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The five stages of decomposition are as follows:
FRESH
Among the animals that have a heart, the fresh stage begins immediately after the heart stops beating.
“Wait,” Mapicc hisses. “Close your eyes, Spoke.”
He can’t see him, but he can hear him; shifting restlessly in the artificial blackness. All around them, massive invisible trees arch upwards into a dark sky. Rapid breathing to his left and behind; that’s Jumper. Spoke makes a confused noise. He does as told. It doesn’t change much; he couldn’t see before and he can’t see now.
“Oh, I see,” hums Jumper. “Yup, yeah, good. Keep ‘em closed, Spoke. And don’t speak.”
“Hmm?”
A hand, circling around his wrist. Calloused and warm; that’s Mapicc. He’d recognize that touch anywhere. Another steadying hand on his shoulder; this one smaller, cooler. Jumper. One friend in front of him and one behind. Spoke, safe in the center.
“You’re like a night-light,” Mapicc murmurs, stepping in front of him. At least, that must be what he’s doing, because Spoke can feel warm breath brush over his cheek.
“Your eyes,” echoes Jumper, behind him. Her hand is still steady on his back. Holding him in place. It feels good. Both of them can touch him which means he is alive and real. “And your mouth. They’re too bright. Can’t sneak like this.”
Spoke nods.
Jumper’s fingers spread across his shoulderblades like feathers on a wing. Mapicc’s hand comes up to cup his face in a hand; to hold his face still. He doesn’t really need to; Jumper or Mapicc could ask for the sun in a marble or the stars splayed out on a necklace and he would do it in a second. In the dark, the pressure of their touch marks the boundary between him and the world; maps out the edges of his body. Real; where their hands rest he feels real.
“Can we use—?” Mapicc starts, and Jumper cuts him off.
“Yeah, hold on,” she says. There’s a rustling, and then cool hands on his face. Long, slender fingers; pianist’s hands. Jumper’s wrapping something around his face, over his eyes, like a blindfold. The fabric is satiny and smooth. It smells a little like roses.
Without sight, the image strikes him like a bolt of lightning. The pink ribbon Jumper ties her hair back with. That’s the soft sensation over his eyes. She ties it back behind his head; he feels her warm breath on the back of his neck; doesn’t shiver.
“S’that—”
“Try opening your eyes,” says Jumper. Like a good soldier, Spoke complies.
Still, the world is black. He thinks he can maybe make out the shifting silhouette of Mapicc in front of him.
“Mm, no.”
“Y’can still see it, right?” says Mapicc.
Jumper sighs behind him. “Yup.”
“Well, then,” she says. “Your turn. Eyes closed, Spoke.”
Peaceably, he obliges. This time the shifting is Mapicc stepping into his space; he can tell, instantly, because his is the most familiar presence in the whole wide world. Mapicc’s hand on Spoke’s cheek is much rougher; much more firm than Jumper’s cautious gentleness. But Spoke leans into it all the same. Over his eyes, again, the soft slide of more familiar cloth. Rough-spun cotton, smelling of salt and smoke. Mapicc. His ribbon red headband, surely—Spoke recognizes that texture from playing with the ends of it while Mapicc snored in their bed. He needed something to occupy his hands with while he watched Mapicc sleep.
“Open your eyes?” Mapicc asks. He’s still close. Spoke can hear him breathing.
He does, and Jumper makes a contented sound.
“Good,” she says. “Yeah, that’ll do. Just don’t talk, ‘kay?”
“Mhm,” Spoke hums. The pressure of two blindfolds—of these two blindfolds, which smell like safety and loyalty and love—makes him start scheming ways to make this happen again.
Mapicc takes one of Spoke’s hands. Jumper threads her fingers through his other.
“Just follow me,” murmurs Jumper.
“And don’t let go of my hand,” adds Mapicc. “Countin’ on you, Spoke. I don’t wanna get lost.”
“C’mon,” Spoke chirps, at last. “I would never lead you astray.”
And then both snap at him to shut up, and Spoke closes his mouth in a grin, and he follows dear Jumper through the dark and drags dear Mapicc behind and together they slip through the artificial night, through the strange towering trees, to a staircase where Spoke feels his heart stop.
BLOAT
The buildup of pressure combined with the loss of integrity of the skin may cause the body to rupture.
Spoke can’t shake this strange sensation of doom, even as he puts back a whole bottle of invis.
