02x18: Spike's Loss

Spike, shaken by what he had done, receives terrible news regarding his father.

SPIKE’S LOSS

 

     It’s been two weeks now. He couldn’t get the image out of his head. His arm, covered in spikes, piercing a young boy’s arm. He remembered the painful sight of blood running down the boy’s arm and going onto his.

     Spike laid on his bed for what seemed like every single second of the past two weeks. He knew his mission from the moment it was given to him. He knew that he would see the sight of a seemingly dying teenager soon enough. He never knew how real it would look.

     He didn’t mind killing older men. He didn’t mind killing men, even when it was fake killing. He didn’t mind the pleasure of killing another useless piece of waste on the face of the earth. But killing an innocent child, even with the knowledge that he would be okay, still, at one point, that boy was dead.

     The past thirteen days of his life went pretty much like this: He would wake up, feeling terrible; he’d walk over to his fridge to get breakfast, eat and slop back to his bed, turn on the TV and spoil himself, eat lunch, slop on his bed, eat dinner, get to sleep. His hygiene was ignored for thirteen days. He smelled like s**t, felt like it too. His clothes, still stained with blood.

     The second Saturday morning however, he decided to listen to his voicemail. There was a ton of messages from down the Cliffside. Mostly asking for the mission report. He went to eat his breakfast and slopped back on his bed. He turned on the TV and went to the news. He was met with bad news but he wasn’t sure.

MAN FOUND DEAD ON WEDGE STREET

 

     There were many men on Wedge Street but there were not many murders. Deaths were of old age but his father was only hitting fifty. Ever since he was born, there was actually the rare case of no murders. He listened to the news report.

     “Local Man Blaine Estaquilla, found dead. There are no indications of a struggle other than a trashed living room. Investigations are still being held.”

     Spike was heartbroken. He turned off the television as he remembered the last thing he said to him was “You’ll never see me in person again.”

     He quickly took a bath and went in clean, black clothes. He took the van to Wedge Street and sure enough, there were police lines all over the place. There was an ambulance near the house. He ran over there. Inside, he saw his father’s dead body.

     “Sir, you can’t go in here,” one of the male nurses said.

     “Shut the **** up. I’m his son, d****t, I’ve had a s****y week, don’t you dare get in my way!”

     The male nurse moved aside. His dad never liked him swearing. He swore thrice. The guilt was eating him up. He sat beside his dad and put his hand on his head. He looked at the male nurse.

     “Look man, I’m sorry. It’s been a really bad week.”

     “Yeah, yeah, I understand.”

     Spike put his attention back to his father.

     “Dad, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for lying. I’m sorry for everything. Please dad, forgive me. I just want to say I love you.”

     He was fighting his tears back. While he spoke, he was shivering.

     “DAD! PLEASE, COME BACK TO ME!”

     He was raising his voice. He didn’t want to remember their last meeting at this moment.

     “Dad…” Spike said as a tear went down his eye. “I love you. I wish I could…” He couldn’t collect his thoughts. “I wish I could take back ev… everything I s-s-said.”

     He did keep his word; he’ll never see him in person again. But this wasn’t how he pictured it. He never got his depictions right anymore.

     “Dad, even though you know, yes, you were right…” He took a deep breath. “I-I-I was the one who caused the cable car accident. I just wanted you to hear it from me.”

     He bowed his head down and sobbed on his father’s left shoulder. He was devastated. Just to make things worse, he heard the male nurse scream behind him.

    “OFFICERS! HE GAVE A CONFESSION! HE CAUSED THE CABLE CAR ACCIDENT!”

     Spike was shocked. He didn’t know what he was feeling anymore. Anger, sadness, guilt, shock, all were tearing him apart.

     “I heard him officers. He whispered it to his father!”

     Spike turned back to the outside of the ambulance. The male nurse had 5 cops with him.

     “Spike Estaquilla, put your hands where I can see them.”

     “Don’t you need an arrest warrant for this?” Spike said in a panic.

     “We have a witness.”

     “You dumbass cops.”

     “Step out of the vehicle!”

     Spike raised his hands in the air, the cops surrounded him.

     “Get on your knees!”

     He acted like a good boy. There were five cops pointing five guns at him.

     “Cuff him”

     Spike then moved his arms together in one swift motion, aiming at the officer’s legs. Then he ran for it.

     “Catch him!”

 

Spike ran as fast as he can. He promised himself, he was never going back to Wedge Street. Tears streamed down his face. He finally got out of Wedge Street and as he was running back towards the city, a cop car pulled out in front of him and another one behind him. Eight cops went out and surrounded him.

     “Spike you are under arrest for…”

     “Shut the **** up with the charges. I know what I’m ****ing guilty for. I didn’t watch my father die, I saw him dead. I would’ve wanted to speak with him before he died but that’s impossible isn’t it?”

