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It is a living thing, the Spiral, a large beast with belly of twisting tubes and corridors and mirrors for digestion, and a gaping maw so massive and so demanding that it is never satisfied. The Spiral has many Avatars, though Joshua sees himself less as an embodiment, or a soldier, or anything grand as that. Joshua thinks he’s more like a caterer, or a custodian. A servant or a worshipper, on days he feels particularly close to monstrously huge thing. That does happen, sometimes–many times in dreams, but with the Spiral waking hours might be much the same so he doesn’t really see the point in the difference. Joshua’s god sees him, sometimes, and shares thoughts with him, and him specifically. From what he’s heard, echoes in the Distortion’s hallways, it’s rare, but every avid servant of their god has experienced it a few times. What is much more common is that the Spiral Marks a target, and lets it be known to every Avatar; in a way not dissimilar to the vibrations sent along spiderwebs through its twisting gut; that it wants this person to be fed to it.
The ranks of Spiral Avatars didn’t have much organization or hierarchy, nothing like the Dark and the Desolates, which suits them well, as it’s probably the only way they could exist in tandem. The Distortion exists far outside of the material world, and Joshua sees it as the stomach of his god–surely, trapping a human in there is most potent and delicious meal for their god, but only Michael is able to consistently pull it off. Suck-up.
However, Joshua likes to imagine all of them as a large group of coworkers. It’s funny and cute to him, seeing The Distortion as their collective breakroom as they flit in and out, one end of the material world to the other. Michael is definitely their slightly annoying and obnoxious supervisor. He doesn’t order them about, it really isn’t in his nature at all, nor is it to keep things in order–Michael’s idea of order is incredibly muddled and confused, something Joshua has seen firsthand in the material world as the thing tried to set a group of pens in order on the desk of man who had just finished blowing a hole in his head. Joshua had been turning his crosses upside-down, but by the time he finally looked over, Michael had twisted his head to the side, bouncy riglet curls bending with him. He looked at the collection contemplatively, spinning the last pen in his hand (and inadvertently cutting it up with his fingers) trying to figure out where to put it. Finally, he placed it balanced atop a blue pen, which was surrounded in a pentagonal figure with two red and three black pens, slightly to the left of which was four pens, one of which had been taken apart and the spring wrapped round another of the pens, and two different colored markers.
Joshua topped the pile off with a bullet casing he’d found on the floor, and filled it with ink. Joshua disliked the Eye with a burning passion, so he had no way of knowing, but he thought Michael might have liked his addition.
Joshua knows Michael as well as anyone can know a thing without an identity. And, though the Spiral does not talk (because its mouth is otherwise occupied) he knows what his god wants of him. The Spiral is like a greedy child, which Joshua assumes is what madness is, sticking its fingers in every pie it can, the more beloved the better, claiming as much as it can for its own and not stopping until it is utterly consumed. It’s not rare that the Spiral will mark someone, but it is one of those rare occasions where it has not that Joshua is preparing a hearty feast of a young university student, ripe with hope for the future and faith in a perfect god and compassionate congregation. Bethany O’Connor’s is a perfect life to ruin, so much ahead of it, and enough behind it (a short affair with heroin and an even shorter stint in rehab; its not that those with pre-existing or comorbidities are the only ones to be taunted with madness, anyone can be with enough work, but they are the only ones who will leap to distrust their senses).
Beth is what her friends call her, which Joshua also calls her, in his head and in hers, because he is very attached to his job, loves every moment of it, and in his thoroughness he develops a sort of intimacy to the meat he butchers. Who couldn’t, when they did as well as he did? Joshua is subtle as a breeze when a gentle hand is required, he is as harsh as a whip when a shock to the system is warranted, and is as illusive and tempting and formless and frightening as he needs be when he appears to them, in waking nightmares they cannot see through.
Joshua’s mother used to weave. It’s a microcosmic artform, sewing colors and textures and the smallest threads together. But the prettiest tapestry is woven with the greatest attention to detail.
Beth isn’t difficult to sway to madness. She thinks she’s possessed. Joshua can lean into that–he knows enough about Catholicism to paint a terrifying picture for her. He doesn’t remember where he learned it, exactly, but it does come awfully in handy that he can name saints offhand and has the most despairing and violent parts of the Christian Bible memorized. Still, he wishes she was more difficult. She’s young and scared and fears possession more than she fears mental institutions and padded cells. But, Joshua is able to elicit that beautiful brokenness and desperation when no one believes her, not truly, not even the excorsist she calls.
The excorsist catches Joshua’s attention immediately, watching from inside her skull, inside her home, as he enters and she begs him to cast the evil out of her dwelling. Joshua isn’t attached to her building, though it is how he spotted her. This thing is built on a crinkle of the Distortion, which is definitely why one of the other tenants, an Avatar or something close, scratched Mentis on the wall–and, of course, why Beth had hacked away at the wallpaper there until it was revealed without any prodding from him. (But he couldn’t help himself to taste that little furl of unease from the Father when he hid the revealed word from her eyes and not from his. Who says he needs to be picky where he feeds from?)
The taste is sweet and hotly painful, like drinking sugary battery acid. It’s wonderful. Material food is so bland and tasteless to him after so many years feeding on fear; though maybe that is because he’s more Distorted than material, at this point. The priest’s is by far the best he’s ever tasted, but it’s… diluted. Muddled. Joshua frowns and he’s sure Beth can feel his rolling spikes of irritation in her own mind, as closely attached as they are.
Faith… worship… hope… The Spiral doesn’t use words, but it is certainly communicating to him now, zeroed in on the exorcist. Joshua’s god says nothing, but he knows that it wants that faith, the way a shackled and worn mother knows her spoilt child has set wet eyes on a new, expensive toy it wants to break. It’ll be Joshua who pries the safety from this priest, who drags him to forsake his fake god and feed his own. He’ll keep little of the meal for himself, unfortunately, as heavily marked as the priest now is, but there are other ways to enjoy himself.
Joshua won’t be able to taste but little drip-fed drops of this man’s fear, but really, there’s enough joy in simply watching a man destroy himself. It’s no hinder that the Father is tall and slender, build with wide shoulders and a slim waist in a v-taper. His cassock clings to his well-maintained build in such a flattering way, his face, tired but pointed down to his square jaw, and heavy eyelids keeping the look of a man who has lived so much of a life he is happy to be getting on with it. There are smile lines around his eyes and mouth, but they get no use now, wracked by worry and pity over young Bethany O’Connor. His black hair curls ever so slightly, mostly in the front, where it is longest, and from his temples is a dark grey infection.
Joshua is so bad at understanding time and age now, too used to being in a place where the clocks tick backwards. He has seen many ages, but not lived nearly as much life as this priest in front of him. Joshua perches himself on the window sill, elbow resting on a knee to prop up his head to best observe the exorcist lay a blessing on the house. Joshua can feel his worry, and waves a hand through the air to try and dissipate the thick cloud of it bundled up around the man. Has the priest noticed he has brought more for the “demon” to feed on by coming here? He’s only made it worse for Beth. So, so much worse.
The worry is invigorating, but distracting. A dark cloud hangs over the priest, which is not visible to the eye, even Joshua’s, but can be felt harshly in its potency by any of their world who comes near him. Joshua needs to give him months, perhaps years to stew in guilt and turmoil after he destroys Beth, which means he needs to keep his coworkers off his glistening and red prime steak he’s left in the shared fridge. Maybe he’ll talk to Michael…
The priest leaves the room, and Joshua follows him, ignoring his quarry in the other room as she rubs her bare arms in a self-soothing gesture. He leaves that intoxicating worry on every surface he touches, clinging to the air and spreading like oil and mud across the old wood of the Mentis house. Joshua really isn’t sure how old the priest is, or even how old he himself is. He knows he looks young, but not child-young. Old enough to be a man, certainly, if he was still a human. He has most definitely finished maturing. He has shaved his face and cut his hair whenever it remembers to grow, and he is left with a smooth and round face, skin pale for sunlight is utterly useless in Joshua’s eyes. His hair is golden and curly, and falls across his face and is soft when he remembers to wash it and usually clean even when he doesn’t. Hygiene is very… obstinate for an Avatar of the Spiral who is as lost as he is in his worship. Joshua dedicates practically every waking hour to it, a servant with no life of his own–and in return he is rewarded with life, bountiful, beautiful, everlasting. Joshua might not even be his name. He could be changing it every time he introduces himself to other people. Michael is very bad with names and he is the only thing with a tongue Joshua meets with in any sort of regularity.
