◦ blasphemy ◦
as second in command, it is your duty to ensure that everything is going well within your group, especially with the aftermath of recent events. due to your leader’s current imprisoned state, chaos has started within your group, and fights have begun to rise on the inside. there is one suspect in general—and when you are given their name and role, it is easy to pinpoint then. please find them, and quell the fire that is bound to start with your leader’s disappearance. while the cottonmouth encourage chaos within the city, in your syndicate—it is not allowed. do your best, find the rotten egg, and best of luck.
▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ 「 ACT ONE 」 - THE MOURNING
ʏᴏᴜ worship at the altar of jung joonyoung, king cobra the basilisk turned to stone by his stare. the grunts are his disciples and you are his apostle, reading scripture and prophecy with a commanding tongue from the bible you keep close at hand. they listen because they believe, as do you. there is a fire in the religion cottonmouth and you are the gasoline, he is the flame, the disciples are the spreading. together, you will raise a new world and hold it in your iron fists.
but the dreams of the devout are faulty; even jesus himself was scorned before the very people he swore to save. and so it is with joonyoung -- he may be no saint, no sacrificial lamb but he is your soothsayer and your prophet, your one true king. he has been since that day in the rain when he touched your thighs and gave you redemption with your very own hands ( it’s more than many have given you in your entire lifetime. ) he deserves more than what they say and you watch the casting with cold eyes, the remote falling from the ice in your fingers. you see that they are the first to cast stones, paint an ugly picture over and over again as they show his unsmiling face, his dark eyes. they call him a cruel man, a criminal -- a monster when all you can see is but a man with eyes akin to your own, venom and fire ready to ignite.
a cruel man he might be, but all acts of change start with a rebel committing their crime.
hatred coils in your stomach like a child kicking in the womb. blood runs cold as ever through your veins so there is no shift in your expression, a frown or fear or the slightest bit of unhappiness. you feel it there, like a kick to the shin -- it’s sharp and it’s forceful, and the pain will linger long enough to leave a bruise. he’s been taken.
these are the three words that repeat in your head as you look into dark eyes still staring back at you, paused on your television screen.
he’s. been. taken.
you are a snow woman, so there will be no tears shed for this. you’re not even sad; that feeling was lost to you years ago in a time of bloodshed and innocence lost to the touch of men who do not know their place. instead, there is anger, liquifying your form and turning you to a more molten form -- you’re limp, you’re tired, you’re in disbelief. but as much as you are hurting, you think of the children sprung from another’s womb -- the ones you took in with open arms to carve out the world into a better place through the wrath of their burning. you only just remember the world will still revolve around you and these children that need salvation are crying out with fear in their voices. you may be cold, but they are the ones shivering. they are your kin and though their father the prophet is gone, there will still be a vision for the likes of cottonmouth. this family means everything.
there is nothing left to realize but joonyoung’s face salting your eyes and telling you to move.
「 ACT TWO 」 - THE HERETIC
ɪᴛ doesn’t even take a day to recover, though the news still hits you hard -- still festers somewhere in the depths of your ribs, plants its seed as a reminder to flower every hour on the hour. to make you remember that this is real.
things go on as normal for the first few days -- as normal as it can be, at least, without a guide to lead them to eternity, their own brand of utopia. you are uneasy on your throne; the feeling that the bad seed that’s started to fester in your insides is taking root in your family to make them restless with their own malcontent. you don’t blame them for wanting to hide, the snake will look for a den when it’s healing and so too, do your kin. it’s probably the best advice you can give at the moment -- to lay your heads low, my dear children; strike only when attacked.
the bad seed still festers on your insides and you know that something beyond the obvious is really wrong.
whispers. that’s all that it starts with, the mouth of a loyalist hissing in your ear the dirty words of mutiny and a fire from within. you listen with closed lips and savage eyes; heretic! your mind screams. those who pledge allegiance to jung joonyoung and then dare to cross him deserve whatever hell they are to pay. you kiss the snakechild and call him good for bringing you this gift; you keep the news like the folded paper heart inside your chest. protected. concealed. contained.
a few days of fun is all that they will be gifted. it takes that long for the devout to rear to the snakemother’s side where they would have immediately slithered to joonyoung, and you do not fault them for this. you would have been the same, but eventually you succeed because their talks of riots on the inside is not something that you’ll stand for -- not something a true cottonmouth would stand for. joonyoung is their leader, their prophet, their messiah. he is the one who deserves kingship.
you hear the name kim insoo and you want to crush him beneath your hand.
