Chapter 18 - Living In A Mad World
I came back a week later, during the day for the first time in months. I wanted to have time in case Lila decided to tell me more about herself. Though I arrived at the library countless times before, this time I appeared in the small room underneath it in the small room at the heart of the creationism infection. There was nothing extra added to the space, but all four doors were open onto the darkness with a ceiling of the library slightly lit from within.
There was no reason for the open areas since the vines creeping out from the central invisible mass could go through solid objects. It only took a sweeping motion to close them all. I had to wonder what this space meant, and just how big it could be. I worried that my creationism may impact the Infinity Void sourcing, but the giant mess of vines could very well be a small blotch in a very big space.
There was still a ladder up to the library, not the grand spiral staircase there once was. The idea was scuttled by none other than the Rahin, or so I had been led to believe. Lila said it, so I had to be cautious about it. Maybe there was no point asking her about why she was here. I had no answer for the reason I was in this darkness, and now exposed it to my overactive mind.
Before I had the chance to ascend the ladder to the library, the hatch on top opened with a brighter light of the daylight lamps in the library.
“Jack, is that you?” Lila asked. For a moment, I figured I would give her a scare.
“No,” I said, with a deeper voice. Silence. The flap closed with a slam, as I started ascending.
“Whoever you are, you’re not welcome here!” Lila called through the panel of wood. When I tried to lift the lid, it was heavy. With a bit more force, I pushed it up a few inches until the weight changed to even more. I could not force it open.
“Let me in, little girl,” I continued, with a deep voice. “I have a surprise for you.” Having realized that beast was enjoying himself far too much, I decided to drop the modulated voice before he got the idea we were friendly. I looked up through the cracks as a droplet of water hit me right in the eye. Then, just as sudden as the door slammed closed, a pour of water burst through the wood clearing me off the ladder.
The water kept coming from the library, filling up the little room to the brim until the windows burst out. Meanwhile, I only allowed myself to breathe water and swam up the stream like a fish. There was a giant bubble of water over the broken hatch to the bottom room that swirled with water seemingly multiplying without end. When Lila saw that it was me, she broke the glass, releasing the tornado of water onto the library by accident. I quickly took control of it all and funneled it down into the small room.
“Jack!” Lila exclaimed. “There was some weird guy down there just now! He said… wait…”
“That was me,” I said. “Sorry. I played a trick on you. Didn’t think you’d try to drown me right away though.”
“Sorry,” she said. “So what’s the surprise?” I smiled at her quick change.
“I honestly didn’t think of one,” I replied. “What would you like?”
“Another night like the one a few nights ago?”
“Erm, I didn’t write that down,” I said.
“I know, that’s why it’s fun to bring it up.”
“It’s not a good idea,” I said, hoping to avoid her revealing any more.
“I wish we could have sex for real,” she said. “I wish I could feel my physical body, like you feel yours.”
“If you could, we’d no longer be connected here,” I said. “This is strange and unique. I’m sorry for being weak.”
“Weak?”
“I came back to you that night because I wanted you to help me sleep,” I said.
“And did it work?”
“Yes.”
“So how is that weak?” Lila asked. “Using special mental circumstances isn’t a weakness. It’s a perk. If I was able to come out of the untethered space, I’d also use you for my own gains. I’m just glad I can ‘touch’ you in your reality, in a manner of speaking.” I grimaced.
“It took some effort,” I said. “My imagination isn’t as powerful as it used to be.”
“Says the man who created roots of his own mental power still growing out of that box below into the untethered space,” Lila said, concerned about when it was that I told her about the vines. “Maybe it’s not that your mind isn’t as powerful, but that it’s mostly occupied with memories.”
“I forget things sometimes,” I said. “Not to mention that learning is getting increasingly harder the further this idea expands.”
“Fair trade for a bit of pleasure, don’t you think?” She asked. “Especially pleasure of the most exciting kind.” I motioned my hands to remove her sound as she motioned her hands detailing the many different things we did that night. It was best that it remained just between us. While she was entertained by providing me a brief moment of reprieve, I was still worried that her reality was much harder to explain.
“You muted me,” she said. “And on the best parts.”
“The parts I would very much like not to discuss,” I said. “The thing about people is that certain things inside our heads do not fit in modern society, at least my modern society. If this ever reaches the public eye, and I’m sure it will, I don’t want everyone to think that I am everything that beast embellishes. Curiosities must remain ignored. Do you understand?” Lila grimaced and shrunk back to her kid form.
“What I’m hearing is that you’re like the others,” Lila said. “Just like all those people saying not to act some ways because they don’t fit in. When someone tells you to stay in the box, I would rather die. I bet beast and JJ are the cool parts, and you’re the box.” She waved a hand making herself float, then formed tight fists as a burst of invisible force tore off her clothes. I pushed a bit of creationism onto her, changing her body to a grown woman.
An index finger of each of her fist escaped the tightening flesh, as the naked woman split in the middle peeling skin back to her muscle skeleton. The muscle between her legs took point, as that differed from a normal human body. With the middle finger and the index both out, the muscles flexed once, then tore open to reveal the internal organs. I first noticed that her heart was in her stomach, a symmetrical orb pulsating into an oval. Beyond the giant muscle between her legs was the womb, a sac of intricate indents. The upper body looked similar, but the lungs expanded right above the heart, similarly symmetrical. There was no rib cage, only four vertical bones connecting the shoulders and pelvis. Pelvis was not a bowl, but instead solid bone with ligaments to the legs.