But it… doesn’t really matter, in the long and short of it. Joshua doesn’t think he wants an identity, at least not anything solid that couldn’t change with the tide. He doesn’t think he wanted an identity when he had one, and almost definitely the reason he doesn’t remember his past life is because he doesn’t want a past life.
He hopes it was full of anguish and fear. He hopes his god enjoyed the taste of it.
Beth calls him Father Edwin Burroughs in her mind. For the information, and because Joshua will be the one who devours him, he leaves her to sleep her last peaceful night as he leaves through a door on her second story.
There’s not much to navigating The Distortion. Really, you can’t navigate it at all, not even an Avatar with considerable power like Joshua. Because it’s not supposed to be navigable. It doesn’t make any sense. There is no logicality or realism to the place. Which is why if you turn a mirror back to face the wall and stop showing the rest of the corridor, because you believe it will remove the corridor, then it does, and you find yourself in inky blackness with no walls, free to walk through the used-to-be hallways as you please without hindrance. That is the beauty of the Spiral: there are no rules and words and laws. It is your feelings and your instincts that carry you, and if it seems like it should work, then it does. Simple as that.
When Joshua thinks he’s walked far enough, loose slacks swishing around his ankles as he walks and treks and climbs and slides because the floor is more of a concept than flat plane, he finds another long mirror and reaches around inside it until he finds a light switch to flick, which successfully turns the lights back on and here his is, right near the heart of The Distortion, where the carpet is patterned like a 90’s arcade and the lights are oil lamps and the paintings seem to be of old Victorian men with bolo ties and ascots, severe-looking faces twisted in heart-wrenching terror. Joshua never liked those paintings. He thinks they’re very unsubtle, something from a bad horror movie. He doesn’t like the carpet, either, but he’s pretty sure Michael picked it, so he’s not going to say anything because he might hurt his feelings.
There’s a lot of doors in here, because there’s a lot of places to come from and even more places to go. Everyone has a different way of getting in here; he knows Xiulan likes to pop up out of the heavy wooden trapdoor in the floor, but he doesn’t know where she goes in order to get there. Joshua can’t see Michael around, but that doesn’t mean he’s not there. Michael is present even when he’s busy on the material plane, because you wouldn’t really have your hand fiddling with something on its own and act like it's gone and taken a vacation, would you? Joshua just started opening cupboards and doors at random, yelling, “MICHAEL!” as loud and obnoxious as he could, because this really couldn’t wait and Michael got distracted more easily than he got things done. It’s just not in his nature to be efficient.
Eventually Joshua gets bored and frustrated, and it’s just when he’s started shouting, “MICHAEL!” into an empty flower pot that the vase shudders. The vase was there the first time Joshua came into the core, and then gone for most of his time until one time it was back. It was an artefact of the Spiral, obvious from the (oddly geometric) fractals painted on its surface.
Joshua grins as a large, pale, clawed hand erupts from the center of the vase and begins to pull itself out. Joshua kicks the base of the pot with the toes of his boot. “Miiiiichaeeeeel,” he calls, nudging it again. “Hurry up, it’s important you know.”
Between one moment and the next, Michael has twisted his long form mostly out of the vase, though one stick-thin and many-jointed leg is still lodged in the vase. Michael isn’t angry-looking, per se, but it’s really not like they’re friends (Michael isn’t enough of a person to have relationships that relate to his non-personhood) and Michael does what Michael does, not what Joshua says.
“Joshua,” Michael’s high-pitched voice whines. Joshua always thinks Michael’s voice is like a kind of straining violin string, like his vocal chords are pulled unfathomably tight and he can only make noise by scraping across them in a way even he’s not sure is correct. Joshua doubts Michael is even made for speech; the Spiral certainly isn’t. As with the rest of his body, Michael seems like a workman who had suddenly been provided a great array of power tools, not knowing how or why to use them, perhaps being better off without them, but feeling as though, since he’s got them, he might as well make use of them.
“You were… calling for me, Joshuaaa,” Michael grates out through his voice, drawing Joshua’s name out the way he always does, like a teetering note at the end of a rough performance. “What is it?” He almost sounded polite there. Sometimes that happens.
Joshua seats himself on the arm of a plush armchair, dark brown and dirty, worn a much lighter shade on the seat and armrests. It’s facing towards a fireplace, which is seated in the center of the “room” and produces smoke though is never lit. A lot of the heart-rooms, as Joshua calls them, closest to the center of The Distortion, seem more like a sitcom soundroom than an impossibly spiraled corridor. Of course, that’s because the walls only go up so high, empty space and lightbulbs hanging from… somewhere above.
“Well,” Joshua starts, leaning over the back of the chair to look Michael properly in the eyes, which are much bigger than they are on a normal person. “The Spiral wants the priest.”
Michael blinks owlishly at him for a moment. “Yes… it does.”
“He’s marked.”
“He iiiis….”
“I’m about done with Beth. He cares about her, and she’s going to die in front of him. It’s going to be his fault,” Joshua tells him. He knew, before the Spiral ever even marked the guilty man of God, that he would feel more guilt than his tired shoulders could bear before this was through. But now, it’s very, very convenient. “I’m going to take him.”
Michael nods, one dip of his sharp chin, causing his long curls to bounce. “Are weeee… gossiping?”
Joshua frowns. “No. I’m asking you to keep the rest of the Avatars off him until he’s had time to marinate.”
“You didn’t phrase it like a queeestionn,” Michael whines, finally freeing his leg from the vase the same way a Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robot winds up its arm to punch. Michael’s true form in The Distortion is much more troublesome to move than the human-appearing look he takes in the material world. He practically stumbles over his thin, long legs as he approaches Joshua by the fireplace.
“Okay,” Joshua takes a deep breath and pouts, clasping his hands together in front of himself. “Please, oh please Michael, tell everyone that I’m going to drive the Father to madness so that they don’t take this from me. Pretty please, Michael, I couldn’t stand it if someone took him from me now.” Joshua himself is surprised at how genuine that last part was–of course, he’s no stranger to begging, but… he’d be very mad if someone else got to the Father before him.
Michael makes an unfiltered face of disgust (no expression he makes is filtered through anything, he’s very easy to read if you know where to look to find his face) and stumbles his way back from him to look into a mirror that shows the room but not either of them reflected back. “I didn’t ask you to beeeg,” Michael says. “I didn’t aaaask you to do anything.”
Joshua rolls his eyes and drops his shoulders and the act. “You implied you wanted me to ask properly.”
“I don’t imply…”
“No, you don’t,” Joshua acknowledges with a sigh. “But I’ve stated and asked and begged, now, will you please do this for me? Pretty please, Michael? I really, really want him.”
“Youuuu won’t be able to take him,” Michael points out, twirling a lock of blond hair around his sharp fingers–and cutting it off completely. He frowns miserably and the lock grows back. “He won’t feed you Joshuaaa,”
“There are other ways to enjoy myself,” Joshua says simply, though he knows Michael won’t understand what he means. Isn’t it enough to see a pretty and aged man attempt to drink himself to death, drowning in his own guilt? Isn’t it enough to drive something beautiful mad?
“You want him baaadly,” Michael drawls, a flicker of something contemplative in his voice. Oh yes, he’s got him. “I’ll tell them. But I don’t think… Oh, I don’t think you’ll get him without a fiiiight.”
Joshua’s brows knot together. “Michael?”
“Yes?”
A flicker of annoyance passes by quickly enough, because he knows Michael isn’t being purposefully obtuse, he’s just bad at speech, like his god. “Michael, why do you think I’ll have to fight for him? You’re not webbing out on me, are you, friend?”
