Chapter 10 - The Lost, The Red, and The Lies
It had been months since my pen touched these pages. What was written, still remained in my mind, but as a snapshot of events. Details failed to save on my organic hard drive, so I had to wonder if I ever released Rebecca from her restriction of mentioning beast. It warranted a read through from the very start, one and a half of a notebook ago, back when I still hoped Rebecca could help me lead a healthy life. This was another in a long line of mistakes letting my own mind heal itself. I wanted too much from my insanity, and created another Finnelgamin, another undying existence with no limitations.
My time away was spent writing another story. The tale was meant to be light and fantastic, but evolved to tackle the abuse of the LGBTQIA+ community, or rather the difficulty of accepting such changes to the world that have been happening for a long time now.
The story was about a young girl who hatched a dragon from a chicken egg, only to find the creature not fit the world it was born into. When the story began sliding off toward the Uncle that was born an Aunt, it lost steam. One night, two days ago, I heard someone call my name in a dream. It woke me up and I felt an uneasy feeling that it was Rebecca who did so.
And so, here I was again, at the pages that I was told to keep away from while she subdued my first monster. There was an aire of Frankenstein in this occurrence, but where the monster and later his “bride” were revitalized living bodies, Finn and Rebecca were cut from the space within my mind, taken out forcefully from that infinite and impossible space.
There was fear in my mind, hesitation of entering that space I created for Rebecca. I already used forty minutes to explain myself, leaving only thirty-five before I had to leave for work. Perhaps it was best to give her more time, more allowance of freedom. In no uncertain terms, Finn was capable of controlling the space and Rebecca was learning before I left. Even with that in mind, I had to be sure it wasn’t Rebecca’s voice I heard calling out my name.
With an imagined breath, I stepped into the library and right into form. She was there, sitting on the stairs next to another, but it wasn’t Finn or James.
“Told you he’d show,” Rebecca said to the older guy leaning against the wall that separated the staircase from the kitchen. She stood up without a word and smiled in my direction. “Jack. It’s been a while.” With a few steps, she closed the distance and embraced me.
“You said he’d show yesterday,” the man said, pushing off to stand. The force took him too far and he fell face first to the floor, but before he fell, a metal pillar extended from his chest and pushed him back up. All of a sudden, I knew who it was, and I knew how he was related to the people I knew.
“You’re Mr. Barcode!” I exclaimed. His eyes narrowed.
“Have we met somewhere before?” Barc asked. Rebecca let go of me and looked surprised.
“Well, no,” I replied. “But I did hear of you from James Denizen. I bet you also know Kara.”
“Oh, those two,” Barc said. “I see. You must have read one of his journals. They don’t capture me in the best light. We should get to some explanations, shouldn’t we, Rebby?” I smirked at the nickname and Rebecca rolled her eyes.
“We should, but there is no point,” she said. “Jack needs to get to work soon, but I’m glad you’re alright. Find me again, Jack. There is much to explain.”
“Does it have to do with Kara’s son?” I asked. Rebecca locked eyes with Barc. “I did leave for a few months, you know. It’s not like I expected you to still be trying to subdue Finnelgamin. Can you at least tell me if John’s alright?”
“Yeah,” Rebecca said. “I took Finn to rescue the boy and he’s back in his mother’s arms, at a cost.” She paused and looked out of the long windows.
“What cost?” I asked, feeling my mind run with various bad outcomes that could have befallen James, Kara, and Finn. I didn’t want to guess it, didn’t want to bring it into existence, but whatever she said, it would serve as a cliffhanger and it would be where I stopped writing to process the news.
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Rebecca took out two shiny stones from her pocket and held them up to the morning light. One was a jagged purple with white blotches, while the other was a smooth oval of pink and green hues mixed in a solid swirl.
“James and Finnelgamin,” she said.
“So Aki turned them into gems, so what?” I asked. “Dr. Barcode can undo this. He made the lekerator originally. I’m sure he can undo this.
“Those aren’t normal gems, bud,” Dr. Barcode said.
“These are the gems from their spots in the Infinity Void,” Rebecca said.