With the third finger out, Lila’s body lost all flesh as everything ripped out to the sides, floating in midair around her. Her skeleton was visible now, a skull almost human, save for two indents of where the ears would be. Her spine was most striking after the vertical rib cage, as the separated spinal column was in plain sight. The single spine split at about the heart level, and opened up into two such paths just to join the pelvis at four points of the rib “slats” descended. With the fourth finger out of the fist, the skeleton fractured to pieces, ligaments be damned, joining the mess of skin flesh and various organs. Only the brain remained, hovering among it all, two indents prominent in the sides where the ears would be.
“This is me,” a voice said from somewhere in the mess. I knew it to be her vocal chords, not exactly intact. “I do not fit in a box.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I don’t want you to be put into a box. I was just saying that my reality doesn’t allow people to be like you want to be, entirely exposed. I need to keep beast and JJ away from the eyes of many.”
“My world is the same,” Lila said. “And that’s why I'm here.”
“What?” I asked.
“I did not fit into my world,” she said. “The boxes they wanted to put me into to feel safe. Why can’t they see that the world is all chaos? Trying to put pieces of it in order is true insanity. I joke that it’s a time out, but it’s a sentence, Jack. I don’t belong in my world, and it seems I don’t belong in yours either.”
“I haven’t told you why the others exist, have I?” I asked. I put my hands up to assemble her body like a puzzle stage by stage. I felt her guidance over my arms, her embrace on my back. When she was back together, still naked, I dressed Lila in a purple dress. Without a moment of hesitation, I gave her an instant hairstyle change to something I liked, then altered myself into a woman to kiss her still floating in the air. When we parted, Lila was in my embrace, looking for something in my eyes.
“JJ is the child,” I said, turning from her. “The child I could no longer be, so full of possibilities and ideas. He only wants to be loved, and to give love from an unlimited source. That feeling, the endless trust and pursuit of love, hurts. I never want him to die out, to dwindle in brightness. I never let him grow up. He’s the part of me still hopeful that one day I’ll find a normal life, someone to love, and live something standard. That’s not so simple to attain, and he gives no path, just glimpses of the future that could be.
“The other side of the coin in beast. He’s everything wrong with me. My ego. He wants to act impulsively with disregard for human life. He wants to fuck, hungering for blood, and pleasure. He wants to feel pain, and give pain, to maim, and cut, hurt for pleasure. Every little thing pushes him harder, makes him more difficult to restrain. He has the drive to succeed, but getting there over the bodies of those around him. I don’t trust him. He wants dark things, things I can’t mention even here. I feel his teeth chewing on my brain like a chew toy, as his tongue penetrates between the salty flesh to weaken me.”
“He sounds fun,” Lila said. “I’d love a roll in the hay with beast.”
“He’d kill you,” I said, feeling a tightening in my chest at the sound of his cage rattling. “They were once a part of me, the one me. They were inside my head. I mean, they still are, but it’s different now.”
“Different how?”
“Back when I was the one me,” I continued. “I’d go around bursting out angrily at people sometimes, wild-eyed in revenge. The next second, I’d be happy, wondering why people were upset, or why people kept their distance after an outburst of anger had me destroy something. The two were problematic, but all I wanted was some normality, some time away from those excessive parts of me. So I divided them out.”
“That’s not possible,” Lila said. “You can’t just split them apart inside yourself. They’re part of you. They ARE you.”
“If you have an endless mind, you can do anything,” I said. “I split my mind up. I didn’t want beast to always be angry at everything. I’d scare people away. I couldn’t have JJ always there, I’d be constantly suffering his trusting acts only to explode with rage when I was fooled. Both had to be further in the back of my mind. Both had to be their own thing. As a precaution, I added a safety measure, robot. When I was too busy dealing with either beast or JJ, robot would take over. With that, I finally fit into the box I was supposed to.
“Knowing all of this, made me certain that I could not look for anyone to share it with, and yet I ended up sharing it with many. Including you. That’s why when I found out that you’ve been lying to me, it hurt, Lila. I wanted to let beast loose on you, though I now imagine you’d have enjoyed that. Something about you is so familiar, but I don’t know what.”
“Maybe I’m the part of yourself you split apart a long time ago,” she said. “Maybe you cast me off as raw material and I found another reality to live in.”
“That’s a nice story,” I said. “Yours?”
“Yes,” she said. “I wrote that once. A person seeks a piece of themselves in the world of another.”
“How does it end?”
“The person seeking loses their way, only helped by a stranger along the way,” Lila said. “The more they talk, the more it feels as though they know each other, but they part ways without ever finding out that they are part of the same person. The stranger is also looking for an old friend. Neither finds the other because they aren't honest with each other for fear of sounding outlandish.”
“That’s very sad,” I said.
“I imagine so, to the person who has lost a part of themselves,” Lila said. “And to the part they lost. But to someone who has struggled to keep together, to be themselves all the time no matter who they upset, it’s a comedy.”
“I guess I can’t understand that,” I said. “Do you mean to say that you wrote it as a comedy?”
“Nobody laughed when I told it,” Lila said. “They just looked at me with those judging eyes. They said there is something wrong with me. I didn’t try to hide it, while it expanded with my growing mind. In the end, it was too much for the box I was to occupy. There was no place in my world for me, and that is why I am here.”
“You’re honest,” I said. “You didn’t try to hide away like I did. Another flaw leveraged against me. I lied to uphold normality. Even though normal is boring, there is a limit to strangeness that people can accept. Beyond strange, is weird, then it’s not a long walk to insane, standing before deranged. I fear, as a whole, I’m quite a bit further than deranged.”
“Then we are similar,” Lila said. “But with you beside me, I feel better. It’s like you’re a part of me that I once cast off, my conscience.”
“I’m conscience, and you’re honesty,” I said. “And we’re both quite lost, aren’t we?”
“I feel found,” she said. “Why be normal, Jack, when being mad is so much more fun?”
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