“Quiiiiite the opposite,” Michael twists his head to meet Joshua’s eyes. “There are many things out there thaaaat may want your priest. My friend,” he adds in a way that’s half-mocking, half-genuine. Joshua really can never tell with him; for anyone to understand Michael, they’d have to be a very strong Avatar of the Eye, indeed.
Before Joshua can straight-out ask him, Michael walks through the mirror that does not reflect them, and into the room with now only him and not Joshua, and Joshua is no longer in the room.
Annoying about The Distortion and it’s “do I make sense, now?” rule is that sometimes you can find yourself floating about through it’s hallways with no destination and no presence, as Michael had, with quite a bit of finality, banished him from the room he was busy existing in. He’d find his way out eventually, Joshua settles in, as the dark yellow fuzzy rug of some of the corridors turns M.C. Esher in proportion and his Distorted self is still trying to figure out when to become material again. It’s not like he can be late to Beth’s death. As he passes through the halls, everything looking a bit like the room must look to a hard-spun globe, he hears a thump-thump-thumping and the scream of a woman, a material woman, definitely, and is overrun by such a great surge of curiosity that he manages to reach out and grab hold of something.
Joshua’s stomach flips as he realizes he’s lodged himself half-stuck in a painting, now dripping oils off his face and half into his mouth. He spits it out with a sour twist on his face. The material woman doesn’t seem to see him as he throws herself against a half-cracked mirror, which is interesting–how did she manage to break a mirror?–before with a choked scream it shatters, and she stumbles out in the material plane. Freedom at last! Joshua claws himself out of the painting and follows her out, easily cloaking himself from her eyes, though is too tired to mask the noise and smell of himself.
It doesn’t matter. She’s hysterical, sobbing her eyes out and screaming relentlessly, even as the mirror behind her disappears into its shattered shards, cutting her off from The Distortion. The asphalt below them is cold and wet, and Joshua scuffs his shoes against them. It had just rained. It’s dark as night, and the neon lights of a gas station shine a few meters off. Catching a part of his sleeve, Joshua wipes the remaining oil paints off his skin and starts walking, hoping he isn’t far off in time, because crossing space is easy enough with enough access to a door, or any sort of threshold or entrance, but since The Distortion winds time in a spring-like shape, from Joshua’s understanding, he can really pop out at any time. It’s only happened a few times, the worst being Australia, 1915, but he can get back if he tries (it’s not always important to. Xiulan was born in 1981 and then found herself in 1119 and lived back up to her time normally, keeping her youth by bathing in the blood of virgins. Hey, if it works).
Joshua makes his way into the gas station’s automatic glass doors (which see him even if the cashier doesn’t; rushing past to help the screaming woman on the side of the road) and finds a newspaper propped up near the magazines. He groans loudly, sound bouncing off the walls back to him and making him scowl and clutch at his ears. 2017? He’s nearly ten years off! If Joshua ever saw that woman again, even if she looks marked by Michael himself, at whatever time that was, he’s going to cave her head in after he has her admitted for a lobotomy.
He does, eventually, find his way back to the morning after he left Beth, who is doing her makeup in the mirror and humming, the good night’s sleep and Father Burroughs’ blessing placebo doing wonders for her health. Maybe it is going to turn around.
For a few moments, Beth sees her eyeshadow drip from her face and eyes like blood in the mirror, and has enough time to scream and frantically rub at them before the illusion disappears. She is left with her smudged makeup, ruined, and tears well up in her eyes before she starts hitting herself about the head, without any influence from Joshua, as if she can beat the crazy out of herself. Oh, if it were that easy.
Joshua barely has to turn her head to the mirror, a light touch on her chin to tilt her, showing her a slightly exacerbated image of what she looks like, crying and distressed and crazy, before she hates the sight of herself enough to bash her forehead straight into the mirror, shards cutting down her face. It’s a lot, but it’s not enough–Joshua makes her think the door to leave her room is the door out of the bathroom, and she doesn’t notice the long walk but she does notice the porter, who’s close-cropped brown hair shifts into Joshua’s own blond curls, which she has seen, she has seen in her nightmares–she knows he is the demon, the thing plaguing her and haunting her–
That illusion alone is enough to get her to viciously attack the bystander, whose screams alert the neighbors whose phones alert the police. The police call an ambulance, and Joshua, unseen and unnoticed by everyone but Beth, slips onto the back of the ambulance. She thrashes so hard when she sees him, standing in the corner, that she needs to be gagged by the paramedics to avoid her biting her own tongue off.
“Would you bite it off?” Joshua crouches down next to her. Tears stream from her face, and she does not understand. Joshua flicks a strand of hair, wet with her blood, out of her mangled face. She struggles harder, but the paramedics cannot see him. “Would you bite off your tongue? That would end it, you know.”
She can’t talk, but Joshua is very good at understanding without speech. What do you want? What do you want from me? Why? Why me?
It must be something along those lines. Joshua shifts his weight and smiles conspiratorially down at her. He leans closer to her ear, breathing in that lovely panic she’s emitting like pheromones.
“I want your fear, Beth. But I want your priest’s faith more.”
If it were possible, Beth’s blood-drained face grew even paler at his words, and now she saw past him, and did not acknowledge him again, although she could see him. She did not struggle even when they sedated her, simply shuddering. She feels… guilty.
Not as potent as her fear. But Joshua devoured it, all the same, until the moment that the time came for her to be exorcized. Joshua watches Edwin as it happens, his hand digging, unbeknownst to everyone, into the back of her skull, squeezing her lumpy gray brain until it hemorrhaged. She never stops seizing, and his grip never abates, as he watches the priest speak his Latin, his panic spiking ever higher. The Spiral takes this fear, too, from Joshua, as it does not know how to wait for the main course. Well, it will be years before the Spiral gets another taste, so Joshua might as well give it a grand finish to this afternoon.
He jabs two fingers deeper into the girl’s brain. Before she dies, she warns the priest–
“I’m sorry, but he wants your faith.”
The Spiral laps up Edwin Burroughs’ jolting terror like a dog cleans its bowl with a flapping tongue. It is no wonder his god cannot talk, because his god is always busy eating. There is no crushing guilt, or loss, or grief left in Burroughs as he drives back to his congregation with the news. But as he told Michael: Joshua doesn’t necessarily need it to engorge himself on the exorcist. He slips into his car and watches him from the passenger’s seat, chin propped up on his hand as he observes him.
The burning power of the Spiral Avatar comes from deceiving the senses, and the easiest of all tricks is to hide oneself from them. The art of weaving a descent to madness is very difficult, especially for those who lack creativity and subtlety. Most of all, it requires restraint. His quarry only see him in dreams and hallucinations, and only sometimes, when they need to see a guide instead of accept his influence without argument. So Joshua spends most of his time tracking his prey under the cloak of invisibility.
It is good now, to see the priest wallow as he drives. It would take barely a vision of Beth’s dying face to have him swerve into traffic, but that would go against everything Joshua stands for. He literally held Beth’s mind in his hands, reshaped it in a way purer and realer than any part of reality. The material world works through so many disgusting and disquieting rules that nearly drives Joshua mad himself. The Distortion exists on the back of human instinct and creativity, and isn’t that so much more of a truth than sciences and physics that a man doesn’t even need to know to be governed by?
Father Edwin wipes just-shed tears from his eyes. Joshua reaches over and pops his collar up and dishevels his hair without his notice. He wants to unravel this man.
And he will. But he needs to let him stew for a while.
…
Joshua intends to leave the priest for seven, maybe ten years, in order to really develop a complex about the whole ordeal, maybe get himself let go from the service. He checks in, every once in a while, though he doesn’t really do anything, although maybe he should. He could lay some groundwork with the man, give him a reason to believe he’s crazy rather than trust his eyes. But… he doesn’t. He just watches.
Joshua sits in the back row of pews, dressed the same way he always is, in bright colored pants that flare around his ankles and puffy button-ups and cufflinks stolen from previous meals. He’s not tall, really quite short, and he isn’t physically, materially strong, simply thin and slender and very creative. His hair curls like used up candle wicks, and his eyes are a pale blue that tends to blend into his rather translucent skin. What he looks like doesn’t really matter; it also never really changes or decays, as his god keeps him well-taken care-of for his services, and his round face is always jubilant and alight with the vigor of the well-fed. Most of the time, though, he’s unseen by everyone around him, despite his flamboyant dress, because that is how he cloaks himself from their eyes.