It’s cool on his tongue. It tastes like vanilla and rot. He can hear Jumper talking somewhere far away. It’s really not that bad, working with Spoke… from what I’ve seen, he’s a good guy.
The feeling of his body fading away is panic-inducing, so instead of focusing on how he can see through his fingers and the way his heartbeat is picking up, Spoke focuses on that lingering feeling of touch. Mapicc’s hand cupping his cheek; Jumper’s hand steady on his shoulderblade.
This is, after all, all for them.
Jamato would have them all killed. Jamato will have them all killed, if Spoke doesn’t do something about it. They won’t believe him without evidence, but if he’s gone, then it doesn’t matter. They’ll be safe. He’ll be safe. Null gone. And then they can go—home. They can go home. Maybe Jumper will come. She doesn’t have anybody anymore after Spoke fed them all to the crushing machine of his own desires. Now she only has Spoke, and isn’t that nice?
He’s going to be a hero, after all, once he kills Jamato.
The thing about that is, however, that Jamato doesn’t die. He should have expected this, on some level, but it isn’t totally over—he’s gone, now, and that at least gives him time. To slip away and rough up his hair and fabricate some injuries; smear some blood over his cheek and come crawling back to the village gasping about how close it was and how he’s so glad Mapicc and Jumper are safe, and Mapicc will fuss over him while Jumper does the first-aid and he can explain to them, now that Jamato is mysteriously gone, about the blackmailing book and how he was so worried Jamato would lie to them and they would believe him and leave Spoke and Spoke just couldn’t handle that because he needs them and maybe they would both wrap him up in a hug and Spoke would cry for real. How long has it been since Spoke has cried and meant it? How long has it been since Spoke has meant anything? But Mapicc won’t get off of his tail.
He’s there, and so was Null, in the village—is Jumper okay? She’s strong and capable, she will be—and so will Mapicc, once Spoke loses him. It’s aggravating, really; that he’d go so far for JamatoP. What makes him so special? Why isn’t Mapicc looking for him? He’s supposed to be lost in the woods right now, mending his armor. Terribly vulnerable. And yet Mapicc is here and not there. It’s a mistake.
Spoke is making a lot of mistakes. He can’t lose to Mapicc. He’s running out of invis. They’re in a cave and he doesn’t know how to get out.
Mistake after mistake after mistake; they build up underneath his skin until he can hardly feel it; bubbling and buzzy.
Maybe they never left that staircase. Maybe he’s still stumbling down in circles, into the dark, Jumper above him and Mapicc below, just out of sight. But in the spiral when he can’t see them they’re not really there. If they’re not close enough to card a hand through his hair and take a hold of his mind then they’re not there at all. In the spiral he has nothing is nothing. In the spiral, Spoke gets in over his head.
He makes mistakes.
When the invis washes away, he is left alone. Below: the void. Above: a towering labyrinth of stone. In it, Spoke loses his mind. And then he finds Mapicc again.
ACTIVE DECAY
Active decay is characterized by the period of greatest mass loss.
The breath hitches; the body moves. Mapicc, in his arms. Something cuts through the back. Not his back; he does not have a back. No back, no body, no bruises, no pain. No sword slicing into no lungs.
A mind, free and floating. The hands reach up and cup Mapicc’s face in between his palms; they frame the disgust and horror and betrayal in his dearest most precious friend.
“Sorry,” Spoke whispers. “Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry Mapicc, I’m so sorry.”
“You’re getting blood on me,” says Mapicc, and then: “Don’t fucking touch me.”
“I need you.”
“You need help,” hisses Mapicc.
“You’re my help,” Spoke begs. He steps forward; Mapicc's blade shifts deeper in between the ribs. Not his ribs; he has no ribs. “You’re—Mapicc. Mapicc.”
“Spoke,” says his best friend. “Get the hell away from me.”
Mapicc plants his foot into his chest and he kicks; Spoke is thrown across the hall. His head falls back against cobblestone; it cracks. His cheek touches moss. It’s soft, and then damp, and then all red.
“Two years,” Mapicc says, from very very very far away. “Two years. Two fucking years.”
Spoke just whimpers, and he nuzzles his cheek into the red moss like a wounded animal. His head throbs. It’s split open; all the evil spilling out of his cracked mind. “I didn’t… would never… didn’t mean to…”
Mapicc just clicks his tongue. Spoke can imagine the exact expression he has on his face right now. “Liar.”
