in Massachusetts
Chapter Two
Mary buttoned her coat and headed for the door. She was frantic about finally being able to meet Mr. Lucifer with Joe by her side. As much as she had grown to loath him she loved him now too. Mary wanted more than anything to stop being herself, just for him. She knew that he was kind to her in his mind and couldn’t control the chill that he gave her whenever their eyes met. It was his indifference that made him so appealing. He was her only true fear, but he was the only thing she understood. Mary let the icy skies wash over her as she neared the outdoors. She was looking forward to playing with Joe’s heart. She was at a point where Joe was hanging on a string from her finger. It was obvious that he wanted her. He wanted her so that he could open her up like a book and read and analyze her secret tales. Mary was not ready to come out of her plastic mask and show Joe who she really was. He knew her as the evil horrific person that was her, but he didn’t know how real she was too. She had hidden her sincerity behind lies and hate for her own persona years ago. It was now, as she and Joe were finally to be considered equal, that she wanted to melt away her frigid soul with his tears. Mary peered around the corner and darted over to the brook behind the dumpsters. As she approached the place in which she was heading for, she saw Joe standing awkwardly waiting for her. When she began to feel his anger tingle within her she knew he could sense her presence too.
“Hello there Mary, I have only been waiting for you a little while. I know that I shouldn’t have even done the deed of waiting but I didn’t want you to think I would purposely leave without you.” Joe didn’t want to offend Mary if she thought that he was being too gallant. But only because of a sudden urge of forced kindness, Mary was not offended in the slightest.
“I am nervous for you to meet Him. We worship His ways because He is brilliant, but He is also harsh. I know that you are a good man Joe and I don’t want you to break your oath to power because of His intensity.” Mary reached out her hand for Joe to take. Confused by her own gesture Mary nudged his palm and explained some fake meaning to her action. “We could loose each other and end up on other ends of the Basement. If we don’t arrive together than Mr. Lucifer would be irate. I don’t want to face any mishaps on your first visit so I am only offering my hand for that purpose.” Mary used her other arm to wipe the sweat that had begun to glitter across her brow in anxiety. She waited as she watched Joe reluctantly settle his fingers into her gentle fists.
“We should leave now or all of this chatter about avoiding the worst will be real.” Mary laughed in agreement and then put her toe a few inches closer to the edge of the brook. Joe acknowledged her fear and leaped over the edge into the depths of the brook; because their fingers were intertwined Mary had landed facedown in a foot high pile of mud. She grunted and brushed herself off before climbing up and settling herself to wade in the water. Joe pulled her close to him and held both of her dainty hands firmly in his large rugged ones, securing her from any more excuses to touch him. Mary held her breath and squeezed his hand into lifelessness. She dug her feet further into the muck below her and began to hum softly. She thought of the empowerment that her faults gave her and the strength that fear devoured her with. Everything around her was hated as she began to see things realistically. Her blood throbbed throughout her veins while the dimming lights brought upon satisfaction. Her humming was belting staccato now, it seemed to be echoing across a narrow hallway as her ears came back to focus. Mary could still feel her grip on Joe growing more impulsive as she bashed out to the underworld. Upon opening her crusted eyelids, Mary found herself marveled.
“Joe?” Her voice was still bonding down the empty passageway, “Joe, are you still there?” She shook the hands that were molded around hers and screamed, “JOSEPH BLACK!” A tear washed away her dirty face, leaving a streak of perfection on the skin. Suddenly she felt the fingers in hers tingle and the life was restored to the dummy.
“Hello again my Mary.” A full raspy voice slithered up Mary’s spine, “Your Joe has left us for now, and so let you worship me as you worshiped him just now.” The devil smirked as a red light illuminated Joe’s unconscious face. “I am in him. I am living off of his love for now. He had far too much goodness in him for my liking.” Suddenly the body on the floor floated into an upright position, Joe’s lips curled in a taunting smirk that he did not posses. Mary lashed out to the one source stronger than she. The devil hung his head in disgrace and laughed, mocking her aggression. “Foolish ignorant girl, I cannot kill the boy. This little human I am thriving off of now is only to my disposal until his body is clean of all his goodness. You know as well as I do that he is immortal, do not act weak and sensitively unimportant under pressure.” Mr. Lucifer sighed in an attempt to calm his own nerves, an action failed more than ever succeeding. He pointed Joe’s glistening fingers down the endless hallway and began to glide forward. Following instinctively Mary wandered depressed along behind him.