But. Joshua sits as a part of Edwin’s congregation, does not stand or sing with them, just leans against the end of a pew, heeled boots kicked out in front of him, and watches him speak. Watches him drink the wine and eat the wafers. Edwin sees him, sometimes. The first few times their eyes lock, but he does not stop, does not know at all who Joshua is. But Joshua keeps appearing in the back, in all his material glory, every three months, every six months. Eventually Edwin starts to stutter in his sermon when he catches a look at Joshua. Once Joshua hides himself in the back, and sees Edwin look for him for a moment, before shaking his head, a soft look of consternation etched upon it. But Joshua shows up for him after that.
Maybe he likes being seen.
But he doesn’t know why Edwin notices him, because it’s not like he’s some sort of Eye Avatar, blegh, no thank you. He’s not insighting any paranoia in the man–or, at least, he’s not trying to. Sometimes Joshua forgets that those sorts of emotions happen naturally in material humans, not brought on by an unseen or all-seeing Avatar. You don’t need to parse someone’s thoughts to make them feel watched, Joshua supposes, lounging back and watching the man speak his useless verses and cling to his unproven faith with a mass of sheep ahead of him. He’s so confident, so well-spoken, intelligent and composed.
He speaks of lies, though, and, in time, Edwin will come to know that as intimately as Joshua knows it.
He doesn’t wait as long as he wants to, of course. Avatars of the Eye are known to retain a watchful gaze on people on the other side of the globe, at any time; and the Spider Mother’s ilk can feel the vibrating distress and changes in those integral to their plans wherever they may be. In the Spiral, Joshua cannot keep an eye on his Marked prey unless he takes a door to him–though the location is unimportant beyond “where Edwin is”–and has no idea what’s going on in that fragile mind of his from afar.
But although the Spiral is not meant for speech, speech passes beyond it’s doors anyways. The echos of screams, of calls, can find the servants through the infinite impossibility of The Distortion, and it is in The Distortion that Edwin Burroughs’ prayer finds Joshua.
One moment he is beside Xiulan, laughing and planning to go with her to this American super-mall she has found that sounds like a helluva good time, and then the plea in that voice, so familiar when confident, but now tinged with a beautiful desperation and enticing fear. Both their heads snap to the source of the sound, and both notice the smell of burning hair at the same time. Xiulan, whose face had been mischievous, no doubt planning on trying to mess with his Marked to rile him, drops that quality at the scent. She even sends him a look like she expects him to drop the man as well–she doesn’t know him that well, all that time spent in the Song dynasty has eroded her memory of him.
Joshua is out of The Distortion like a shot from a gun, slamming open the first door and stumbling into the Desolate House on Hill Top Road with all the grace of Michael wrangling his origami limbs. He’s hidden from human sight after a moment–but it doesn’t matter. The only material people nearby is a man, Touched by the Desolation, in a truck outside; and his priest, doubled over on the ground, clutching a smoldering bible in his hands and praying desperately for deliverence. Not to his God, but to anything–no doubt Joshua had heard it, he’s surprised there isn’t half a dozen other Avatars from different factions here to claim him. But it is just Joshua, Edwin, and the burning presence of the Lightless Flame crushing in from all directions, determined to crush and bleed and burn the Marked man.
The Eye disgusts Joshua–understanding is so utterly bland, not to mention their obsession with knowing the unknowable–but he hates the Desolation. There is no joy. There is no creativity. There is no perfectly crafted unraveling. There is no process. The thing is there one moment–and gone the next.
“Please, I ask–I pray–” Edwin chokes on the smoke of the Bible the Desolate burns in front of him, though he does not let go. It seems to know, the same as the Spiral, that his faith is his anchor, and it must destroy that to destroy him. Joshua himself is sweating; the Fire is as little a friend to him as he is to it; but he is strong enough and protected enough by his beautiful and mad god that he does not burn yet.
“Sa–save me, please–” the priest begs–
–and Joshua answers.
Edwin loses control of himself as Joshua turns the Spiral’s attention to the desecration of his Marked, and he takes control of his mouth, painting out that in no uncertain terms–
“I am not for you. I am Marked.”
The Flame is reluctant, it wants to erase him from the material plane, destroy that pretty, fragile mind instead of play with it until it falls apart in its hands. But the Spiral has him. The Spiral has him because he asked the Spiral to have him.
Joshua kneels beside him as he collapses on his hands and knees to the floor. Joshua tilts his head to watch him more fully, contemplatively, and wipes the sweat from Edwin’s brow. He does not feel it. But he knows Joshua is there. He is in despair, because he knows his God did not answer his plea–Joshua’s did.
Edwin is his. Body and soul but most of all–his mind is Joshua’s to play with. Unlike Beth, poor, young, hopeful, dead Beth, Joshua is going to pull him headfirst into The Distortion and show him things enough to break his will–and then he will follow Joshua where he leads him, do whatever he guides him to do.
And then Edwin will be broken and faithless, and Joshua will be gone.
The thought is… almost saddening. Other than Michael, a constant presence somewhere that he sees quite often enough, and Xiulan and a few other Avatars he sees on a somewhat regular basis… for these past two years Edwin has been a weird and consistent part of Joshua’s life. Edwin sees him sometimes, and Joshua lets him see. He watches Edwin and thinks about the best ways to break him in with the anticipation of a horse jockey stroking his riding crop.
Edwin stares at the Bible’s leather melted into his hands and pulls them away, finally, to wipe them off gingerly on his cassock. Joshua sits back on his heels and contemplates the Bible. Firstly, he needs to destroy the congregation for him… either they must or Edwin must cast himself out… a fugitive, and a vagabond on the earth….
Joshua grins and swipes his hand over Edwin’s Bible. Isn’t it wonderful that he remembers so much Genesis? Even though he has no idea where he first learned it. Edwin will not find comfort from lies, oh no. And nor will he find comfort in his friends, his congregation, nor even the steady hand of the wine he has been stealing these past few years. Joshua will stay by his side from now till the end, and make sure of that.
Edwin runs past the man who pulled up the tree in the backyard, the man Touched by the Desolation, barely sparing a glance to that tree. Joshua can feel… traces… of something there, but it is dead, and he is following close behind Edwin, so he has no time to inspect it further, if he really were curious at all. The sun is falling, and Joshua makes sure Edwin sees the houses around him darker, taller, and more imposing than they truly are. The emotions are his that project the feeling–Joshua just makes his panic and paranoia have a basis in reality. Edwin will see what he feels and isn’t that such a wondrous gift Joshua can give to him, even as he falls to the asphalt as the woman escaping The Distortion had, two years past and six years hence.
Edwin clutches for his mutilated Bible once more, but Joshua is beside him as he does, blotting out any passage the priest searches for with black tar and oil and darkened blood. The man’s frantic searching grows, until he flips to a page to read, and Joshua replaces the real words of the page with something a little more fitting for the end he will reach by Joshua’s side.
“Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the Earth. And from thy face shall I be hid. And I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth. It shall come to pass that everyone that findeth me shall slay me.”
Edwin cries out, a weak, pathetic thing, for a man of his years and usual composure. But that’s the beauty, isn’t it? Joshua thinks as he, unable to control himself, strokes the man’s neck and spine comfortingly. It’s so easy… so, so easy to crumble in on yourself. Even the most “stable” man has the foundations of rickety, termite-eaten scaffolding. Just a few well-placed strikes with a hammer are all it takes–but Joshua isn’t quite there yet. When he is there, Edwin will be perfect to rebuild with. And he shall hate the man he is and fear how he became it, but he will know himself in the only way one truly can.
“Hidden from the face of a fake God…” Joshua murmurs, settling himself beside the man, lips against the side of his shaking face. He doesn’t even completely bother to mask Edwin’s senses–perhaps he’ll rationalize Joshua is his own thoughts. “But you are so wanted by a real one.”