“Please,” says Spoke. “Please, Mapicc, please. I can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
A weight settles beside him.
“Can’t,” says Spoke, ‘cause it’s true. “Y’r my… my best… my…”
It’s silent, for a second. Mapicc’s sweet and kind and soft hand brushes the hair out of Spoke’s face; he whimpers like a dog.
“Mapicc,” Spoke breathes.
“Don’t speak,” says his best friend, before he pulls Spoke into his lap and cradles him to his chest and curls around his rotting soul. “Don’t speak, don’t move, don’t say anything, just—“
“Wh…” he asks. His mouth is dry and it tastes like blood but Mapicc is here and holding him and really isn’t what he was doing all of this for.
“Dunno,” whispers Mapicc. “I really don’t. I don’t know. Just need to. I need to. I need this. Don’t—don’t get it twisted. This is for me. This is not—I’m using you.”
“Kay,” he says. It’s only fair, really.
Let Spoke be used. Let him be useful. Isn’t this a use? For this nothing body and absent mind? Mapicc presses their foreheads together and his hand on the back of Spoke’s skull comes away crimson and dripping.
His best friend stares at the blood on his hands. “I hate you,” he says, flat.
Spoke just whines. A whine is good; a whine is brutal & animal & right. He feels animal. He feels small & preylike under his betrayed friend’s shadow.
Mapicc’s hand is covered in blood-not-blood. Evil. Mapicc’s hand is covered in the evil that is leaking out of Spoke’s mind, which is where it swirls and sparks and screams. If it does not clot it will all go and then maybe Spoke will be free; maybe then Spoke will be happy. Maybe then Mapicc will love him again.
“You used me,” Mapicc says, again, under his breath.
In his friend’s lap, Spoke stares up at the sky.
“I need to die,” Spoke sighs, and Mapicc laughs.
Loud and hysteric and barking, Mapicc laughs.
“I know,” he says. “Yeah, I know. I know, I know, I know, I know. I thought—I thought I could—”
“What?”
“Thought I could fix you,” says Mapicc. “Thought you needed me. Thought I was saving you. I thought I was saving you, Spoke, but you were just—” He shakes his head, wonderingly. “Using me. All of it. You were using me.”
Too dizzy. Spoke is too dizzy for this. He’s too dizzy and it hurts too much.
“Don’t—” he starts, and then thinks better of it.
Who is he to ask Mapicc not to leave?
Spoke is dead, and Mapicc finally, finally, finally realized it. He had been waiting for so long for somebody to look at him and realize that he wasn't alive anymore—hadn’t been alive for years and years—had died when he flicked a redstone lever and spliced a portal and his mind in half. Spoke is dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead.
“I think I want you to do it.”
“What?” Mapicc asks, and then snaps his mouth shut. He knows. His face twists in disgust. It’s like he’s looking at rot; like the thing in his hands in his lap in his arms is deathly & horrific. Like he’s caught the sour, nauseating stench of animal decomposition. The chemicals that make that smell are called cadaverine and putrescine and Spoke used to think that actually they smelled quite beautiful when they came from the bodies of those that he had killed; those that he had speared on dripstone and cooked inside-out in lava. Spoke used to like it when players screamed; he used to like it when Mapicc would run a comb through his hair and kiss the crown of his head and tell him that it would all be okay and that he would never leave him ever.
“Want you to kill me,” Spoke sighs, and Mapicc flinches, which is usual. Then he does something unusual; he cradles Spoke’s head in one hand and braces the flat edge of his blade against Spoke’s throat in the other.
“I could,” Mapicc says, softly. “I could, Spoke.”
Cadaverine on his hands & putrescine in the air. Sweet, satisfying, slipping away.
Spoke could give his life to Mapicc. If he was to give it to anybody it would be Mapicc. If it belongs to anybody it belongs to Mapicc. If that’s who decides Spoke should die, then it must be true.
“Do you want to?” Spoke whispers.
“Yeah,” murmurs Mapicc, almost lovingly. “I do. I really do. I think I hate you. I think I want to kill you.”
“Good,” Spoke says. “That’s what Jamato wants, anyway.”
In a second, he’s ruined it.
“I’m done,” Mapicc snaps, and he shoves Spoke out of his lap and onto the floor. “I’m done. I’m done, Spoke. I’m done.”