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The morning left a sour note in my mind for the day, and so at dinner, I sat once more to write in this notebook. I appeared in the library and put my solid form on, but found it empty. I watched as the afternoon sun cast its last rays in, just like around winter time of the original structure. I wondered if I should wait for her to feel that shiver that JJ gave her, but before I decided, a voice sounded off in my mind.
#JACK!# Rebecca spoke into my head. #Wait! I’ll be right there!# It was surprising to hear her speak that way and for a moment, my mind went back in time to when Finn was inside my brain. How could he be a gem of his own story now? Did that mean he was dead? Who did that? I sat on the desk with a journal under one leg and let my mind wander what could possibly be written inside if the library contained books from within my mind. Was that journal my truths? Or was it just a blank book to hold the desk level? I was just about to get it out and look when Rebecca burst in through the door.
“Hey!” she exclaimed. “You shitty bastard! Leaving just as I told you about Finn and James. What’s the big idea?”
“I had to work, Rebecca,” I replied.
“Yeah, well, you didn’t have to be so melodramatic about it! Just for them? For all you know, nobody’s reading this, Jack! You’re keeping a record of this for no reason!”
“Maybe it’s my way of saying goodbye to all my family long after I’m gone,” I said and felt JJ grow older from his stalled age. He’d always been stuck at the same age, so this was a new development. Was this his way of telling me that he only existed stalled because I allowed him to? “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that, JJ. It’s been a rough day.”
“Rougher than this?” Rebecca asked. I wanted to be angry, but I just looked at her. Did she even care if I stopped by to record our talks? She obviously didn’t wait for me to go take Kara’s son back, didn’t take beast out of me to tame him, and let me live in peace for a time.
“You didn’t wait for me,” I said instead. “I thought we had a plan, Rebecca, a good one. Was it my fault? Did I take too long?”
“No,” she said. “It was peer pressure, Jack, you know, the thing you are subject to if you have friends and family. It’s that thing you love to avoid by isolating yourself and pretending someone is listening to all of your ramblings. That’s not how it works, Jack, JJ, beast, even robot. By knowing people, you acquire more than you lose. It’s like you take out a spot and- you know what? I’m not good at analogies.”
“A figment of my imagination telling me how life is,” I said, half to myself. “A being I created to help me lead a healthier life, who rebelled against me, surrendered to me, learned everything about me, wants to tell me that I’m not living my life the right way?” Rebecca looked away from me, but I felt her pain ache in my heart.
“Do you really believe that?” she asked. I could feel tears escape her eyes as if they were my own. JJ was growing older by the minute. “Do I not matter at all? Am I just words on a page, a record of another failed attempt to create a friend for yourself in your mind that will not to try to control you? Tell me, and I’ll go have Aki do the same to me as he did to James and Finn. You can be rid of me so easily.”
JJ was now my age, but didn’t stop. Regret. I felt the child inside my mind dying and had no idea how to stop it. Where was Dion of my world to snap me out of my world like he did for Tiarto? Where was Sana to risk my life for? That was a story of such great outcome the real world often lacked. Life was unpredictable and wild, and ever so beautiful. Where else could I imagine someone as amazing as Rebecca and ever try to contain her for my own benefit?
“You’re not just in my mind,” I said. JJ stopped aging at around eighty. “But you are my creation, someone who has far surpassed the purpose I made her for. You’re alive, Rebecca, first in my mind, then in my heart. Maybe one day you could survive in the minds and hearts of others who read this, if they ever do, and I hope that happens because I’m insane to think I could ever imagine someone like you, but I did steal you away from a life as another. You were a gem in the infinity void, and I stole you away, just like Finnelgamin, and we’re going to get him back to us. I don’t know how, but I need the full story of what happened before we go any further. Isn’t that right, JJ?” I looked within my mind to find the kid again at the frozen child stage of development. He grinned so stupidly at me that I almost cried from joy.
“Right!” He said.
“I’ll be back tomorrow, Rebecca,” I said. “Regular time, Oh, and just one more thing. I’m proud of you, Rebby, for everything, for bearing with my shit and such. I love you.” I froze at the words and her face froze as well. Before she was forced to respond, I vanished from the space and sat back from the notebook. I wasn’t very original, falling for what I created to be perfection, but she wasn’t, was she? Far from it, but compared to me, she was just like that golden tree I saw when we clashed. The world felt just a touch warmer all of a sudden, but I was still alone.