      “Get on your knees and put your arms behind your head.”

     “Can you at least tell me why he is dead?”

     “Get on your knees.”

     “TELL ME HOW HE ****ING DIED!”

     Overwhelmed by emotion, he shot a spike through the stupid officer’s chest and shot spikes all around him. He created a magnetic field and flew out of there. The other cops tried shooting at him but the spikes deflected the bullets.

     He flew out to a small bunch of rocks in the Pacific Ocean. He didn’t care who saw him. He sent down on the pile of rocks and cried. His life meant nothing anymore.

     He felt something tap his shoulder. He looked but there was nothing there. He heard the male nurse’s screams of “OFFICERS! HE GAVE A CONFESSION! HE CAUSED THE CABLE CAR ACCIDENT!”

     He didn’t know why but it didn’t stop. He then felt a man put his hand in his ear and literally yell “OFFICERS! HE GAVE A CONFESSION! HE CAUSED THE CABLE CAR ACCIDENT!”

     He looked over his shoulder and literally saw the male nurse there.

     “What the hell are you doing here?”

     His voice changed.

     “It’s amazing what control can do to you. Makes you act like a defenseless p***y one second, next thing you know, you’re strangling your best friend while shooting fireballs at your other friends.”

     “You!”

     The male nurse morphed into Austin.

    “Hello there, my name’s Austin. Glad to meet you, you stupid b*****d,” he said in a delightful tone.

     “What are you doing here?”

     “Oh, I don’t know. Talking to the son of a dead man.”

     “Shut the **** up about my father!”

     “Shut the **** up about my father” he mockingly repeated. “Stop, just stop okay?”

     “STOP MOCKING ME!”

     “Well, I was going to tell you how your father died but since it would be one percent ‘mocking’ you. I’d better follow your stupid orders and just skedaddle away.”

     “Wait, no!”

     Austin disappeared in front of him.

     “D****T! COME BACK HERE!”

     “Fooled ya!” Austin said behind him.

     Spike was incredibly pissed.

     “Okay, ready to listen to my bedtime story?”

     “Just shut up and tell me.”

     “Well, don’t rush me, I have to recall how I killed Blaine.”

    Spike opened his eyes. His father was killed by a kid, and this kid was in front of him on a pile of rocks in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

    “YOU KILLED MY FATHER!”

    “Don’t you watch the movies? It’s the oldest cliché in the book. Next thing you know I am your father but that’s not really possible.”

     Spike threw a spike threw Austin’s forehead.

     “AHHH! MOTHERF--- KIDDING! Hahaha, you IDIOT!” he said. “You really think after what you did to me, a spike through the head would hurt?”

     He grabbed the spike and pushed it in.

     “Alright, I always wanted to feel my brain. This feels amazing, I think I’m gonna have a weird impulse to kill you. I think I’m going crazy.”

    “You already are cr�"“

       “I AM ALREADY CRAZY! WOW! YOU FIGURED IT OUT! DORA SHOULD GIVE YOU A FRICKIN BJ! After what you did to me, I have no choice but to act like a psycho. That or I blow up. All the power I stored using that band, it was released, only there’s a catch, my outer body, a term I hope you could understand, is currently a sort of ‘bomb enduring shield’ and the powers are the bomb. What powers this so-called ‘shield’ is the lack of control. Staying calm only works if you survive it. Sometimes, to stay in one piece, you have to lose all control. JUST SCREAM OUT LOUD, ‘SCREW IT, SCREW CONTROL, I’M FLIPPIN’ HAPPY’ and I ain’t swearing that much as a last tribute to your dead butt buddy.”

     “SHUT UP ABOUT MY FATHER!”

     “What are you gonna do if I don’t? You gonna give me a brain massage? I would love that!’ he said as he pushed the spike through his head and phased it out, dropping it to the other side.”

     “How did you kill him?”

     “Why would you want to know?”

     “I want to see him alive for one last time.”

     “Oh, you want me to show you?”

    Spike nodded.

     “Very well, welcome to My Butt Buddy’s death 3D. You’re my only customer so put on your seatbelts, it’s about to get real crazy!”

      Spike didn’t mind the insults anymore. There was nothing he could do about it. Austin placed his hands on his head and he was now in his father’s living room.

 

     “You’re a crazy, unfunny b*****d, you know that?” Spike quietly said.

     “Shh… The movie’s starting.”

     There was Spike’s father, sitting on his chair, reading the newspaper. Spike usually wasn’t this emotional but he teared up at the sight. Austin noticed.

     “What the hell is wrong with you, you p***y? Man up!”

     He wanted to hit Austin so hard but he just forced himself to continue watching. The doorbell rang.

     “Hang on. I’m coming!” Spike’s father said.

     He slowly placed the newspaper on the table and stood up. The doorbell rang again repeatedly.