On the ground, Spoke laughs and laughs and laughs and spills hatred red and ribbony from his head to the stone to the moss. Like Mapicc’s fluttering red headband; the one he wrapped around Spoke’s eyes to protect him to hide him to keep him safe. Where is Mapicc, now? Where is Jumper? Where is Spoke? Not here. Not here and not anywhere. He laughs.
“You can just—just stay here, in the fucking Farlands, or whatever, and live out your awful little life. But I swear to god, Spoke, if I ever see you again—”
The body cackles; the mind collapses. A nether portal cuts the air in half.
ADVANCED DECAY
When the carcass is located on soil, the area surrounding it will show evidence of vegetation death.
“Spoke,” says his best friend. “Wh—”
And that’s as far as he gets before a black human-shaped shadow slams the knuckles of his netherite gauntlet into Mapicc’s helmet and throws him sideways.
Mapicc hits the stone in a fighter’s crouch; reels from the impact straight into battle. He always was the best fighter out of them. He was fierce and stubborn and he always went straight for the throat. Past tense, because Spoke thinks he’s probably about to watch Mapicc die. He didn’t kill Spoke. He was supposed to kill Spoke.
“Son of a bitch,” Mapicc hisses.
He always was a good fighter but this is five people fully geared in close quarters and Mapicc isn’t in the right headspace right now. Spoke can tell because he keeps looking at him, sprawled out on the ground, still laughing, sometimes curling into himself and sobbing, and sometimes silently watching. Watching. Watching as Mapicc does his best; parries blades and redirects and still fails to avoid the worst of it; catches cuts in the chinks of his armor; is bled dry bit by bit until he really fucks up and catches the hilt of a sword to the eye.
Mapicc crumples on the spot; hits the ground like a doll. Curls up into himself like a roly-poly. Cradles his head. “Wh…” he mumbles. “What, Spoke, what—?”
But he’s fallen and there’s no coming back from this. They’re on him in seconds.
A hand; on the back of his best friend’s neck, holding him down. Another one kicks at his face; Spoke can’t look away. Red-on-white makes pink; is Mapicc missing a tooth? Pretty tooth; sharp tooth. He has such sharp teeth. He rolls. Spits out blood on the stone. Reaches out for Spoke reflexively; flinches back at the sight of empty white eyes.
Sorry, Mapicc, Spoke thinks, hysterically. Sorry. Gimme your headband and we’ll find Jumper and I’ll blindfold it away.
Then he could just follow them. In the dark. Sightless.
In that black manmade void, that shifting silent darkness in which his dearest friends breathed and they spoke; they whispered are you coming and shh, shh, shh, and don’t fall behind come here Spoke come here come here let us blind you let us hold you lets us drag you in between like three beads on a string like the stars on a string he would string the stars adorn them with every iridescent shining thing in this server—shining! his eyes won’t stop shining glowing bleeding radiance all over the place to light to brighten to stain, substanceless, to illuminate
nothing nothing holy holy holy nothing. Void,
senseless. What he would give to be senseless.
Then he could not see or hear Mapicc. Precious Mapicc, how he hurts. How he is beat.
“St—”
Mapicc gets only that far. Only one sound. Only one half of a syllable. Awful syllable. Shocking sound. Sick syllable; sick sound. Slamming into Spoke’s head. Bullet-syllable, bullet-sound.
Spoke agrees. It should stop. It has to stop.
Mapicc’s eyes are wide red-and-white. He crawls on the stone. Tries to push himself up.
“Fuck you, Spoke,” he hisses, and then: “C’mon, no... no, no, c’mon,” as he reaches for his sword, fallen far across the hall, but another one kicks him in the stomach and Mapicc curls back into himself. The sound of it is heavy and thick, like a hammer tenderizing meat.
“Sp–”
He wishes, almost, that the shadows would speak; that they would taunt them and shout and gloat. Then maybe he wouldn’t have to hear it—Mapicc’s soft gasps—his keening whimpers—the moans of pain and the choking blood-rattling gurgles and then the totem,
Snap
Snap
Snap
remade & rebroken
Still, they are silent. So is Spoke. Mapicc isn’t—they’re beating him to death. Or until his armor breaks. Spoke’s not sure.
DRY REMAINS
All that remains of the cadaver at this stage is dry skin, cartilage, and bones, which will become dry and bleached if exposed to the elements.
A long time ago, Spoke was alive. At one point, at one point, at one point, he was alive. When was that? In the Spring? In a Spring, that’s for sure, he remembers because all the cherry trees were flowering pretty pink and it was the dead of night and the moon was high and full and round. It was fat and silver; it looked like a silver coin spinning in the sky. It was him and it was Mapicc and they were alone.