Edwin shakes his head frantically, squeezing his eyes shut before opening them, a few last vestiges of determination stuck in him. The reason he is so afraid now is because of what Joshua did to Beth, he’s sure of it. He’s put it together in his mind, and he fears not her madness but her tormentor, Joshua, which is, to him, a little bit like being worshipped.
Edwin begins to run, forgetting his car, which is irritating to Joshua, because he has to run alongside him and he’s not one who chases for a living–leave that to the Huntsmen, for fuck’s sake–but he follows his desperate path to the church with a dogged persistence. He’s panting alongside his quarry, but Edwin doesn’t stop when they pass the heavy oak doors, making straight for Father Singh, undoubtedly the only person he thinks will understand–something Joshua knows because he recognizes the new priest, back from his days warping Beth beyond recognition. Ah, memories.
They sit in the pews and Edwin half-cries, half-explains what he had seen, what he had experienced at that House on Hill Top Road, going back as far to Beth’s death. Joshua leans against his pew, lounged as he always had beside him, and he listens to him. Because Father Singh is not here. Only Joshua.
“Perhaps, Edwin,” Joshua interrupts in the voice of Father Singh, a firm guiding hand clearly what will lead the distraught priest now. But Joshua cannot help the tick up of his lips when Edwin’s head lifts from where it had been hidden in his hands, tear-streaked and disheveled. He looks just like he had the day Joshua killed Beth and–
–he is so perfectly puddy in Joshua’s thin hands, smaller and paler and weaker than Edwin’s by far. His reality is going to be what Joshua decides for him, and the priest will finally learn what it’s like to be wanted and needed by something so perfect as the Spiral. Edwin will feel as Joshua did when he found the love of a truly caring god, a god who is greedy and imperfect and evil and authentic. A god born from humans who could bring such a better world than Edwin knew now.
There would be a rapture for them, eventually, into the end of worlds that are incomprehensible and muddled and wrong, like caging a lion, and a birth of a world that fell to the side when you pushed it, and hurtled around the sun at a speed you could feel.
“Perhaps, Edwin,” Joshua repeats, licking his lips lasciviously in preparation for his meal. “You would prefer to tell me this in confession?”
Edwin stares at him, face slack with surprise and no small bit of fear. “What–what sin do you think it is I have committed, Father? That I must confess for?”
You are guilty of a great many things, if only in your mind, Joshua thinks, and leans forward conspiratorily, hand landing on Edwin’s shoulder. He stares at it as if he had seen Michael’s true hand. “Why, the sin of spiritual pride.”
Joshua does not need words to hear speech. Edwin’s face, the acidic scent of his horror and that heady guilt, just as tantalizing as it had been the day he killed Beth, and no sooner greedily lapped up by the Spiral. Joshua didn’t mind, couldn’t mind–he had what he needed right in front of him, after years of a wait.
Edwin is guilty of trying to save a girl who was Marked. And he will confess. He will confess all his sins.
Edwin shaking gets to his feet, and Joshua leads him to the confessional booth. Edwin begins to confess beyond the closed curtain, and Joshua leans back in his seat against the hard wood and finally lets the illusion fall. If his accent gives him away, who is he to care? If Edwin leaves before he’s done his job here, he will find the booth door locked. It won’t be, of course, but he won’t open it because it feels locked.
Edwin confesses about the journey to Hill Top Road, and Joshua can’t help but feel a vindictive rush rise inside him. Yes, you had best confess your sin of going to a place where the Desolation could see you. Could want you. Could try to take you for it’s own, even though you have been Marked by my god.
Joshua wishes the Catholic confession tradition were changed; he wishes Edwin would fall to his knees and grab Joshua’s cassock and beg for his forgiveness, that he would admit his folly and utter stupidity, listening to someone Touched by the Eye and arriving in a place the Lightless Flame would see him.
Joshua’s hand clutches the armrest in the booth with a ferocity that caused the wood to crack under his white-knuckled grip. Edwin starts at the sound that Joshua had not been able to mask from his senses, and stop his confession.
“Father Singh?” Edwin asks hesitantly, after a few moments where Joshua has not spoken. “What is my penance?”
“You have not confessed. All your sins.” Joshua grits out, words spitting past his teeth with rage.
“What? I don’t–”
“Did you not taunt the crippled boy in your primary class, what was it you called him?” Joshua is so intertwined with Edwin’s mind at this point the answer floats ahead of his eyes as soon as Edwin remembers it. “A donkey? You have not confessed all your sins, Edwin.”
“I–but I have, Father Singh–I confessed that years ago, I was forgiven–”
“You were not forgiven by me,” Joshua hisses through the curtain. Edwin’s fear is spiking, chest pounding in time with Joshua’s material heart thrumming in rage. Joshua had almost lost him, lost his Marked. He had asked Michael for help to keep him! He had been trapped in 2017 for two weeks! He had been prepared to wait years to reap his soul, and in his own stupid, blind religion in his compassionate faith he had almost gotten himself destroyed!
“I was forgiven by God!” Edwin protests, finding some strength back in his voice.
Joshua chuckles humorlessly. “Oh, no, Edwin. You were not.”
And then he begins to list. He tells Edwin of everything he has ever felt guilty over in his life, things he can only see because they are something he hates that he has done. His regrets are so easy to tap into, his past as well, in the way that is all but impossible to anyone but servants of the Eye because Joshua does not seek to Know Edwin, he seeks to crumple his mind like a piece of unwanted paper.
Edwin runs, once he pulls himself out of his shocked and terrified stupor. Joshua stays in the booth, but can see through his eyes and tilts every cross on every wall upside-down, scratches every four into a six, and does not let him escape, even as he finally sees the real Father Singh, and realizes who he had been talking to. Edwin doesn’t know his face as Beth’s demon. He sees his face as a strange onlooker–so he has not connected the face to the demon to the thing that saved him on Hill Top Road to the man in the booth–but he will. Oh, he will.
Joshua leaves the booth slowly, he can almost feel the Spiral watching him, on the cusp of their wordless communication, but it does not come, and soon his god’s presence recedes. Ah. He’ll finish this on his own for now, then.
Joshua is in no hurry as he follows Edwin. The priest’s heartbeat is heavy and loud in Joshua’s ears, he can practically hear that clicking against his ribcage. Edwin slams open a door with his shoulder as Joshua turns a doorknob. Just like that, they are both in The Distortion.
Joshua carefully muddies Edwin’s perception, clouds his eyes, blurs his vision for a few seconds to build him a proper cathedral full of proper worshippers for him to deliver his sermon to. The audience is full of faceless watchers with yellow-stained skin, jaundiced and clamoring in their wordless mutter. The cathedral is massive, tall ceilings stretching into infinity, with a plush red carpet to the front of the mass that Edwin has fallen onto, hands gripping the cloth as his vision clears and he takes in his surroundings with a dawning horror.
Joshua frowns at the renewed speed and strength of the heartbeat in his ears, something he didn’t think possible. He kneels beside his priest. “Oh, you are very frightened. I don’t want you to have a heart attack, Edwin.”
Edwin stares up at him, and it is a long few silent moments before recognition crawls across his face. “I–I’ve seen you, before…” His gaze drops to Joshua’s red and white and gold robes, that of an altar boy. “But you’re… not part of the congregation.”
Joshua reaches out, past his anger he can feel the tug of his heart to appreciate the trauma-ridden beauty of his prey. He reaches out his hand and smooths Edwin’s hair out of his face. Edwin clearly leans into the touch, starved of any comforting contact since Hill Top Road. No, before then. After Beth’s death he had withdrawn, and he had had no friendship, no closeness with any human being. Well, he still hasn’t. Joshua is not human.
Joshua can’t kick him now, while he’s down, firstly because he’s now very worried the man will have a heart attack before he gets to any of the fun things, and also because he likes the feeling of petting Edwin’s hair.
“Why do you wear that?” Joshua asks, head tilted in genuine curiosity. At Edwin’s confused look, his gaze flicks down to the collar of his cassock. “That collar. Are all men of the Lord dogs with leashes?”
Edwin doesn’t bother to hide his shock at the question. He keeps glancing to the jaundiced congregation, which is clearly distracting him. With a sigh Joshua dissipates them and tilts Edwin’s head back to face him, two slender fingers gentle cupping his chin. Joshua raises his eyebrows as the silence stretches on longer and longer. “Well? Are you? Do you bark for your God?”