     “Hold your horses, I’m on the way!”

     He opened the door and it was a police officer.

     “Good morning, Mr. Estaquilla. I’m here to discuss your son, Spike.”

     Spike saw the pain in his father’s eyes as he heard his name.

      “What about him? And please step in, take a seat.” Spike’s father asked.

     They went in and sat on two chairs facing each other with a long, glass, coffee table in the middle.

     “We spotted him on the cameras in Woodridge Place. Interestingly, he was the only other person in the terminal, minutes before the cable cars fell.”

      “That is just a mere coincidence.”

     Spike seemed enraged by this. He looked up to Austin.

     “I never went in front of the cameras. I never even went to the terminals.”

     Austin turned his head ever so slightly just so Spike can see his eyes, he gave he a sinister smile.

     “I know…” he said, maintaining that smile of his.

     “Yes but later then, we saw him running from the terminal, two minutes after, the cable cars go down. We received reports that he was in the forest.”

     Spike couldn’t believe what he was hearing. This was probably the worst or the best police officer in existence.

     “So what if he was in the forest?”

     “He could’ve launched the bomb from there.”

     This wasn’t how a police officer would talk. He was talking like a thirteen year old. How could it have even crossed his mind for a second that this one could be the best? Austin looked at him again.

     “I hope this doesn’t come as too predictable.”

     Spike paid attention to his father.

     “Is that all you have for me officer? Accusations? You come here on a pleasant Saturday morning to give me accusations?”

     “Actually sir, I only told you that as an ‘appetizer’ if you may. We actually confirmed that he killed someone, in a rather mysterious way might I add.”

     His father’s eyes had a strange mix of disappointment, anger, and sadness.

     “You have proof?”

    “Actually I have a tape.”

     “Who did he kill?’

     “You don’t know him sir; he’s a thirteen year old.”

     Spike couldn’t understand. He took out the cameras in the base. He hadn’t killed anyone else recently aside from Dr. Orción.

     “What’s his name?”

     “Well, remember that school in Las Pinas City. The one where all the students disappeared from the face of the Earth but oddly, no one held investigations because stuff would come out of there. Oddly, nothing went in?”

     “Yes, I’ve heard of Elizabeth Seton School.”

    “This kid was a student.”

     “What was his name?”

     “I don’t need to tell you his name, sir.”

     “And why is that?”

     The police officer coughed.

     “Because my dear sir,” he said in a different voice, Austin’s voice. “You’re talking to him right now.”

     “You’re crazy!”

     He morphed into Austin, Spike was in shock but when Austin was hoping he wasn’t too predictable, he kind of saw it coming.

      “No I’m not. I’m far from crazy. Your son on the other hand, I’d worry about.”

     Austin stood up and phazed through the glass table. He held Spike’s father’s throat in his right hand.

     “Your son is a very bad boy. He’s been lying to you since day one. Now if you believed his lies, you sir, are an idiot.”

      “You disrespectful�"“

     “Disrespectful?” he interrupted. “I’M A ****ING WEIRDO! I JUST TURNED INTO A POLICE SHITHEAD, AND BACK, WALKED THROUGH THE GLASS TABLE HERE, AND OTHER STUFF YOU WILL NEVER SEE, AND YOU’RE WORRYING ABOUT RESPECT?”

     Austin threw him across the room. He landed on the floor. He walked up to him and crouched down in front of him.

     “Look old man, your son ended one part of my life. Your son made it impossible for me to have control. So basically, if I kill you right here, it’s not under my control. I’m just trying to stay alive here. It’s indirectly your little boy’s fault that you will be dead.”

     Spike took hold of Austin, he couldn’t bear to watch him throw his father across the room but he kept it in. But a kid like him talking to his father like that was too much.

     “We’re in a vision sir, please go back to your seat and watch the film.” Austin told Spike mockingly.

     “What do you want from me?” Spike’s father asked.

     “Why ask that question? I told you, I want to level the scale. I want to balance the load. I want to kill you. Here, look into my left hand,” Austin said as he raised his right hand.

     Spike’s father looked at Austin’s right hand. Austin then slapped him across the face.

     “You failed your first test! I said left you damn fool!” he shouted as he put the correct hand in front of the old man’s face. “There we go. Now, tell me, did you love your son, what he did? What he said? What he felt? What he wanted? Did you love every single cell in that worthless, untrustworthy, sack of s**t?”

     Spike’s father stayed still, tears started running down his face. Austin slapped him across the face again.

     “I asked you a question. I think I deserve an answer.”

     Spike’s father said nothing.

     “YOU ANSWER ME OLD MAN! YOU LOOK INTO MY EYES AND TELL ME YOUR ANSWER!”

     Spike’s father looked down.

