind. Without a guide, Spoke was lost. With a guide, Spoke was obedient, but that didn't mean he was good.
They brushed over the warm, runny trail of blood, smearing the crimson across the underside of his nose. The smell of iron wafted through both of his nostrils, eliciting a groan.
That thumb was brought to the pointed tongue of Spoke, and licked like a starving lion.
Finally, even as his words felt heavy, Mapicc began. “You've changed, Spoke. You've really changed,” stated Mapicc, as if it would fix everything, up to the point where he was currently bound to a splintered wooden chair. Spoke chuckled, throwing his head back to laugh away the stifling guilt in his heart. “I didn't, no, I really didn't,” he denied.
“What happened to the one I've planned for?” Mapicc questioned skeptically, his eyes sharpened, that hunter-like gleam showing, despite the vulnerability that surrounded him and his captor. Faced with denial, he can't let it slip past his fingers—that maybe, his best friend is in there. Somewhere.
“You mean?” Spoke questioned back, a retortive snarl decorating his face as he circled around the premise of Mapicc's chair. “I've said it already. I'm here. I'm right here, and I've been here. You're way too.. how should I put it.. uh, blinded to notice the picture.”
“Blinded?” Mapicc snapped, his body flinching in between the harsh friction of the rope as his head followed Spoke around the room, like a south to a north magnetic pole. “I'm not blinded. You are blinded,” he spat in defense.
The monster chuckled behind him. “The hypocrisy is showing, Mapicc. We are both blinded.”
He heard the dull flutter of the clanking armor as Spoke moved in a ritualistic circle around Mapicc as he elaborated on his thoughts. “Yes, maybe I am blinded by the totem. But that's all I have, Mapicc. They are my children, so I must care for them,” he paused verbally. “Despite the blindness, I continue if it means they can reside safely.”
Mapicc's teeth grinded, almost like the hum of a vehicle's engine in the back of his mind as Spoke continued. “But you, you're blinded with nostalgia. Like.. you still like me. Me, the ‘old' me you speak of.”
“Can you just speak!” Mapicc shouted, Spoke flinching slightly from the raise of the intonation. He quickly fixed his posture and reasserted control over the situation. “Impatient fucker..” he cursed under his breath.
“I'm blinded, but I'm useful. You're blinded, and you're nothing but a rag to the world.”
The harsh sting of the venom shot through Mapicc like an arrow. He had almost jolted from the chair, to lunge and throw himself to Spoke's figure to refute the insult. “Of course you'd say complete bullshit,” he scoffed.
“Bullshit?” His head tilted.
Spoke's circling had slowed, to a stupid metronome of a lullaby. It was like trumpets in his ears, with every nearing step of the looming boy.
“Mapicc, my friend,” Spoke halted in his slow, agonizing trail. Mapicc could feel the shadow of the void over the very back of his head, and the shy warmth of Spoke's chest behind the board of the chair. Followed by a disturbing pattern of breaths, by his right ear.
“I am the greatest creation of JamatoP,” he stated, with his chest and his pride, admittedly acknowledging the way he had been created not by friendship, but loss. His finger brushed the shoulder of Mapicc's hoodie, caressing the curve of the broad skin. “And I thought you'd be my right hand.”
He could hear the slightest hitch in Spoke's breath, where the voidling had laughed at his misery. “It seems, though, Underscore proved to be a better right hand than you,” muttered Spoke, with irrational mockery. His hand pushed Mapicc with deliberate control as he continued. “He sees everything I do, Mapicc. You don't.”
“You've been with me longer than he was, and yet, why is he the one that is still by my side instead of you, who should be wearing the trims of a Commander?” He asked. Mapicc's jaw clenched, and he could feel the heat not spreading only to his neck, but spilling to his face and the tips of his ears where Spoke breathed in fueling anger.
“It's fine, it's okay. You want the old me back, Mapicc,” said Spoke, with the boredom of a lone, isolated child. “But I don't.”
Mapicc's eyes fixed on his lap, once again. The red splotches of blood had dried, staining the vibrant, stretched fabric of his hoodie. Bunched around his waist, followed by the tangle of the strings from his sweatpants. With all the detail laid in front, he could still focus on the monster behind.
“And you aren't me who decides that.”
His breath hitched where his throat seemed to bop with his Adam's Apple. He could feel the bubbling despair of the void, mixing with the shared air of the room and tainting his heart with dark spots of despair as the weight of Spoke's words pressed where he heard. All of a sudden, all he could hear was static.
Though, he suspects that Spoke isn't finished, and he'll continue. Spoke is never satisfied, and that's what makes him a monster of himself.
“Have you heard of the quote by Charles Baudelaire, Mapicc?”
Through the speech, he felt the slithering lull of a snake from an appetizing, forbidden tree wrap around his neck like an impending noose waiting to hang him. Waiting for a moment of relaxation, to catch Mapicc off his feet, and let him sway in the air.
Mapicc is stubborn. He won't.
But this one is particularly hard.
"The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist."
“I've been reading books as of late. Are you proud, Mapicc? I've been waiting to use this on you. But he means, or my interpretation—that evil does not exist unless it exists by definition,” Spoke hummed, his exhales hot by Mapicc's collarbone. His fingers tapped in a sequence on his loose hoodie.
“You are like Adam, Mapicc.”
“You've fallen for me.”
Mapicc’s eyes widened, those red irises bulging as he lifted his head, not to look at Spoke, but to look forward. Where the door had seemed closed, despite the wide gap of each panel. With every stunning word he uttered, he was pulled to this convincing reality.
“I've been Spoke from the start. I have been the devil you describe in your mind from the very day we've met.”
Then, his lips pressed a mellow kiss to the skin of Mapicc's jaw, and murmured. “I just wasn't defined at that time,” he finalized. “It's funny how the devil and I are the same.”
“We aren't evil until definition catches us by the tail.”
Mapicc's mind spiraled through a trance of memory after memory, each scrolling through like a photo strip printed after a photobooth. He felt his chest constricting at the dawn of the new knowledge. It was almost forbidden, every single step, every breath, every memory of Spoke from 2, almost 3 years ago, was the same as the one behind him.
His head dropped, blocking everything out of sight and hear. He saw recurring flashes of ‘the undefined' while he heard the yell of Spoke's command for imprisonment. Though, even that was muffled by static.
How could he be so gullible?
The quote repeated like a mantra. Over and over, recycling in his mind. With every denial, it only built itself stronger.
But it was unmistakable.
The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.