Chapter 25 - Universe of the Mind
I came back reluctantly, at odds with myself. My mind wavered between a blissful ignorance of the world going to shit and the stark panic that tortured my sleep. Maybe it was something else that tortured my sleep. I wanted it to be Garavand, in the dark of the room shifting me awake in the middle of the night as a joke to keep me tired, but it was far more likely to be some mouse looking for food in the winter times. Otherwise, it was my stressed mind, wondering what I could do to make enough money to keep a roof over my head in the coming months.
Here I was again, at the device for entertainment, for work, just writing of my own insanity Part 3. I wanted it to be the final part, but seeing as Lila would be with me for years of my life, I felt this final arbitration of me would not be wrapped up here. Not to mention that I was still a part of Tarne, Lila’s child. I had to figure out a way to exist apart from her, though I had a feeling that I would always somehow exist within the confines of that person, whereas I could not exist in my reality as who I truly want to be.
:Hi, Lila,: I sent a text to a phone she molded with my assistance.
“Jack,” she said. I was in darkness again, but heard footsteps near me, and soon her face appeared in view. She picked me up from the cradle into the darkness of the room. “It’s been a few days. Did I scare you off by talking about sexual things again?”
:No,: I replied. :I’ve had other things on my mind lately.:
“Like what?”
:I won’t bore you with my reality drama,: I said.
“Bore away,” she said with a smile. Her arms placed me up against her bosom, a warm pillow underneath soft fabric. It felt good to be close to someone, a reminder of something I never sought, but remembered from the few memorable hugs in my life. One lingered stupidly above others. The star. I hugged her once, as a means of saying goodbye. I thought it was on good terms, but I was certain they were not. JJ and beast wrecked me with havoc post that farewell. “Jack?”
:Sorry.: I said. :I got lost in a memory of this girl I knew.:
“Rebecca?”
:No,: I said, and with that one mention, the flood of her story crowded my mind again. The hesitant abduction of a shell from the void, brought up from my memories and knowledge of the world, corrupted by my dark, elated by my light, culminating in heartbreak, as if designed that way. I only wanted help, but with Lila, I did not want anything anymore. I just wanted to rest. I wanted to escape the compressed life in the city and separate myself out to live wildly alone, somewhere I could not hurt people. :She was in my reality. I dubbed her ‘The Star’, and saw her always shining above me. I wanted a life with her. I held her up to be this goddess, but Rebecca shattered that illusion. I’m glad of that.:
“You loved her,” Lila said.
:Maybe,: I said. :I loved the idea of her. She had an undeterred personality, especially given the cards she was dealt in life. I liked that about her. I felt magnetized to her, catching glimpses of a life with her because of JJ, yet always spoiled by focusing on her beauty thanks to beast. I never considered to help her, to learn what was important to her, and rightfully so lost her as a friend for pushing my feelings on her aside my sadness.:
“That’s a bit romantic,” Lila said.
:One side sees it romantic,: I said. :The other, astringent.:
“So, what drama are you dealing with now?” Lila asked, rocking my small body up against the warmth of her body. I wanted to feel it in my reality, but the prospects for something like that were low. I was a big person, and the memories of being held this small, were fleeting in the best of dreams. In adult life, I would have to peacock myself to get somewhere that comfortable, and it would almost certainly end up badly thanks to beast.
:Money, I guess,: I said. :Fearing for my life, I have confined myself to my room, growing roots of extra weight and sloth. Hold on. Food arrived, and I want to eat it while it’s warm.:
“Ok.”
:I’m back,: I said into the void of thought between me and the device receiving my texts.
“You were saying?” Lila asked. I was still in her embrace, amidst the comforting warmth. I had to wonder whether Tarne woke up because of me, or have I once again interrupted her. “Something about the pressures of everyday life?”
:It’s not an everyday life,: I said. :It’s an aberration, but it begs to be revolutionary. I want more than just a salary job, though I’d appreciate the steadiness of work to escape this monotonous imprisonment. The work I want is in writing, but my thoughts are bogged down by volume of ideas wanting to live, and I have no skill to develop them into their most evocative timeline.:
“What does THAT mean?”
