Chapter 48 - All Monsters Once Kind

I came back the next day without an idea how to fix the mess I possibly created by myself. If only there was a way for Akier to forget he ever was his past life. If he could just go back to being Tarne… It would not work. Kara would know. Lila would, too. I wanted a rewrite, to stop myself from bringing these events on. Was it my mind seeking to destroy happiness for entertainment? Yet, it still felt like healing, like understanding myself. I have come a long way from Finnelgamin. Even though Rebecca was the true surgery of my psyche, Lila was the rehabilitation. Is.

I entered the library to find Lila holding Tarne in a headlock. I rushed to separate them, and pulled Lila aside.

“What was that?” I asked.

“He’s not supposed to be here!” Lila exclaimed. “I want my daughter back! You hear that, you monster piece of shit? Get the fuck out of my daughter’s body!”

“Lila,” I said, forcing her to meet my eyes. “I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s always been him. When I wasn’t Tarne, the empty shell invited the nearest void leech, which just happened to be Akier Vil Moredo. It’s entirely my fault.” Her anger flushed her red, with tears welling in exasperation. I hugged her as she tried to pry herself off.

“That’s right, mommy,” Akier said behind her. “I was always oh so bad, you just didn’t know about it.” I looked over to find Tarne naked, straddling a dildo sucker-cupped to the top of the desk. Lila tried to pull away from me, but I held her in place.

“YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT!” Lila screamed behind me. “I’LL KILL YOU! LET ME GO, JACK!” I tried to hold on, but Lila used creationism to make herself slippery. I went partially out of phase and grabbed hold of her spine directly. Tarne kept riding the silicone penis on the desk, with Lila and I watching until a gasp of climax. I snapped my fingers to increase the size of the member inside her until it split her in half, tearing through flesh to no blood gush. I used that moment to clothe, bind, and gag her, while healing her injury.

“Lila,” I said. “I wouldn’t suggest this, if there was any other way.”

“Suggest what?”

“Let’s venture inside his mind,” I said. “We can alter things, or erase who he used to be completely.” Tarne somehow bit through the gag right away.

“You can’t do that,” Akier said. “It’s not fair.”

“THIS!” Lila said, motioning to him. “ISN’T FUCKING FAIR!”

“I don’t care about fair, Akier,” I said. “You’re not being fair either, though I bet you were never fair in your original go. You were defeated. I don’t know who did it, but the fact that you found your way back isn’t fair for everyone that you hurt to get digested by the Rahin. It’s my fault that you’re back, so I’m taking responsibility. I’m fighting fire with fire, mirroring the suffering you caused back on you.” Before he could respond, I bound his mouth with a sturdier ball gag this time. I heard a low growl inside me and looked to the female beast on her throne, straddling the very same dildo I used to explode Tarne. I felt heat between my thighs, but shook the thought off before beast pounced. This version seemed to be less vocal, more animalistic.

“Ok,” Lila said. “Let’s penetrate this bastard and erase him from inside my baby.” I held up a hand.

“I’m running low on time,” I said. “This feels like something that would take a while, so let’s save it for tomorrow, ok?” Lila looked at me with a scowl.

“I can do it myself,” she said. “I’ll purge the bastard out.”

“No,” I said. “You need a control person with you. I don’t want you getting lost in Akier’s mind. I also don’t want you to destroy it to an extent that we can’t have Tarne back. Please, Lila, wait for me.” I watched her eyes shift between me and Tarne for a moment. “Please, Lila.” She grunted in annoyance.

“One day,” she said. “If you’re not back tomorrow, I’m going in by myself. For now, Let’s leave him bound like this. Tomorrow, we get her back. You hear that, you piece of fucking shit?” Tarne’s brow said it all, angrily lowered while thinking up a way out of this predicament. I put up a hand in farewell and did a cannonball into the floor of the library which rippled like water before returning to normal wood.

break

I came back at seven in the morning to the device, the library. Kara sat alone on the desk. In the pit of my stomach, I knew this meant nothing good.