joonyoung would have already quelled their anarchy with an inferno of his own, burning white hot and drenched in the blood of the blasphemer. he would have gutted them pretty on your floor while you watch on with a frown sitting on your doll lips that never smile. the eyes of a disapproving mother watching the child be punished will be your own while the blood of the sinner dances in the air until it strikes you in the cheek. ( you are always dirtied by the blood of the unholy, but he has always cleansed your skin. )
but you, you are not jung joonyoung. you are ember, the slow burning fire willing to ignite a hell more grievous. lethargy sits in your bloods and you let the information simmer -- the peon kim insoo, just an extortionist. he thinks he is not expendable, that the snake children will heed to his side. he is a coward that makes your lip curl.
you will deal with this yourself. the ninth circle of dante’s inferno is built for one such backstabbing heretic like this and he is already burning on the funeral pyre in your mind. may he rot there for all eternity trapped in the ice of judas; the thoughts in your head are unforgiving as your fist. a snake is unafraid of the blood on their fangs and the wicked deserve to be damned by the devil’s bride, his right hand.
so it begins.
「 INTERLUDE 」
ʏᴏᴜ remember that day in the rain because it was both the beginning and your undoing. your hair was soaked through and cold just like the rest of you. he was a dark man with a devil’s smile and it was just so easy to pull you in ( to give you the things that even you didn’t know you were looking for ). he always had that way about him. he was a seer on the nights you looked to him adoringly and copied down his word in your little black book.
he would have seen this nonsense coming, as did you. you felt it in some dark place taking root in your belly like a child, pregnant with your worries. he’s gifted you with many things, this time it’s his odd foresight - the vision of what’s bound to come. may the family reign high on a city inferno while the treacherous rots in his own hell.
you don’t know what you’ll do without him.
「 ACT THREE 」 - THE MOTHER EATS HER YOUNG
ᴊᴜᴅɢᴍᴇɴᴛ day.
kim insoo is a small man made smaller by his own rambunctious dreams. your lips curl when you see him but he takes it as a smile, when he sits across your table. it is amazing how the little men always pretend that they’re doing nothing wrong, that their actions in an unjust world are just. he is no different when his lips taste your wine, when his filthy hands cut your bread. he eats like a glutton and you fold your hands daintily in your lap -- this is his last meal, and the only thing you’re hungry for is his head on a shining silver platter. it would be both a reminder and a victory -- that cottonmouth is a family that won’t fall to the likes of lying, forked tongues.
you still can’t believe he has the nerve to sit at your table and hope to touch your skin.
the very thought of it makes you want to retch. the thought of a man like this touching you and soiling your skin ( again ) is enough to send you shivering into the depths of the darkness from whence you came -- the darkness that joonyoung saved you from by giving you salvation. by cleansing your skin with just a bare touch of his hand. it’s the thought of him that reminds you that you are the snakemother -- proud of your kin, cold and calculating as you look at him through lashed eyes while you take a sip or two of your own wine. you know if you turn your back he’d likely douse the glass with drug. it wouldn’t be below a man like this. this is why he doesn’t deserve his place in cottonmouth.
perhaps he never did. mutiny is treason.
pepper stings your throat and heats your insides. anger coils somewhere in the pit of your belly and with rage comes dessert -- the poetic ending. you’ve given him his fill and now it’s time; you are not a cruel mother. once upon a time you looked on him with pride, too. your chair scrapes slowly against the floor as you push yourself out from the table and he looks at you with eyes still hungry. that’s the problem with men like this, you think. they always want more than they can eat.
and so it goes on. your steps are slow and you can tell he’s eager for what’s to come ( or what he believes is about to come ). not many -- if any -- can say they slept with the devil’s bride, and that’s why you play right into his hands, his fantasies. because then, he is playing right into your own. he never suspects a thing. how easy it is to play it coy with men like this, like kim insoo -- you just keep your head down with eyes taking a peek through your lashes and he’s almost salivating. it’s disgusting. but he will never see the glint of silver hiding in your belt as you move behind his chair, touch his chest. that’s when you whisper in his ear.
i know.
he freezes, as he should. all bad children do, and it’s such a shame because the very act tells you everything without a single word. guilty as charged.
the knife in your belt makes its way to your hand as he starts to stammer out apologies before you, lay his begging on the table. you should have crossed someone else, you coo. i’m in a bad mood. he doesn’t see it coming when the knife slits his throat but he gurgles enough in realization. this is the end of a rebellion on the inside, ended by your own hand.
the phone is your next operation and you’re calling the only person trustworthy enough to clean this up without a trace -- the only person who whispered his fealty in your ear and handed over the name of the rotten. “ gen?” insoo’s lifeblood spills in a puddle on the floor and you are sullied by its filth. ( later, you’ll take a shower for hours and scrub your skin raw of his sin. ) “ i have a bit of cleaning for you to do.”
the beast is dead.