:The ideas for stories that I get sometimes,: I said. :They are a vague starting point to a timeline with many different outcomes. I get the gist of that story, skipping bounds to its end for a satisfying conclusion with the meat of the thing missing.:
“Bone-broth, basically,” Lila said, clicking a word into my brain with a bone on bone crunch.
:Yes, exactly,: I said. :It’s akin to finding a skeleton, and building it into what it was, without knowing fully how the fleshed out being looked like. I can only go from the beginning and cover the story in grafts from timelines of their life to flesh out the idea into something nourishing. Each is a skeleton, cataloged for who they would entertain. I want to entertain every age group. Where some writers aim to capture a child’s imagination and grow with them, I’d prefer to divide into every category.:
“Sounds impossible,” Lila said. “That’s the definition of ‘stretching yourself too thin.’ And you can’t just start in every category at once.”
:All the more reason I want to try,: I said. :I want to reach the hearts and minds of kids, and be there for the teens, and progress young adult minds, with something that also entertains the parents and people in their twenties and thirties. It’s impossible, but I want to do it.:
“Why?”
:I don’t know.:
“Because you don’t want to be forgotten?”
:Maybe.:
“Or maybe plucking a single creative feather chokes you,” Lila said, pulling me apart from her. She brought the little bundle of me up to her eye level. Her eyes held concern, whether for Tarne or me. “People choose one thing because it’s easy, but I imagine it would be the hardest thing for you. Making a choice that impacts the rest of your life must be scary, but if you split yourself into many things, you’re that absent for all of the things you want to have. Even with that, I can’t tell you to narrow it down. I’ve been in your situation before, though it had nothing to do with writing.
“I wanted to be free, but freedom to some is a box to others. I know it’s not the same, but the main theme holds true. I exploded beyond what I was expected to be. I didn’t even bother holding back the bad thoughts that others would keep hidden. Because of that, I was exploited by the darker side of my reality, growing like your root structure into the darkness with control over it. Looking for trouble from all directions you find trouble in all surrounding parts. If you look for recognition in everything you want to pursue, you will find all those segments realize the half-assed effort you give them, and never reach them.”
:I can’t abandon any of them,: I replied. :And before you say that it wouldn’t be abandoning them, yes it would. Focus is abandonment of the rest. It’s unkind to the others to focus on one.:
“With that mindset, you’ll never have a significant other,” Lila said. “If you can’t focus on one person, and love them, just them, then why would anyone choose to be with you, to focus on you. It applies to more than love. If you can’t focus on one thing at a time, what purpose do you serve to people other than creating chaos? Choosing ONE thing, is choosing a box to rent for some time. Just like living in the place you live now. Just like your idiotic focus on a woman that has no doubt forgotten you since the time spent NEAR her. You DO fixate on stuff, just not the things that could better your life. You fixate on your addictions, that which elates your mind, excites your heart, and you hold onto the bad in the same fashion. I think you are able to box yourself, unlike me. You only do it to pretend to have many options.”
:You mean I’m focusing on being someone without focus?: I asked, trying to fully understand that ouroboros of an idea. The focus of my life was to be unfocused, be like a Tisyros and morph to the shape I needed to be to get what I wanted. :That’s ridiculous.:
“I know,” Lila said. “You are a pretty ridiculous person, and this is possibly coming from a deep part of your own psyche. Not that I’d acknowledge that I’m make-believe. I have far too many bad memories of my reality, WHICH I DESTROYED, to believe I was thought up. But, hell, anything is possible in someone’s mind, you know?”
I looked over the scene that was the true bizarre madness I would soak in the tears of forgotten first love’s orgasm discharge. The scissors cut into the darkness with a crunching sound, as if chopping lettuce of reality, while my vision swam at the scene in the library I pulled equal parts out of my own ass and a childhood memory. I was in a box of creation amidst the never-started raw material for what would once be the Infinity Void outside time and space, encroached by the beings that literally consumed chaos, the disorder only mounting and existing outside of time.
Having communed with a base story of one, stolen the empty shell of another, we built a separate dimension bridged by my imagination to the torrent of everything wanting to live again, from beyond said existence. Warned, and cautioned by the denizens of said void, I threw caution to the wild between, ending up before it all existed, only to meet a bit of a kindred spirit of chaos-creation, stuck in the darkness for the atrocities of her reality under the watchful eye of now sentient beings farming the Infinity Void for chaos sustenance. And above all that, my focus was to have this chaos as the first thing I thought of every second of every day.