“Hey,” I said. “Where are Tarne and Lila?” She said nothing, only looked disappointed. When she leaned back and jumped to her feet, I half-expected an attack, but she just motioned her hand to follow her. I walked after her upstairs to Tarne’s room. She was strapped to the bed as if prepared for an exorcism, but the ball gag was out of place. The mouth ball put the setting to BDSM, so I switched it for a wad of cloth, hoping Akier would not chew through it right away.

“So, where’s Lila?” I asked. “Please tell me that she didn’t go into his mind yet?” Kara jumped onto the bed, and put a hand right through Tarne’s neck to hold onto the bone structure of the upper spine. “What are you doing?”

“Giving Akier a warning,” Kara said through her teeth.

“I’m ready,” said a voice behind me. I turned to find Lila, geared in something of a space uniform. I searched my mind, finding the very same uniform on the child version of Lila when we first met. The garb never made another appearance, until now, this time filled out nicely with her figure. This figure differed slightly from Kara’s as the hips were noticeably wider for the spine-womb, and the muscle down her midsection to where my version of humans had a crotch, was pronounced like two thick haunches of muscle underneath the skin.

“You vanish,” Kara said, eyes dripping anger into Tarne’s still gaze. “You will cease to exist, and Tarne will be back to us. If you try to resist, I will step in there after they fail and raze your mind back to infancy.” Lila stepped forward and put a hand on Kara’s shoulder to disengage.

“I’ll get our daughter back,” Lila said. Kara’s ferocity charged Lila’s face into a passionate angry kiss. I watched their lips mingle in the hunger and watched the female beast drop to all fours in front of her throne, shake her hips, then spray something from underneath the shaking hips. I closed the door to the throne room as she pounced, possibly suggesting we have a threesome before going inside Akier’s mind. I felt heated up, and felt the blush on my face that could be attributed to watching two women kissing passionately.

“You better,” Kara said, then walked up to me. “You should thank Lila for talking me out of going with you. I have a real deep hatred for this prick. He abducted my son, tried to kill me and James numerous times, and tossed my old man into the Infinity Void. I don’t know what he’s even doing as a void leech. The Rahin and the Goni should have just jarred him.” I wanted to ask what jarring entailed, but there was no time. I had an hour left of time before work, and this was likely to take a lot more than that if we stalled.

“Ready?” I asked, while holding out a hand to Lila. Kara stood in the corner of the room, in the dark. A red star lit up in the darkness, a lit cigarette but rather than a circle the end was a defined five-pointed star. I wanted to ask, but looked to Lila when she took hold of my hand. I met her eyes to find a determined mother, seeking to save her daughter, to save what once was me. “Here we go.”

I placed my palm on Tarne’s forehead, fingers toward the hair, and clenched my fingers into the flesh to grab hold of the skull. Akier still fought the physical contact, until Lila gut punched Tarne to stop moving. I slipped my finger into one of her nostrils, expanding the tether from the thumb that would send us inside. The tether on my thumb dug into the physical brain, spreading like a root network of blue veins into every aspect of the brain. On a metaphysical side, I sent myself and Lila through my hand into the tether on the thumb, and felt awash with a blazing red light.

“That’s very hot,” I said, realizing I was standing in a very red space, pulsating into orange, then back to red. Lila was still with me, hanging onto my hand. “We’re here.” Lila let go of my hand, and stepped a bit away into the pulsating red-orange room. I draped us in a darkening bubble to alleviate the red alert of any invaded mind. It would have been best to put Tarne to sleep before entering, but we needed her fully active for this particular venture.

“This is it?” Lila asked. “Where is the stuff?”

“What stuff?” I asked.

“The STUFF, you know, memories, plans, all that stuff.”

“Is this the first time you’ve been inside someone’s mind?” I asked, almost laughing at her notion. “Oh, it is. I— Sorry. I mean, I thought you might have sometimes explored your creationism to go into Kara’s mind for some sexual reasons, or at least read her mind for cues to things she liked.”

“We talk enough to understand what we want,” Lila said. “So this is what a mind looks like?”