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“Hey,” I said, as I formed in the library to her already waiting. Her face looked conflicted. “Is it just you today?”
“Barcode went to check on Kara,” Rebecca said. “She’s been pretty down since James got inhaled into his gem.” I came up and sat beside her on the stairs.
“Can I see the gems again?” I asked. Rebecca stood up and opened a drawer in the desk nearby. When she pulled them out, I noticed neither of them were glowing the way Infinity Void gems were supposed to. “They’re not glowing.”
“That’s right,” she said. “They also can’t be accessed like the others in the void. At least from what Kara told me, these gems are locked away from the story they once told. She told me that whenever she’d run into those in the void, they made her feel sad. When she asked the Rahin about it, they said gems that have been tampered with didn’t follow the natural order of the infinity void, and could only be corrected by the elusive denizens of the Infinity Void, the Nth Goni.
“I’ve written about one of those,” I said, and paused to recall the halted story. “Well, I mean, he was writing about me and saving me from a reset. It was a bit confusing so I stopped writing it, we stopped. Tell me more about when you went after Akier Vil Moredo.”
“You sure you’ve got time?” Rebecca asked.
“Forty minutes, fifty if really needed,” I said. “I guess try to be concise.” Rebecca put the gems back into the drawer and sat cross-legged on the desk. For a moment, I imagined her pants tighten over her crotch as beast roared out in my mind. I tried to not look toward her while I contained him, but Rebecca caught onto the thought.
“beast?” She asked.
“So I did take off that spell with frogs coming out of your mouth,” I said.
“Well, no,” she said. “I did that myself. As for beast, don’t think I forgot about him. I’ve been thinking about how to deal with that passionate angry lump he is, and did come up with one idea. Wanna give it a go? It will involve one strange position for the two of us, I’m afraid.” Rebecca slipped to the edge of the desk with her legs hanging off.
“Is it sexual?” I asked, feeling beast loosen his chains.
“Yes and no,” she replied. “But it needs to be, partially, so just kneel right in front of me here. You can close your eyes if you’d rather not look between my legs.”
“What, uhh… does it entail?” I asked, as I knelt before the legs and closed my eyes to not give beast any more fire.
“It’s best I don’t say anything else,” she said, as I felt hands on the back of my head, running between my hair until the grip took the strands by the roots and my face was pressed to a soft surface between two other soft pillars. I knew where I was, beast knew where we were, and my mouth was lost to my control. When the pressure holding my head to Rebecca’s pants let loose, I scrambled back in shock that beast was about to tear her clothes off, but in my mind I saw a version of Rebecca clad in red. She glanced at me from within my mind with a wink and a devilish smile I’d never seen her make before.
“What-?” I asked. “What did you just do?” Rebecca sighed and looked at me with the kindest smile.
“I created my own beast,” she said. “And inserted her forcefully into your mind. She’ll keep beast busy since I designed her that way. She satisfies all his desires, but you best not check on him for a while unless you have time to let loose in the real world.”
“Let loose?” I asked. Without beast to react to it, I did not make the connection until Rebecca made a motion with her hand at her crotch. “Got it, but we’ve wasted some time again. I’m on the last twenty minutes, so tell me the basics of Aki only.”
“Ok, so,” Rebecca said, going back to her cross-legged position on top of the desk. I shrugged it off and focused. “Peer pressure of Kara, James, and Finn made me go with them to get their son from Akier. The Rahin had also been hunting him, since he created that other device on the basis of the old Keir that could go between worlds and much more. Understandably, Aki used that device and their two glowing-at-the-time crystals, to absorb them into their own stories, tampering them and stopping the glow. Think of it like a master ball for just that one person, sealed up in a paradox of their story where they were inhaled.
“From what the Rahin said, they repeat their stories inside until that moment of capture. So you see how it could be troublesome to try and rescue them without a being who can reset stories. All the while they got tampered, Kara was getting her son, but since I was outside my world, I had no chance to fight him. Seeing as you stole the gem first and made it into a bridge, Aki didn’t have a way to get mine. He was quite intrigued by this, to the point of declaring that he’d make me his wife.”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s crazy.”
“Yeah, well, most of the stuff I just said was crazy to me at first.”
“So you know that you can create anything in this space, huh?” I asked. “Did Finn tell you about it?”