I was a contradiction, the paradox of my existence, and every bit as stupid for seeking all that. The thought was tiring.
:I feel sick,: I said. :Later, Lila.:
“Earlier, Jack,” she said. “See you earlier.”
I did not try to decipher what she meant while fighting off my heavy eyelids.
break
:Hi, Lila: I said in my mind transferring to a text chime on a phone nearby my ear. I opened my eyes as Tarne, but was not laying down. I was upright, and having found myself on noodle legs all of a sudden, I rightfully fell on my bum. There she was, hands out toward me with a smile. I missed the smiles. She was such a simple person while I believed she was a child in a time-out for bullying her brother. That had to pull from some sort of reality, but seeing as she was abused, it was too hopeful that he was not. :It seems I interrupted an important moment.:
“Nah, you’re alright,” Lila said, walked up, and lifted me up by the armpits. “You seem tired. Didn’t sleep again?”
:I slept, sorta,: I replied. :I slept from evening to the start of night, then didn’t sleep at night. It’s evening now, so it’s about my bedtime, but I need to push myself past it and try sleeping normal again. It’s all out of whack when there is no schedule in mind. It snowed two days ago though. A whole foot of snow. I shoveled it at four in the morning, while it was still snowing, then again when it stopped snowing. That led me to get pooped out at six in the evening, and sleep to midnight.:
“Sleeping is so weird,” Lila said. “I kinda miss it. Granted, I’m kinda constantly asleep, but not entombed in-“
break
Having returned to the file a week later, I remembered how I fell asleep at they keyboard, while continuing the conversation in my dream. I remembered vague points of the conversation, but as I awoke it all dissolved like sugar in water. With that in mind, and because it was Christmas Eve, I decided to come back to see Lila again.
:Hello,: I texted her phone prior to opening my eyes as Tarne.
“Jack, what happened to you?” She asked. “We were talking and then suddenly Tarne was back.”
:I fell asleep, but continued the conversation in my mind,: I texted. :Does that mean that the conversation we had in my dream was not with you?:
“It wasn’t,” she said. “Are you ok, though? You didn’t come back the next day. Not even for the next few days. I had a bad feeling that maybe you died. Then I started wondering what it would be like in here if you died.”
:Yikes.:
“I don’t mean I imagined you dying,” she corrected. “Just that you’d disappear in a similar way as if you were falling asleep. Then I started thinking what would happen to me and Tarne if you were to stop coming back. What happens to Tarne when they pull me out of untethered space? Or would you just become Tarne and lose all knowing of what you were before?”
:Before you get too into the idea, I just came by to say… I guess to explain something in my reality. Tonight is Christmas Eve, a holiday. Usually holidays are times of celebration of the year, based on some past events. It’s not celebrating the end of the year, but it’s when family gets together and exchanges presents. This year, the whole spirit of this is broken because people need to be separated to avoid sickness spreading. Everyone is sectioned off, connecting over the internet, but a lot of people are very lonely.:
“And you?”
:Hmm?:
“Are you lonely, too?” Lila asked. Without waiting for an answer she held me to her in a hug. For some reason, tears sprung from my eyes in my reality, the begging of JJ for human contact overwhelming me. The hug felt warm and kind.
:Happy Holidays, Lila.:
“Are you leaving for now?”
:Why?:
“When you said gifts, one thing came to mind, so here.” She held out a small box, wrapped in green paper, with a purple bow. “It’s nothing special, and of course I’ll open it for you.” She lifted the small lid to reveal a toy rattle. Inside was a glimpse at what I believed to be the Infinity Void, a dazzling array of gemstones glowing in a near-endless cavern of gravity-free space. When she put it in my hand, and I shook it, the whole space shifted the glowing gems inside but remained looking just like I always pictured it would.
:Thank you, Lila.: I texted, then felt conflicted. :I didn’t get you anything. In fact, I’m sorry. I haven’t been thinking of you at all lately.:
“You already gave me the greatest gift,” Lila said, then pointed at me. I was confused for a moment, but realized that she meant Tarne. I was slightly disappointed. I had to find a way to separate myself from this child of hers. “I’m grateful for giving somebody like me a chance to interact with a life that came from me. I haven’t been a living being in a long time. I was just an angry thought in a machine floating in space that was plucked out to be consumed as chaos, but given another chance and jailed. I’m different because of you.”