Edwin’s eyebrows knot. “No, it’s… it’s to show devotion and loyalty to the L–L–to G–” Edwin gives up trying to say God, because Joshua is never going to let him. “I don’t… bark for Him.”
Joshua sits back on his heels and regards The Distortion. “What a pity. I would bark for my god. I would do anything for mine. But you wouldn’t, hm?”
“He… wouldn’t ask for something humiliating like that,” Edwin explained haltingly. He had no idea what was going on, but his heartbeat was starting to thrum calmer in Joshua’s ears. Technically good, but this is why he needs to search out younger prey. If he tried to ramp things up again, wouldn’t he still just croak? Material humans are so fragile. Beautiful in some ways, but utterly inconveniencing in others. Fine. Joshua is creative. He’s an artist. He can scrap the literal body of Christ–Xiulan would probably appreciate the college students he’d left in that basement, maybe she could find some use for them.
Fear doesn’t need to be heart-attack inducing. It can be… disturbing. Slow. Creeping. Subtle. Yes, Joshua is very good at subtlety. He can restrain himself with Edwin. A little bit.
“Right,” Joshua sighs. “Because God is good. Hooray.”
Edwin shoots him a look. “He is. What god do you pray to?”
Joshua smirks down at him and leans close to his face, breath fanning hot across his skin. He can tell Edwin is entirely uncomfortable with the closeness, but as off-putting as Joshua certainly is to him, he’s a familiar face–and one that has not outright attacked him yet. (What a low bar. And utterly useless. Nothing Joshua does is outright, and attacking? How gauche.)
“A real one,” Joshua whispers with a smile and a knowing wink.
Edwin blinks a few times. “It’s not–it’s not about reality. It’s about faith.”
Joshua just keeps smirking at him, making no move to leave his personal space as he sets a hand on Edwin’s chest, picking at his dog collar. Edwin does not stop him. “I know it’s about faith, Edwin. Your faith. You’ve got so much of it, and so beautifully. You believe in something. You believe in something that is not real.
“God did not save you in that House on Hill Top Road, did He?” Joshua simpers, smoothing over the white collar with his thumb. Something clicks in Edwin at that, and he attempts to rear up–likely to get away, but maybe to attack Joshua–but Joshua presses his thumb down on his priest’s neck, pinning him back against the side of the wooden pews he is half-laying against. He clicked his tongue and shook his head. “No, the Good Lord didn’t come to you. Because he can’t. He’s not real.”
“How do you know–” Edwin grits out, struggling against Joshua’s grip on his neck, but Joshua is much stronger than he looks.
“Who answered your prayers when you wandered into the den of a lion, my priest?” Joshua asks, grip tightening on his collarbone and catching the hand he attempts to pry it off with. “You need to be so much more careful about where you go, Edwin. Your faith is so tempting, to any beast with a snout. Everyone wants a piece of you. But you are Marked!” Joshua finishes with a snarl, slamming Edwin’s struggling body against the pew to punctuate his words.
Edwin’s head hits the wood, hard, but where they are is not the material world, so any hurt he feels is just that–hurt. He looks up at Joshua again, beyond heavy eyelids and thin lashes and long, spindly spiderweb curls knocked loose. “It was you,” he breathes shakily. “You–you spoke through me. You–you–”
“Saved your life,” Joshua supplies helpfully.
“Killed Bethany O’Connor!” Edwin shouts. “That poor girl, do you even rememb–”
Joshua rolls his eyes. “Of course I remember her. She was how I met you.”
“So you–you did kill her… oh L–L–” Edwin cuts himself off brokenly. “Why can’t I still say His name!”
“He’s not real,” Joshua reminds him. With a put upon sigh, he finally settles fully on the ground beside Edwin, as his knees are really starting to ache, even in The Distortion. At the release of his hand, Edwin immediately tries to break away from him, but Joshua pulls sharply on a a chain, the leash tied tightly to Edwin’s priestly collar, and pulls him back down beside him. Edwin stares at the thing, wide-eyed and confused, but he should know by now that reality is just a word and that words cannot pass through the Spiral.
“Edwin.” Joshua says sharply, snapping the leash and giving him a look. “You’re with me until you die. So stay put.”
“You’re–you’re going to kill me,” Edwin interprets numbly, a brief look of consternation passing across his weary face as he shuts his eyes for a moment. “The way you killed Bethany.”
“Decidedly in a different way,” Joshua says irritably. Edwin is still afraid, which is good, but Joshua could theoretically be doing more to scare him. But he is far past that now, and he’s never gotten to talk to this man, even though he has sorely wanted to since the moment he saw him in Beth’s flat. But this is not going the way Joshua wants it to. Edwin won’t shut up about God and Bethany O’Connor and murder of all things; like death’s the worst thing that could ever happen to a person.
“I had to change my plans for you, you know,” Joshua says waspishly as he shifts into a cross-legged position. Edwin sends him a look of utter incredulity. “I know! I was worried your feeble material heart was going to give out. I’m too damn good at my job, is what. I should stick to hunting the young. But you’re Marked. And you look very good for your age.” Joshua sweeps over him with a calculating eye. “Whatever… that age might be.”
The dull thrumming in Joshua’s ears tells him Edwin seems to be utterly over his fear at this point, which is–well, probably something Joshua should be looking into. Whatever. It’s not like he’s getting the fear from his priest anyways. The Spiral has a lot of custodians to tend to it. It will be fed, one way or the other. “I’m fourty-nine.” Edwin finally breaks the silence, voice flat. Then his face twists. “How old are you? You’re not a demon–you don’t believe in G–G–”
“It’s not that I don’t believe in him, Edwin,” Joshua explains patiently, even though his heart gives a little thrill at the knowledge. Fourty-nine. Is that old, or young? How long do material humans live, again? “It’s that I know he does not exist. I’ve seen proof of it. But I’m… well I’m certainly… older… than a child? But younger than you?”
“You… don’t know how old you are?” Edwin asks, and Joshua can’t stop himself from tightening his grip on his priest’s leash. This is not… fucking hell, no wonder Michael hates talking about himself. All this identity talk is starting to give Joshua hives. Edwin clearly senses, somehow, Joshua’s growing discomfort in his silence (though material humans can’t smell emotions, a fact Joshua knows for certain). “You look in your mid-twenties,” he offers.
“And that’s… old?” Joshua asks uncertainly, and then shakes his head violently as if he can rid himself of this conversation. What’s he going to do instead of the college students? Edwin has to kill someone, and Joshua would really like to keep the cannibalism aspect–he has to ruin the man’s faith for him, after all. His faith, Joshua had nearly forgotten about the priest’s faith!
Joshua holds a hand to Edwin’s mouth before he can answer. His lightly pointed nails dig into his flesh a bit, especially when he tugs the leash closer. Edwin’s hands twitch, but he makes no move to try and struggle again. The heartbeat in his ears picks up. He should tie up more pretty older men. He had no idea how good men of God looked in supplication.
“Your God, is not real,” Joshua tells him, voice soft and sweet, leaning in closer and closer until he can see the flecks of gold in his priest’s chocolate eyes. “I am a worshipper, you know. A priest. Just like you.” Joshua breathes in deeply through his nose, deeply grateful that his god left him this, just this once, to bathe in the thick scent of his collared priest in his Distorted cathedral.
“But my god is real,” Joshua breathes, so close the movement of his lips causes them to brush against the skin of Edwin’s cheek. They’re hot, hot like the Desolation were in the room with them, and the stink of guilt and shame fills Joshua’s nose like the most fragrant roses. “My god is built on the beliefs of material men. They all are. Because emotion, and belief, in high enough quantities–they make manifest, they create something so, so powerful, because human feeling is so strong, you understand? Your faith is so strong, but do you want to know why the Spiral is real, and your Christian God isn’t?”
Edwin’s molasses eyes keep flicking to the leash clutched in Joshua’s hand, so he gives it a tug, pulling the larger man half into his lap. Mouth slotted against ear, Joshua speaks to his beautiful heathen priest about his false idol.