“Not all of them,” I replied. “This is a mind in a red alert. Akier knew that we’d be coming in, so he put up protections. Let’s do away with that for now. I clenched my fist, turning the red and orange pulsating into gray and black, which felt a lot less bright and hot.

“So how do we do this?” Lila asked.

“Well, the way I did it with Finnelgamin, maybe,” I said.

“Trapping a part of the mind in a loop that exponentially degrades over repetitions?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But first we have to isolate the Akier he was from the Tarne memories and experiences since being inserted into the shell of her. For that, we need a guide.” Lila scanned the endless space pulsating gray and black.

“Isn’t that you?”

“I’m YOUR guide,” I said. “We need a guide to this mind, from inside the mind. We’ll probably have to witness some old memories to get one. I can trigger the first memories, but I don’t know who we’ll get from it so it’s a gamble. Ready for this?”

“Ready.”

I crouched down, and sank my index finger into the invisible ground. The surface was solid, until you tried to pierce it, when it became fluid. When I pierced the standing surface, we fell into it. It felt like water, but it was just a fabric of reality, the outer shell of Akier’s reality core. I held onto Lila as we dove underneath, into invisible, breathable water. There we waited until a hand reached for us from above. I grabbed on as it yanked us back out of the reality core.

“Who are you?” A voice asked. It was a child speaking. They always were, the first instances.

“Hello,” I said. “We’re visiting. I’m Jack and this is Lila. Can you help us?”

I met his eyes to find young Tarne. It was quite the shock. The very person we were here to save, saved us in return.

“Tarne?” I asked.

“Who’s that?” She asked. “My name’s Gemmy. You don’t belong here.”

“That’s right,” I said, putting up a finger. “But we need your help. This is your mind, right?” Gemmy looked around, and motioned to turn off the fluctuating black and gray, then returned the space to a light orange color.

“Yes.”

“Would you show us your first memories?” Lila asked, stepping up. Gemmy blushed red, and covered his face. “What’s wrong?”

“I think he likes you,” I said, smiling. I watched the confusion in Lila’s face, conflicted between hating Akier, loving Tarne, and not knowing who she was talking to. Lila closed the distance to the child, and hugged her. The environment popped like a balloon to the garden where Tarne once played.

“Ok,” Gemmy said. “I’ll show you. Come on.” She pushed off Lila, and walked off into the garden. When Lila looked over to me, she was crying. I put a hand on her shoulder to console her.

“She looks like Tarne,” she said. “I— I didn’t—“

“I know,” I said. “It’s ok. Let’s follow. If Akier is in here, his past will interject soon enough.” I walked off first, and looked back to find Lila walking up behind.

“Here!” Gemmy called out, then presented Garr like a prize. “I was born here, and—“ The image flickered to a darker scene. Gemmy’s expression grimaced, then contorted to a frown as the environment glitched into something else.

There was a woman on the ground with injuries all over her body. Above her stood a man with a knife, smiling and drooling. She had a bundle of cloth in her arms, protecting it from the next attacks that cut into her body. The blood oozed at each attack, coating the blade. When the man with the knife started unbuckling his pants, a blast of green fire pierced through his neck, engulfing him whole. He burned in an instant, leaving a charred corpse.

A hooded figure stepped up to the injured woman just as the last breath exited her body, and a cry burst forth from the bundle she was holding. The figure stepped closer, and put a finger to the woman’s neck, taking a knee in sadness. Bandaged hands reached from underneath the dark cloak and into the bundle of cloth to draw out a child into the dim light of the alley. This had to be Akier’s earliest memories, edited from an outsider’s perspective. If we were in first person, this would seem a lot less scary.

“This isn’t—“ Gemmy said, then shook her fist in the air to shift the scene back to the garden, where she hovered in breathable liquid of Garroton Bloom, an embryo becoming a child, awakened by light and wandering the lush garden as it clothed her in leaf garments woven by Brancher and Reaper. “There. See?”

“Yes, I see, Gemmy,” I said. “You had the greatest parents in the world.”

“Yes,” she said. I took Lila aside for a moment.

“I have to go,” I said. “This is taking longer than I had to do this.”

