Disclaimer. I do not own any rights to Bendy and the Ink Machine. All rights belong to the members of Kindly Beast.
I am not the twisted angel
The ink stained poet
This story is a response to the 'Writers Anonymous Mistaken Identity Challenge'.
We were cut from the same mold. Two angels, each with two horns, a halo. A pitch black dress, two black, inky gloves twisting around each of our arms, the white bow, a mockery of the old cartoons. We are so eerily similar, and yet so different. We share the same name, yet we each wear it different. She wears it as if it is a badge of honour, while I wear it in confusion. She is confident with who she is, she's the angel, sent from above. I, on the other hand, am also an angel yet left wandering with no idea who I truly am.
And yet, they fear me as they fear her. I listen to their whispers, calling me the 'crooked angel'. They scamper the minute I direct my gaze at them, running from me. But I am not like her. I am not the malicious, twisted creature that she is. It hurts every time another calls me a monster, for I am not. I am not the angel obsessed with beauty. I am not the angel who is willing to kill for a cause that will amount to nothing. It doesn't matter that we were spawned from the same ink, it doesn't matter that we live by the same name. We both were cursed with the burden of being 'Alice Angel' but we are not the same. I care about others. I still have a heart under all this ink. I can still feel, unlike that monster. It pains me terribly when the shun me, hurt me. Yet the worst part is being compared to her. I am not the creature that she has been corrupted into. I'm nothing dangerous , I just want to know who I am, I just want someone to tell me that I'm not the corrupted angel.
Then I met him. He was yet another one of those Boris the Wolf clones but he was different, an individual. Something, no, someone a person can not easily forget.
The white against his pie-cut eyes turned down into a frown, the mechanics of his left arm glistened when he moved, two black ears stand atop his head, alert at all times. Some would consider him broken, an incorrect copy, but I felt like I related to him. Two people, each hidden in the shadows, behind a copy of themselves.
I remember the day vividly. I was messing with things I shouldn't have even been near when he stopped me. The minute we locked eyes, I felt a connection. It's as if I knew him my whole life. He looked at me with that stern look he wore and I smiled. He reached towards me and grabbed my hand leading me away. My hand fit perfectly in his and I have never let go since. Spending time with this wolf made me feel safe, secure. It felt like the rest of the world could burn as long as I could stay with him.
I felt awkward at first, calling him 'the wolf' as I didn't have a clue about his name. Though one day when I was drawing on the walls once again, I felt a hand upon my shoulder and I turned. I remember calling him Tom subconsciously and his expression softened. So I started calling him Tom. He can't talk, but I can tell by his expression he liked being called Tom.
Perhaps he likes being separated from the rest of the Boris' and I don't blame him. If I could, I'd distance myself from the name Alice Angel.
This wolf clone , Tom ,was the first creature in this hell that I felt safe with. I thought it was stupid, I believe he would treat me like all the others had but he didn't.
He treated me differently from everyone else. He did not fear me for looking nearly identical to the fallen angel. He treated me like an individual, not like I was the twisted monster others believed me to be. To him, I was me, not her and that made me the happiest I have ever been. Though the other blinded creatures still fear me, still believe me to be the crooked angel she is, I am able to disregard their words. And while they may still sting, they are nothing compared to the hurt they once brought. I no longer feel like the shadow of the angel but rather my own person. I am not the angel to him. I feel like me and for the first time since I've been encased in this world, I felt at home.
Several years pass before I see her again. I await in the shadow as I observe her. She is different now, enraged, consumed by her twisted quest for beauty, she was broken. For the very first time I saw her not as the twisted, malicious angel that I was so frequently mistaken for but rather as a broken shell of her former self with nothing more that a sick obsession with perfecting her exterior to fuel her. The heart that I once prided myself in having ached. She wasn't there, not anymore. I clutched the handle of my sword. Suddenly I was distracted from my thoughts. Her scream echoed across the dilapidated ballroom and I lunged forward. I was doing this for her. She was broken inside, a danger to everyone around her. She had to be stopped. She didn't notice me behind her, too enraged, charging forward to kill the human in front of her. She didn't get to him though, as my blade drove into her chest. Ripping the blade from her, she stumbled slightly before collapsing to the floor, ending her reign. A sick thought consumed my mind. I was the only angel left now. I was the angel that survived the story, the superior angel. At last, I would no longer be mistaken for the crooked angel.