“Because there is not enough good in the world to make a good god.”
Edwin makes a noise behind Joshua’s hand and he releases his mouth, instead lifting it to hold the back of his neck, keeping his priest securely against him. "What are you?"
His priest's fear was sharp in his voice, and smelled acrid and sweet at once in the air around him, but so was his clarity, his mind fighting against the cloying fog of the Spiral that twisted about him.
"I am a little bird," Joshua croons, skin around his eyes tightening with simpering, faux-sweetness. "Who suckles at the sharpest teeth of the most massive crocodile.”
Edwin starts in his hold, as if that was the very last thing he expected Joshua to say, but Joshua isn’t done. “I am a priest,” he says, hand gripping Edwin’s nape, brushed against by his soft black hair. “Of a real god. I am a servant of a perfect master. I am the custodian who cleans the abyss, and I do not complain.”
“No,” Edwin says, but does not say anything else. His charismatic word-smithing has left him, and he is so, so terrified. He is not scared of Joshua. He is scared of a world ruled by evil gods of fear. He is afraid of reality.
“Ah, my Edwin…” Joshua trails off, petting the back of his nape, and knows that his faith is crashing, somewhere in his head he knew Joshua was right from the off. He just needs to finish this. Which, unfortunately, mean untying his hound.
The leash is gone, and Edwin is flat on his back before his material mind can comprehend the distortion. Joshua shakes him from the front of his robes, schooling his features into that of worry and concern. With a belated flick of his eyes, he remembers to shift the hauntingly huge cathedral into something that could realistically be a chapel inside of Edwin’s church.
“Father Burroughs!” Joshua says, and doesn’t stop shaking him until Edwin’s mind catches up to the change, and he looks utterly confused. Joshua isn’t really masking himself well, mostly on purpose. He looks the same, but the change is so stark from where he was before and how he was behaving that every material, “rational” mind will try to rationalize past the unreal. “Father Burroughs, are you alright?” Joshua asks, dressed, in Edwin’s eyes, once again in the cassock he had appeared to him in as Father Singh.
Joshua stops shaking the disoriented man, because his eyes have focused back on him; but Joshua isn’t quite so controlled that he forbids himself from keeping his hands off the priest’s wide chest. But he does try to stop himself from massaging his pectorals. That might be too much.
“What–what’s happening? We were–we weren’t here before!” Edwin shouts, struggling into a sitting position, which he is understandably surprised that Joshua lets him into. Even more shocked (and a little wary) when he offers a hand to help his priest to his feet. In fact, the two of them are in the exact same position they were when Edwin first fled the church. The Distortion can take on any look if you know how to do it, and the cathedral is just one illusion Joshua can pick. But once he goes through another door, they will find themselves in the material church–because that’s where they’re going.
“What are you talking about, Father Burroughs?” Joshua asks him, voice raised an extra octave and full of worry. Is he overdoing it? He usually doesn’t have to act in his hallucinations. But, well. He never has had quite a catch as Edwin Burroughs. “I found you in here, passed out on the ground. Father Singh said you had just run out after a confession?”
“What–I–” Edwin clutches his head with one hand, eyes bulging with the new information, false as it was. But he isn’t as quick to dismiss his senses as he should be. “No. No! I didn’t confess to Father Singh, I confessed to you!”
Joshua plasters his best bemused-yet-helpful expression on his face. It’s not very good. He knows it’s not very good, because it’s not in his nature to be helpful. “Father Burroughs, I don’t take confessions.”
“Of course you don’t, you’re a–a bird… in the mouth of a crocodile…” Edwin’s trail peters out on its own, and he’s left staring at Joshua like he isn’t quite sure what he’s looking at. Perfect.
“I–er, I don’t really know what you’re talking about, Father Burroughs,” Joshua internally groans as he scratches the back of his neck in a show of uncertain nervousness. Focus, Joshua, almost done. He’s going to be gone after this, he deserves your effort, at least. “I’ve been a part of this congregation for years, Father Burroughs. If you want, we can go talk to Father Singh. He’ll tell you that himself.”
Edwin looks properly sick at that, shaking his head and muttering something. But they are going to Father Singh, and Edwin is disoriented enough that Joshua can catch him around the elbow and guide him out of the door and back onto solid ground. Edwin seems to notice the change, but it only serves to confuse the man more, which is when, in the church halls, Joshua starts making him see the crosses tip themselves upside-down, and perhaps a dash of bleeding crosses, why not? The time for subtlety is over. Edwin doesn’t need to be scared, he needs to be lost, moldable, easy to guide.
But in the end, he must be the one who moves.
Father Singh has an office, something Joshua knows because he’s thorough and knows the layout of this church very well, even though its against his nature to memorize anything. Especially maps. Eugh.
“I don’t think…” Edwin is saying, struggling ever-so-slightly against Joshua’s grip on his elbow. “No, I think I need to be alone. I want to sleep.”
“You can sleep after we talk to Father Singh,” Joshua tells him. “I’ll get you a bottle of wine. And you can sleep for as long as you want. Just this last thing. That’s not too hard, is it? You can sleep after.”
Edwin’s mind is foggy and hazed, and Joshua himself is getting tired, even after the hits of Edwin’s delicious discomfort and fear. He can practically hear the cogs going in his priest’s head as they walk through the empty corridors of the darkened church. He’s barely able to present right now, he’s stuck thinking about Joshua’s words, he’s thinking about a world ruled by fear–which is frankly quite stupid. He already lives in it. He doesn’t have to imagine.
They come to a stop in front of Father Singh’s door, finally, and Joshua literally has to reach out to steady his Mark to stop him from collapsing. Fuck, he really did a number on him, huh? This man is so fragile! It’s tempting, incredibly so, Joshua wants nothing more than to break him. But Joshua is, unfortunately, too good at his job. This man is simply not going to survive his machinations.
“Wait, stop, stop,” Edwin’s larger hands clamp onto Joshua’s shoulders, something heavy and steadying, though Joshua knows the man, though physically larger, couldn’t hurt him in any state, least of all the one he’s currently in.
“Father Burroughs–”
“No, you have to tell me, before–before we talk to him–” Edwin’s eyes roll up to meet his, stronger than Joshua would have guessed, fiery and determined enough to snatch his breath fully from his chest. “Who are you?”
Joshua blinks at him. It’s not in his nature to have an identity. He doesn’t want one. But Edwin has asked.
“You can call me Joshua,” he tells his priest, mostly because he can. Whether its the name he was born with or not, it is what people call him. But Edwin won’t be around him much longer.
“Joshua,” Edwin repeats. Joshua turns away and throws open the door to Father Singh’s office.
Father Singh is surprised to see Father Burroughs. He looks terrible. He looks like he’s just run a marathon through broken glass, good God man! Father Burroughs needs to lean up against Father Singh’s desk to stay upright. Eventually he collapses into the chair opposite of Father Singh.
Father Singh offers to call an ambulance. Father Burroughs asks him about a blond-haired priest named Joshua. Father Singh does not know any priest matching that description. Father Singh never gets up from his desk. Father Burroughs never notices that he walked into the room with someone.
Neither priests notice when Joshua snaps the rope out in his hands and binds Father Singh to his chair, by his ankles, his wrists. His neck. Father Singh still thinks he’s talking, and Father Burroughs still hears his words, when Joshua stuffs a gag into Father Singh’s mouth.
In a moment, Edwin no longer sees Father Singh’s office. As an extra treat to himself, Joshua lets Father Singh see what reality looks like, and no matter how much he struggles he cannot break free, and no matter how much he tries to shout no words will make it past the gag in his mouth. Edwin thinks he’s in the wine cellar–Joshua stands behind his elbow and massages his shoulder comfortingly.
“Where–”
“I told you you would get a bottle of wine and then you could rest, after you talked to Father Singh,” Joshua tells him consolingly. He gestures around the office. “Let’s get a bottle of wine, hm?”
“But I’m–I was still talking–to him…”
“You finished up fifteen minutes ago,” Joshua tells him, patting his arm. “Don’t you remember? And then you walked down here with me?”
“I, um, I don’t…” Edwin is racking his brain as hard as he can, but he’ll never find the memories because they don’t exist. “Wine?”