“I found out about it on my own,” she said. “And I understand why you’d keep it from me. Such power is bound to have consequences. Well, that’s it for now. You’ve got work to do.”
“Yeah for however long that lasts,” I said. Rebecca looked concerned.
“What do you mean?” She asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “See you tomorrow, and thank you, Rebecca.” I vanished before she could respond.
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The next morning was still a hot mess, as common for the end of summer. Between the oven of the subway stations, and a frigid subway train, I was at coffee again, at the notebook. I just hoped Rebecca didn’t think too much on that one thing I said before leaving yesterday. I arrived first without a form to see if she was in the library. She wasn’t, but no doubt felt the tingle of my arrival. I remembered her telling me how she took out the beast curse. Maybe she also removed the tingle put on her. For what reason? It didn’t serve her any better with it gone. It was a bonus, not a burden.
I waited in that perfect space of my past and story of old, thinking whether Tiarto deserved a whole revamp. I really wanted him to live in the minds of others, but too many elements were depressing or random. It didn’t follow a normal story arc, and I was damn happy with that. The trouble stemmed from the many folks stuck to the story arc mechanic. To them, the story would be too meta. I shook the thoughts away. Hanging out in the library that started it all with jump-started reflection. I was just about to go flying to look for Rebecca when she burst in through the door. I formed to greet her, but she ran at me too quickly and tackled me down. I felt a strange sense of déjà vu and understood why. She took Sana’s part in this encounter, and I was Tiarto.
“Hey,” she said, with both knees on my chest. “Let’s take care of beast right away.” Without a second more, she spread her knees at my head and sat on my face. beast roared out at the position, but then that same Rebecca clad in red velvet appeared before his cage in my mind with a bright red whip. She winked a devilish smile and closed a red curtain that I had no idea existed there. It was only luck that I didn’t need to breathe in Rebecca’s space. Otherwise, one of those pleasant suffocation encounters could kill me. While I did fantasize about that time James died between Kara’s thighs, this wasn’t the same. When her hips lifted, I sat up on the wooden floor.
“Is that the only way you can bring out the lady-beast?” I asked.
“Well, I made her to be in my mouth,” Rebecca said. “But she had other ideas and moved herself there. We were just at Erik’s place with Natasha, exploring the do’s and don'ts of a threesome with them. You made those two really uptight, huh?”
“They were supposed to be in love, not lusting,” I explained.
“A healthy love balances with lust of both parties,” she said, “You’d know that if you ever had any serious love connection to someone. Hey! What was that? I couldn’t say what I wanted to say. Or rather, I said it, but it made no sound and you didn’t record it.” I looked away in shame.
“I censored you, Rebecca,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’ve done so with Finn once too, but he wasn’t allowed to see all of my mind. You hold power over me that he didn’t have.”
“Are you afraid that if someone does read this, that you’ll lose face?” Rebecca asked. “And you don’t think inventing friends for yourself to talk to will do that already? Not that I think that I was invented.”
“Sorry,” I said, cutting out another sentence from her speech.
“You did it again!” she exclaimed. “Why are you so afraid of it? Does lying help you feel better about it? If you pretend, it will only lead to a lack of trust.” I remained silent.
“Well, watch this,” Rebecca said, then pulled off her mouth as if it were a device attached to her head and finicked with it for a moment before attaching it back to her face. “You can no longer censor me, Jack. Just because you’ve never had sex doesn’t mean you should be afraid to mention the fact. Running away only gets you so far, and lying even less.”
I read over what she said again and genuinely considered setting the notebook on fire. It was out, written, my lies to Finnelgamin undone. Rebecca had no idea what that meant for her. None of her recorded sexual exploits were fueled by real experiences, just lies. I wanted to be angry, but beast was preoccupied by she-beast. I needed distance for a bit. Without another word, I vanished from her space.
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I didn’t return that Friday in the morning, or stop by over the course of the weekend, but I sat at the notebook on Monday morning again, not within her space. Rebecca wasn’t like Finn once was. She had access to my full past, full mind. There had to be some part of her that understood why I became such a removed individual, but she was also the outcome. Unless she hated herself, the feelings about my life had to be supportive. If that was true, I was still not sure why she said those few words and why I wrote them down. Perhaps she caught me off guard. No. Was I inattentive to her now that she could create like me in her space? I needed to find out what held her here.