“Mr. Lucifer sir, is Joe no longer in consideration to be King?” Mary could feel her words penetrate off of the soul that reined these passageways. The figure that was Joe’s turned and paced pensively.
“Hmmm, you do not remember that I have a witty mind and spirit too. I may lack the qualities that make me understood but I am of good use. I know for a fact that you desire the easy placement of yourself as King rather than Joe. You do not want to fight him and win, nor do you want to fight him and lose. As the records stand you have already won him over in many unnoticeable challenges. I have been watching you with great detest. You are far too brilliantly maniacal for this poor wretched boy who is titled a bane of my existence. You were claimed to be two of the least satisfied people. You were never called evil by any standards, but you were not pleased with anything more than yourself. You are selfish and greedy. I worried from the moment that you two were born that you would be too delicate, too human. Do not try and be anything besides you though Mary. If there is one great lesson I know I can teach it is how to become what I am now. You must always be true to everything you are, every aspect of hate, every color of demise. If you are only pretending to be the soul of hatred then that is all you will ever be, a poser for the likes of all that’s real. For me to be what I am I must really be quite sincere, and for God to be as holy as he is he must be quite conceded. You see he thinks that being the way he is, creator and lover of all things he created, makes him somehow wholesome because he is not dripping with self pity, but he has a devilish side to him too. You see to get the wondrous title of Devil you must be selfish, tyrannical, and condescending, and if our God is not these things then what is he?” He grunted and started ahead of him at the thick darkness.
“If we are so wrong for this task, if I was not born with evil pulsing through me then why would God create us at all? Why would he take the time to make someone like you or I if he knows we must be his enemy?” Mary’s eager little hard working mind put her in a position that made the devil squeal with a childlike delight.
Joe’s eyes began to hypnotize her own. “That god whom is so sinless is the greatest sinner of them all. If it had not been for his idea of the creation of heaven and his own idea of making him the most celebrated spirit than he would not be. Little Mary, so very contrary, it is funny what your questions mean. The way you say things about your Master so lightly, you know I have no control of you until you are no longer human; he is your true dictator for now. And yet if I did not believe it and had I not told you I may have avoided it.” Mr. Lucifer shook Joe’s head and the slowly he let the body slink down to the damp cement floors. Mary saw a red light flicker above Joe’s head as the devil found refuge in a bat that was hanging from the ceiling. When a voice croaked out of the bats miniscule lips Mary giggled in relief. Mr. Lucifer was indeed safe inside the goodness of something else. “Ah, so let me resume my lecture to you. Your friend has fed me heartily and I can’t possibly take more from him.” He laughed and flew so that his eyes were level with hers. His lips curled up to reveal a surreptitious smile. “I am his equal.”
“How?” The devil perched himself upon her shoulder and grinned.
“He created me, not out of selfishness but out of compassion. He needed someone to be his equal, to confide in, and to battle when the people doubted his strength.” The devil laughed and his screeches bounded off of the walls. “Walk with me now, into this bleakness. You have come here to be taught the works of hate and that I can teach.” Mr. Lucifer glided over the cement and Mary followed with great anticipation. They found themselves wandering aimlessly back and forth through ground they had already covered. “Isn’t this familiar looking?” Mary nodded as she gawked at the ceiling over her head. Nothing was there but blackness. She had often wondered how she had managed to get herself here so many times, and when she ever dared to ask the devil he would answer by saying that her being here was the one thing that was too bad to discuss.