     “I-I-I�"“

     “I SAID LOOK AT ME!” Austin shouted as he forcibly tilted the old man’s face towards him. He was gripping his face hard.

     Spike was crying on the other end as well.

     “Now you’re looking at me, let’s not waste the remaining time you have and give me your answer.”

     “I-I-I…”

     “STOP STUTTERING… ***D****T!”

     The Mastermind told Spike that he noticed Austin hated blasphemy. This wasn’t Austin. He destroyed Austin in the base one week ago. He was filled with guilt at what it had led to.

     “I… loved him. I always have.”

     Spike couldn’t take it anymore. He ran towards his father but Austin took hold of him from behind.

     “Don’t do that. I paid millions for this screen. If you decide to do that again, movie’s over, understand?”

     Spike stared at him with deep anger in his eyes. He looked back at his father.

     “Very good. Now for your final test. Look in my left hand again.” Austin said raising his right hand. Spike’s father looked at Austin’s other hand, the one in a fist that seemed to be flexing. It was resting on the floor.

     “Good, good, you learn from mistakes,” he said as he put down his right hand and put the fisted up left hand in front of his face.”

     Spike saw something in his father’s eyes. Aside from all the tears, sadness, and depression, he saw acceptance. He knew he was going to die, no resistance. He also saw bravery. He wanted to hug his father one last time.

     “Now, I’m going to open this fist, and you have to look into my palm. Look straight into it.”

    The old man nodded. Austin opened his fist quickly and nearly shoved his palm onto the old man’s face, leaving only a few centimeters. Black powder rushed from his palm to the man’s face. It spread throughout his face and went in his mouth, ears, nostrils, some sunk into his pores, and some even went in his eye sockets. After a few seconds but what seemed like an eternity to Spike, he closed his fist. The remaining powder seeped in until his father’s face was clean once again but his eyes now showed nothing but pain.

     “What did you just do to him?!” Spike shouted at Austin. He was sobbing so he didn’t even come off even a little threatening.

     “Just watch.”

     The old man stared at Austin.

     “Now, you might be wondering what that was. But first, how does it feel, immense pain and yet you can’t scream, shout, yell, or even talk to express your pain. That’s right, you can’t talk. I shouldn’t ask that question. Okay, let me explain. I sprayed death powder in your face. Death powder is a living substance in the form of a non-living object, like powder, found only on a planet far away from here that’s long gone, you don’t know that planet so let me just go ahead and explain what it does. It will just run through your body, inside it of course you stupid vermin, and eat through your arteries, veins, and body tissues. You will experience the worst pain you have ever felt in your life. Sadly, although it’s living, it doesn’t have a brain so it destroys at random but it stops when it’s about to penetrate your skin. That’s why it didn’t burn through your skin, it just found holes. It doesn’t work well with dry stuff like skin, which isn’t exactly dry but significantly dryer than your insides. Just hope it gets to your brain so you won’t feel the pain.”

     Spike once again, didn’t know what to feel anymore. He just wanted to rip Austin’s head off.

      “And one more thing old man…” Austin said before exiting the house. “Your son is a p***y.”

     Spike let go and charged towards the flashback Austin. He felt the real Austin grab the back of his shirt.

     “Told you not to try that again. Good for you, movie was almost over.”

     He took them back to the pile of rocks. Spike was breathing heavily.

     “YOU KILLED HIM, YOU MOTHERF�"“

     “Yes, I know I killed him. WE JUST WATCHED IT YOU IDIOT!”

      Spike threw another spike at Austin’s head. Austin looked back at spike, pissed off.

     “How many times are you going to try that to get it into your head that YOU CAN’T KILL ME WITH THESE P***Y SPIKES!”

     Austin grabbed the spike, pulled it out and threw it and Spike’s leg, causing it to bleed. He fell to the ground.

     “**** you.” Spike said weakly.

     “Yeah, yeah, that’s real charming. You know, you’re on the run from the police, thanks to me. If I were you, which I would never want to be, I wouldn’t go back to Wedge Street, or Woodridge Place, or even the Cliffside. I’d just run far away and never look back. But of course, the Mastermind would get pissed off. He’d probably find you and kill you but as of now, your life is meaningless. The best thing you can do is find a man, get married, and have gay intercourse, then let the Mastermind kill you.”

     “Shut the **** up you prick!”

     “I’ll let you decide but here’s a tip. Grab your left hand,” He said as he put up his right hand. “And point it at your heart. I think you know what to do from then. It’s either that or gay intercourse.”

     Spike lunged for Austin but he disappeared into thin air. He heard the faint sound of Austin yelling “P***Y!” just before he disappeared. He was going crazy. He didn’t know if it was real or not. He slowly raised his left hand and pointed it at his heart. He released the tip of a spike a little. He was thinking if it was the way to go. He closed his eyes as he heard the zip of the spike through the air.