Spoke can still taste that flower-filled night in between his teeth.
“C’mere, Spoke,” Mapicc sighs. “You’re too far away.”
What did he do, then? He probably crawled over the grass and right into Mapicc’s arms; cuddled up into his side, listened to his heart beat. Or maybe he said no, that Mapicc should come closer instead. Maybe Jumper was there, and she laughed at them. No, that never happened. This was back when there was a lava-cast home. Spoke hasn’t both of them for long. If only.
Or maybe—yes, that’s right, that’s what he did—he watched Mapicc mischievously, and tilted his head, and Mapicc watched him back, with that same excited curiosity, and then pounced on him where he lied in the grass and they play-wrestled in the grass until—oh, yes. Spoke remembers this part. Until Mapicc pinned him down in the grass, kneeling over his chest, both hands on his wrists, ready to gloat.
“Wait,” Spoke says, breathless. Mapicc stills in place above him. “Could you—”
It sticks in his throat; catches in a web of uncertainty. His best friend tilts his head, curiously. The silver full moon frames him like a halo.
“Hold me down,” Spoke asks. He can feel Mapicc’s hands reflexively squeeze around his wrists.
“Bro,” says his best friend. “What?”
“Like, even if I—” he stops, curses; lets his head fall back against the grass. This is stupid. “Just. Hold me down. Even if I try to, like, wiggle out, I just want you to—”
Mapicc smiles, cuts him off. His sharp white canines catch in the silver coin moonlight. “You wanna be stuck.”
Spoke nearly whines. That’s not it. That’s not it at all. But he doesn’t know how to say it right. “I wanna be alive.”
Mapicc’s eyebrows furrow; his forehead pinches together. He doesn’t question it. He just braces himself a little more; settles into kneeling over Spoke’s chest and bears his weight over Spoke’s wrists.
“Okay?” he asks, softly.
“Okay,” says Spoke. He tests his Mapicc-restraints—tugs against Mapicc’s hold, but it doesn’t give. Mapicc smiles, sly.
“You think you can get out of this one, pal?”
Spoke tugs a little harder. Struggles, even; thrashes like a wild animal caught in a trap, but Mapicc doesn’t give. He just grips harder. Grins; all teeth. Leans into it; all weight.
It’s that weight that pins him down to the grass; it’s that weight that pins all the floating filaments of Spoke to himself. Mapicc, solid and reassuring. Stable, strong. Right there, his weight on Spoke’s ribs; his hands on Spoke’s wrists, a competitive glint in his eye.
It’s this struggle that makes him alive. Curling his spine against the soil, bracing his diaphragm, gritting his jaw and testing his strength against his best friends’—the way Mapicc’s arms tremble and his grin widens wildly, the way the heaviness strains his muscles and joints and ligaments; burns satisfyingly. A body, used. A body, inhabited.
Still pinned down. Stuck to himself.
“Good,” he whispers, even as he pulls at Mapicc’s grasp on his wrists like an animal caught in a trap. “Good, that’s good, thank you, thank you, thank you, Mapicc, I—”
“Chill,” his best friend says, and his vice grip on Spoke’s wrists lightens slightly; still restrictive, but not immovable. He leans down and gently bumps their foreheads together. “You’re okay. I got you.”
“Oh,” says Spoke, breathless. “Okay. You got me.”
“That’s right,” murmurs Mapicc. The moon is high and silver; it shines in Mapicc’s red eyes. Or maybe that’s just Spoke’s own gaze, reflected back at him. His best friend is smiling peaceful and easy. “I got you. And you ain’t—
getting rid
of me
that easy.”
Living things struggle. That’s what makes them alive. Therefore, as Mapicc gasps airless and thrashes around a sword through his stomach and begs for help or Spoke or maybe death, he lives. And even as jet-black shadowy hands shatter his armor and his ribs, he lives. As they drag him through the portal kicking & screaming, he lives.
Therefore, as Spoke lies there in that towering stone mausoleum and bleeds, motionless, gone, mindless & without body, a soul drifting up and down and out of itself, split apart, fragmented, filamented, feverishly freed from itself himself whatever; he is left to rot—bleached and dried, carrion in the sunless sky.
Therefore, as Spoke fades into the nauseating swirl of a Nether Portal, he is not alive. He is still. He is long, long, long dead.