“Yes, let’s get a bottle of wine,” Joshua says, placing a corkscrew in his hand. He rolls his head on his neck to smirk at Father Singh. And winks. Singh thrashes harder.
Joshua guides him to the bottle rack. Shows him where the cork is he needs to pull. And then he steps back. He leans against a wall and watches.
Edwin knows something’s wrong. He can feel it in every instinct, that something is not adding up, that he never came down to the cellar. He even knows that Joshua has been tormenting him for years, practically, and that he killed Bethany O’Connor. But he doesn’t trust his instincts. He trusts his senses. He trusts Joshua.
Edwin plunges the corkscrew into Father Singh’s neck and twists. Singh gurgles on his own blood, unable to even scream in anguish as Edwin continues twisting, first with one hand, but the skin and muscle do not give easily and he puts his other hand on it, and twists again. By the third twist, he must brace himself against Father Singh’s chair with his foot and twist one–final–time.
Edwin pulls the cork free, and wine-red blood splatters across his ashen face and trim robes. He stumbles back with the force of it, and collapses against the chair behind him, not quite making it to the seat. He leans against the chair, cradling the corkscrew in his bloodied hand. Father Singh is still alive, but his life his leaking out of him very quickly. He will be gone in seconds.
Joshua doesn’t drop the illusion, but Edwin knows what he has done.
Joshua feels a good deal better after the splash of Father Singh’s fear–but it really wasn’t fear of madness, not in the way he needs it, so it tastes sour and strange in Joshua’s mouth. Still, he’s not quite out of uses. Joshua lifts a wine glass to his neck and catches as much of the dribbling blood as he can as the man dies.
He steps carefully over the spillt blood on the floor and picks his way to sit in the seat Edwin had foregone. Edwin’s head presses against his thigh, leaning against him as he breathes raggedly. Oh, yes, he knows what he has done.
Joshua cards a hand through his priest’s sweat-slick hair and lifts his head slightly. Edwin mutters something, but Joshua shushes him and pets his hair. “Come now, I promised you a drink… come… drink… my Edwin…”
Joshua lifts the goblet to Edwin’s lips, and his priest opens them for him. He tips the glass back to pour the crimson liquid down his throat, and he swallows for him. “Very good,” Joshua mutters. “It’s so sad I’ll have to lose you after this. I’ve quite liked your. Identity.”
Edwin presses his face into Joshua’s thigh and begins to cry.
Joshua’s eyes find a mirror behind Father Singh–or his corpse, he supposes–floor to ceiling, very tall. Oh. Perhaps that’s why Edwin knew. He forget to change the reflection.
Wait a moment–
“Joshuaaa,” an echoing drawl winds into the room. “He is not foooor you. He is Marked.”
Joshua’s head hits the back of his chair with an audible thump. “Michaeeeeel,” he groans. Edwin starts against him, and clearly has enough strength left in him to scream as Michael emerges from the door behind them.
With a great effort, Joshua lifts himself up to stare at Michael in his material form as Edwin scrambles back, clearly catching his real reflection in the mirror. Damn it. Joshua had no sooner thought it than Michael appeared–Edwin had known about the illusion and still killed Father Singh. Had still drunk from Joshua’s glass. That meant something–something Michael was not going to like.
“I let you haave him,” Michael says, glassy eyes looking down at him in a way that was almost petulant. “You said to me there were more ways to enjoy a meal. You cannot haave him. His faith is for the Spiiiiralll.”
“His faith was given to the Spiral,” Joshua points out. “Trust me, I broke him out of the Catholicism. Took less than an hour.”
“You know that’s not what was meaaant,” Michael complains. “Joshuaaaa,”
Joshua stood up, anger arching through his bones now. “You know what I know, don’t you? He’d be perfect. He knew, I forgot to change the reflection and he knew! Michael, don’t be stupid about this, the Spiral took his faith, let’s–”
“The Spiral did not take his faith,” Michael spoke in what was almost a hiss as he advanced on Joshua. And Joshua isn’t afraid of Edwin’s size, because size doesn’t necessarily mean power. But Michael is six and a half feet on a good day and carries the power of The Distortion wound within him. Joshua’s first reaction, with a spike of fear that is more shocking than the advance, is to scramble away from The Distortion–but Michael’s limbs are long and all the bones are in his hands–and his sharp fingers cut into Joshua’s neck as he lifts him off the floor and into the wall by the throat. “His faith is theeeeere, Joshuaaa,” Michael snarls. Joshua has never heard Michael angry before.
Joshua chokes out, “He doesn’t believe–”
“He believes in the Spiiraaall!” Michael slams him again against the wall, causing his fingers to split another gash into his collarbone. He won’t die from blood loss, and probably will live even if Michael tries his hardest to kill him–but it hurts, damn, it hurts and he is gushing blood down his clothes–his real clothes, his bright blue slacks and previously spotless white blouse, off his Oxford shoes and gathering in a rapidly growing puddle on the floor.
“I–told–you–” Joshua manages. “He’s–perfect–let me–convert–”
“He was Marked for the Spiral,” Michael hisses. “You were meant to feeeed iiiit!”
“I know–but–I’m also–m–meant t–to–” Black spots start to gather on the edge of Joshua’s vision, and the lightness of his head is really starting to make him worry Michael really will try to kill him and leave him outside The Distortion. “Mi–Michae–”
Just as The Distortion face in front of him starts to blur, there’s a flash of color and suddenly the grip on Joshua’s neck is free and he’s crashing painfully to his knees, soaking his pants in his own blood. He coughs and hacks, trying to get his breath back in his lungs, and barely registers a strange, echoey howl of pain from above him.
Joshua forces his head up and sees, not Michael, but Edwin, bloody corkscrew Joshua had given him jammed into the mirror behind Father Singh–no, in Michael’s reflection… and Michael…
The wound in his side looks like the cobweb of cracked glass, and he makes motions as if to clutch at it with his hands but stops himself at the last moment. He glances his large, glassy eyes from Joshua to Edwin, his thin lips curled into a grimace of pain and unhappiness.
Joshua closes his eyes for a moment in relief. He had been right. Edwin chose to kill Father Singh because he must know, on some level, that the illusion is the real world. That sometimes, the fictional things mean infinitely more than messy, lying reality. And he knows that hurting Michael’s reflection will hurt him because it makes sense and he believes it.
Edwin Burroughs shouldn’t be a meal. He should be an Avatar.
Joshua wrenches his eyes open to meet Michael’s gaze and keeps his hands pressed against the still-bleeding lacerations on his neck and collarbone. “Well? Can I make him an Avatar now?”
Michael makes a face almost like a pout. “You’re a… beast, Joshuaaa. You don’t think you just act.”
“Are you seriously scolding me for trusting my instincts over my senses?” Joshua demands. “Isn’t that the entire point of being an Avatar of the Spiral?”
Michael stares at Edwin for a moment. “He’ll come with me.”
“I will not!” Edwin protests. “I want nothing to do with either of you!”
“I thought we–” Joshua cuts himself off, hacking up a glob of blood. “I thought we had a wonderful time, Edwin.”
“You need psychiatric help.”
“So do you. That’s the point.” Joshua rolls his eyes and stumbles to his feet, but needs to lean against the wall to keep himself up. He’ll be fine after a sleep and good meal. “Fine, you can bring him in, Michael.”
“Good.”
“What if I don’t want to become–what you are?” Edwin demands, mouth twisted into an angry frown. “What if I don’t want to be a–a monster?”
“Then you probably shouldn’t have killed him,” Joshua jerks his head to indicate Father Singh, and then winces when it causes another flow of blood to gush out of his wounds. “Material jailing or eternal life of genuine, authentic, and unknowable madness. Your choice.”
Edwin looks back at Father Singh. For a moment, he’s utterly quiet. “Fine. But I’m not going with that–that thing. I’ll go with Joshua.”
Michael almost looks a bit sad. Joshua grins and offers his arm to Edwin as Michael opens the door to reveal a hallway of The Distortion. “I knew we had fun together,” Joshua tells him.
Edwin lets him lean against him as they walk past the threshold.