:I’m sorry,: I texted. :I’ll find a way to give you Tarne without me in the way. I promise. Even if it takes the remainder of my life.:
“Don’t stress yourself with it,” Lila said, hugged me for a short moment again, and parted to a smile. “Just live some life when you can. That’s all you need to do.”
:Bye for now.:
“Later, Jack.”
break
:Lila.: I sent over to her device. I was in a dark room again. I heard footsteps nearby, then hands on my sides lifting me up to her embrace.
“Hey, Jack,” she said. “You’re back so soon. Everything alright?”
:I guess, Merry Christmas is in order,: I texted. :Though I know you don’t know what that is exactly. And… I have something I may need your help with.: I looked up to meet her eyes, and waited.
“If you’re waiting for me to ask what it is, I’m already on board.”
:I… I need to see if Rebecca left me a message for Christmas. Do you remember that invisible laptop you found a while back?:
”Wasn’t that destroyed with the bookshelf?” Lila asked. “Unless… It wasn’t on the bookshelf, was it? You moved it somewhere.”
:Yes.:
“But you didn’t tell me,” she said. “I guess that’s fair. So where is it?” I said nothing in response, only looked up to the ceiling. The attic of the library house was gigantic, converted now to a dance studio, but never used. “That makes sense.”
:I think it will need my voice to react,: I texted. :But I don’t think that’s possible given I’ve been somebody else for months now.:
“I am capable,” Lila said, using in my voice. “I was a robot once, you know.”
:I’m fading fast, but I have to do this tonight. I feel that it will only work tonight. My keyboard died. I need to charge it.:
“Do it!” Lila exclaimed. “I‘ll go get the laptop! Stay in here to not wake up Tarne, Jack.”
:I got it,: I texted realizing that we were in the attic. I was sitting on the smooth dance floor, and looked up to admire the silver orb at the ceiling. I reached up, feeling like a child, reaching for something shiny blindly.
“Found it!” Lila said. “Not a lot of places to hide it in an open space like this. “Now what?” Lila looked at me for a moment, then inspected the typing bubbles on her phone as I thought up what to say. Would it be something as simple as stating that it was Christmas? Would Rebecca leave it that easily accessible? There had to be something… Redbecca. Her further name was a pet name for crimson, but I always thought she sounded like a gift somebody would open for Christmas instead, with red lace covering the naughty bits. Crimmy, but not by itself.
:Try saying something like- Red Lady, present yourself on the day of gifting.:
“No, that’s stupid,” Lila said. “Let’s try it normally first. What was it, Christmas?”
:Yes.:
“It’s Christmas, Rebecca.” Lila spoke in a copy of my voice I would be more concerned with, if there were more than just two hours left in Christmas Day. My eyelids felt like rocks now. We both waited for a moment, but nothing happened, then the laptop opened to a video call like many times before, with her face. I knew that face.
:Rebecca.: I texted and really wished I could have freedom to move around and speak. I could feel my consciousness fading away, but I had to finish this now.
“Hey, Jack,” she said. The sound of her voice felt so familiar in my ears, even if the ears were brand new. “Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and have a Happy New Year. Ok?” I lowered my head. It was more than I could have hoped for, and it still was not much. The Infinity Void rattle felt so trivial now. I tried to say something, thanks her, but only felt wind rushing out of my lungs, with no sound being produced. This was fitting. I was glad to hear her voice again.
:I’m fading.: I texted. :Can barely keep my eyes open now. Good night, Lila. I’m sorry I woke up Tarne for this. It’s so stupid. I’m sorry.:
“Nothing to be sorry about,” Lila said, “Rest now.”
:Ok.:
break
:Hey, Lila: I texted eleven minutes into the new year. It was dumb to think she would understand. Hours were seconds to her.
"Happy New Year, Jack," she said, then held me up against her. I wanted to question it, speculate on how and why she would know this, but instead I melted away to the comfort of another human being next to me. Whatever the new year would bring, I had to face it head on, but nobody ever said I could not have this, a place to return to, one of warmth and safety. Even if this was only in my mind, it felt like a whole universe.
:I love you.:
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