The Edifice

The Interview (ANNOUNCEMENT)

Otysses Creed cocks his head and fixes me with that gleaming, Cheshire-cat grin that can attract every swoon and every camera in a mile's radius. He lets out a nervous chuckle through his teeth, tucks a long strand of his mottled, sandy blond hair behind his ear and turns back to the woman beside him.

"Thank you for taking the time with us -me- today, Katy. It's nice to finally get to do this with a friend."

"Oh, please, Otysses-"

"Otis," Otysses pointedly interjects.

"Otis. I'm glad to be here. How many years have we all been just waiting to sink our teeth into you like this?"

Despite being seated next to a retired god, Katy Perry dominates the interview. She has Otis pinned against the far side of the tiny sofa with the tilt of her crossed legs and has swapped out her usual show-wear for a sharp suit. Leaning forward, golden eyes fixed on Otis with a predatory hunger, she looks as though she might make good on her words.

Katy continues with a beaming grin that could match the man behind her, gesturing with a sweep of her arm from his head to his toes. "So, I think we better start with what this is. I hope you don't mind me saying, Otis, but you look positively human."

She's not wrong. Even through the screen of my television, I can make out every detail on Otis's hideous new face. The lines, the freckles and every other flaw on his sickly skin. He used to glow. He used to shine from every pore like a fallen angel and now he sits dumbly on that crappy sofa with skin like pancake batter, looking for all the world like every other pissant in this city.

I can't even find it in me to enjoy his fall from grace. Seeing my brother like this sickens me to my stomach.

He's put on weight too, which does give me some small shred of vindication. How many years have I had personal trainers counting every single calorie I ate, meanwhile Otysses could walk on screen any size and shape he pleased. Even his hair seems to sag, falling in muted waves down to his chest.

Nevertheless he looks so infuriatingly satisfied by his mediocrity. Surely he must stare in the mirror and hate how pathetic he's become.

"It's nice, isn't it?" Otis asks, doing a small twirl for the camera like a bride showing off her wedding dress. He pulls at the elastic skin of his cheek and wiggles it in Katy's direction.

"It's as good as any other face out there, but Otis," Katy whispers conspiratorially with a studio audience she doesn't yet have. "I know I can't be the only one thinking this- wouldn't you say that this is a bit of a downgrade? It's not quite the Otysses Creed from the posters in every teenage girls bedroom. How have you coped with that?"

I've always hated her music and her fans even more, yet some small part of me cheers Katy on as her biting words rip the smile from Otis's face. It's slow to return, I can see the gears turning in his head as he fights for composure.

It's not easy is it, brother? To be a God at the beck and call of worms.

Potentate is the only escape from it, something Otysses never seemed to realise. We were both born to rule, he should have been competing for the right to take the Potentate's throne but instead he decided to stay in the mud and serve these fucking morons. Somewhere along the line I was dragged into it as well.

"Someone recently said that this face is 'more me' and I'm inclined to agree with her." Otis's smile is back, eyes fixed somewhere to the left of the main camera. I wonder who he could possibly be looking at... "If people are looking at me with pity or worrying about me wasting my potential, then all I can say is they never really understood me to begin with. This is who I am and who I've been trying to become for a long time."