“Mr. Lucifer you left Joe behind us miles ago, yes?” The devil cracked out a screech to indicate the answer being yes. With her theory confirmed Mary coughed before speaking, “I see him every time I pass the wall with the obscure graffiti upon it. I know he is still around us and yet I also know he cannot see or hear us. And while I cower away from your power I feel him cower away from me. Now I am beginning to wonder whether or not my tasks have already been completed in perfection and I also wonder if all this false torment of me having to defeat a friend is just you stalling your departure.” A fire came out from where the bat was flying, the tips of its wings exposing the blue of the flame.
“Stalling, really? Stupid foolish girl, I do not need to stall for anyone or anything. I will always be the King of The Reign you will simply be the King of The Reign after me, therefore with a little bit less to your name, I will always be better than you somehow. You see little Mary, while you have uncovered a secret by realizing the fear inside Joe you have not quite gotten the secret correct. And because of what my title is, and keeping worthy to its name, I will not tell you what that pesky little piece of information is. Your first official talk is to find the answer to this question: What is the difference between a lover and enemy? The correct answer will help you find exactly what it is you were lacking in your statement before.” He lowered himself to my level and put his eyes down to where Joe’s body was lying. “Pick him up and bring him home, tell him what you can remember of what I have told you. You will both come to me with answers in ahh…” he paused pensively weighing numbers in his head, “in one month you will realize just how much knowledge can be gained from each other on the subjects you desire. Go now and do not return without an answer.” I nodded to him and reached out to pat the top of his tiny black head, not as a gesture of degrading his esteem, but simply to show my thanks for his teaching and my closeness to his cause. “Don’t.” He spoke before my ivory fingers could even graze his brow, “We are not to be friendly Mary, I am the devil and I do not want to hurt you.” Again Mary nodded but this time she strode away without looking back. He didn’t want to hurt her, and he was the devil, how kind of him, how pure.
As soon as Mary was far enough away from him to sprint, she did. Her feet carried her around and around each sharp tense corner. She was looking for the boy whom she had come here with. The one who Mary knew would solve all of her problems and would stay faithful to their hatred by needing her. When she came across his corpse, although she knew she shouldn’t, Mary squealed with a giddy delight. This was her enemy, her competition, her one block from being the all mighty, and here he was lying down ridiculously with limp limbs and a dumb mind. Here lay her chance at passing every level in a moment, here laid the body that had no soul but reigned over her chance of succeeding. Here lay the rest of the story of her life.
Mary slowly bent over the boy and his glistening flesh, the flesh was what made her shudder, his dark eyes with their dense black pupils sunk into his face as his silver sparkling skin radiated off of the walls gently and with great power. It seemed to be more alive than anything else, more alive then her and more alive than Mr. Lucifer, it was calling Mary close to it to a point where her eager little fingers were brushing themselves softly against it. The low lulling tone of his bodies divine will to survive penetrated through her as she touched him. And for some unnamed reason, at that unimportant time, Mary began to hate herself. She began to despise the core of all that drove her. Mary slid her hand behind his neck and propped him against the nondescript wall, she sat herself next him and held his icy hands. She bent to his ear and pressed her lips against it.
“Please God if you are real, even if you really greedy and conceded, I need you to be with me now. I have always believed in you, although for some of my time I spent my believing you hating you because you were real, I am still a servant to your power, I still know you are my superior. I still recognize that you have the power to do anything and everything for the good and bad of the human nation, and while I may not simply be human I am part of their nation. I need you to take my powers here from me and give them selflessly to my Joe. He has to live, God; he has to be able to know that we are equals, and that we are friends. He has to know that the power to possess smell and taste and energy will always be his. He has to God because he is holy, holier than you will ever think him to be, holier than every saint. He loves me God, I know he does, he loves me even though I hurt him. He protects me and follows me and yet he leads himself. He is everything that I know, God, I have to have him. I love him God, I love him.” Mary leaned her head against his shoulder and let the tears she never dared to shed come trickling out of her eyes. They rolled down her cheeks and onto Joe’s cold body, onto his shirt, and into his heart. She wrapped her arms firmly around his body and tried to think of anyway to get back out, but the power to think was lost. With Joe in her arms, his head buried now in her chest, she let herself fall asleep in defeat.
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