“Hey,” I said, appearing in the library right away in full form. There were three people there, but Rebecca stepped up to me and kissed the form of my lips. I felt it, yet had no idea why she did so. Was she about to drop another revelation? Did I have to mute her preemptively? When we parted, she was upset, and her face looked scary. It was a rare thing to see.
“You stood me up on Friday,” she said. “I was going to apologize, and you weren’t here, dumbass!” I was a bit stunned at the loud voice, but cleared my throat as we came apart.
“My usual writing place was closed,” I explained and held back from apologizing. “Just shows you how fragile of a balance my writing has. In the future, just assume something went wrong. If I’m not back for months or years, that means I’m probably dead. At that point, Kara, I trust you will help Rebecca leave this place. I’m sure Barc will help in such a challenging trial, but we should think on how to get James and Finnelgamin out of the corrupted veil gemstones first.”
“STOP!” Rebecca shouted. Her face was in tears. “What do you mean? You can’t die!”
“Not in here, maybe,” I replied. “But beyond this notebook exists my whole world, and it’s pretty chaotic on average. Dangers of death are pretty frequent, but I do my best to avoid them. Regardless of that, my own author, my writer, let it slip that I won’t live past forty. Seeing as I’m twenty eight now, that leaves twelve years of my life.”
“Does he… talk to you, too?” She asked.
“Not to the degree I talk to you and Finn,” I replied. “But Kara met him once.” I looked toward her to find her topless and receiving a bundle of blankets back from Mr. Barcode to feed. I watched stunned as the baby found a nipple and began sucking. Her head raised to meet my eyes. Kara’s other breast was still out, but she didn’t seem concerned by it. All the while, beast roared within with ideas of what to do with those engorged breasts. Before I could say anything, apologize, or look away, Rebecca tackled me to the ground and fitted her crotch over my face. Rebecca in red appeared inside my mind, ran a whip between her thighs, and closed the red curtain on beast.
“Sorry,” Rebecca said. “That’s the only way Redbecca says she can enter. I swear she’s just making fun of me, but if it keeps beast in line, it’s worth it.”
“It’s ok,” I said, looking over to Kara still partially naked. “Is that John?”
“Oh, right,” Kara said. “This is Danielle, our second child. John’s five now. You should know the Infinity Void is a bit strange when it comes to dealing with time. It exists outside it, but has it running in the gems. Basically, I got pregnant a few ‘days’ ago, went into the void, and came out to give birth. This time it was real birth, not some bird-brain mistake.”
“Right,” I said and felt magnetized to the naked breast until she took offense and hid it. “Getting back to my writer, you know him, right, Kara? Alexander Virtu?” Kara shrugged, as I searched if she actually ever learned his name.
“Not sure, JJ,” she said, getting my name wrong as if retaliation for staring. “I meet a lot of people.”
“He’s the one that said the word ‘garavand’, and you put him into that darkness,” I explained. It was pretty much the only mention of him in my writing, not to mention the old man in the Shining Eves. Kara shrugged again. I cringed. It must not have happened yet. Just like she said, time was a real mystery in terms of the Infinity Void.
“So the void gems,” I said, changing the topic from my limited life and time limits. “I don’t see what we can do about them, but I have a feeling who might have an idea. They are quite elusive though. The Nth Goni.” Kara snapped her fingers at the mention.
“Yes!” She said and switched Danielle to her other breast. “They might be able to help us, but the Goni and the Rahin don’t get along. You see, the Nth Goni pretty much drove their Nth Infinity into the Infinity Void and put up existence shielding. They’re pretty much squatters in Rahin territory, but they have access to the void gems, at least the glowing ones. I don’t even know how to get into their place. Not sure I even can, being en existing person.” I cleared my throat.
“I might have an in,” I said. Usually, this would have been a great moment for a cut to black in a TV show, or the end of a chapter, but this was nothing that standard. “I know this Nth Goni who was in charge of my story, Fyntn the Third. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t think I’d be able to create Finnelgamin or Rebecca. He created the opportunities. Let me see what I can do tomorrow, ok? I have to go.” Without a word, I vanished from the space.
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