“You can’t go,” she responded. “We have to raze the hell out of Akier.”

“I—,” I started, then looked over to the Tarne person playing with a stick. “Stay here, in this moment. Stay here, play with Gemmy. She’s just as much Tarne as Akier. Please, don’t do anything stupid. I’ll be back when I can.” I said, then exited, flashing a message in the air for Kara, then exiting the library.

break

That day, I found no time to return. By the next day, I had forgotten about Lila waiting inside Tarne’s mind. The third day was the Fourth of July, and while I had no intention of celebrating this country, I did not return because of a migraine which kept me bedridden in darkness. So I was back, three days since I left her inside the mind of once her daughter, now a person most vile. I hoped that she was ok.

I entered the library directly into Tarne’s room on the second floor. After not being my female self for three days, I was surprised to once more occupy a body I wanted. Kara sat collapsed at the two of them, asleep next to the message I left behind. It read: “Lila is staying inside until I come back. Don’t worry. I will be back soon.” I waved to change the message for Kara before touching Tarne’s temples to sink back into her mind.

I was back in the lush of the garden where Gemmy said she was born, without either of them in sight. When I turned, Gemmy appeared to take my hand. I followed along without question until we came up on a clearing that did not exist in the garden. This place had to be from another memory. There sat Lila, on a large stone in the middle of the clearing.

“You’re late,” Lila said, without opening her eyes. I stepped closer, but the grass around her started to curl as if in reaction to my approach. I stayed in place.

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s difficult to get back in sometimes. Kara is at your side in Tarne’s room.” Lila shifted in her seat, prompting Tarne to jump over the curling grass and land on a part of the stone. When the girl landed, the stone hovered up into the air, taking Lila with her.

“Where are you going, Gemmy?” I asked. “Can I come with?”

“Girls only,” Gemmy replied. I was surprised, until I looked at myself again to find that I did not maintain my female form inside Tarne’s mind. Did she see through it and changed me back? Or was holding onto that dream only possible where I had control over how I looked?

“Jack?” Lila asked, as the stone ascended into the canopies above.

“Can you make an exception?” I shouted toward Gemmy. She pointed a finger, expanding a beam that lifted me up with them into the night sky. She had all the power now, over me. If the beam stopped, I would fall to my… death? Probably not death, but I would be knocked out of the mental space.

“Why do you want to come with us?” Gemmy asked.

“I just want to know more about you, Gemmy,” I replied. “Can I call you Gem?” She nodded.

“Like I told you, Gemmy,” Lila said. “We’re looking for a friend of ours. Her name is Tarne, and we think she might be in here somewhere.” The ground got further and further away until it disappeared completely to space. We were now just objects in space, dancing among the stars.

“Why do you think this ‘Tarne’ is even here?” Gem asked. “Who is she to you?” Lila was about to say something stupid, so I met her eyes and shook my head not to do it. She motioned her head that I should do something about it instead.

“She’s our friend,” I said. “Like you are. You’re both our friends, but there is another part in here that isn’t friendly at all. We’re sure that this last part has her. Tell me, Gem, do you know anything about a person called Akier Vilamones Moredo?” As the last of the word escaped my mouth, I felt a lurch of motion toward a star in the distance. We blazed over to the glowing white surface as Gemmy brought me closer to the rock she floated on, but not over it.

“That’s daddy,” Gemmy said. “What do you know of daddy?” I hesitated. If she was calling him her father, there had to be some bond between them. I had to tread carefully, while floating in a beam of her mind’s creation.

“I want to know more about him,” I said. “But I don't know much.” Did Akier have a child? Is this who this was, or who was somehow recreated in Tarne? I almost hesitated to know more, but to erase him from existence, we would first have to know who he was. “Can you tell us about him? We’d love to know more.” The beam set me down beside Lila, and set me loose. Lila nudged my side with an elbow.

“Nice going,” she said, disingenuously. “Now we have to hear his stupid sob story. Everyone’s got one.” I furrowed my eyebrows at her.

“We’re guests here, Lila,” I said. “We at least have to know what we’re dealing with if we need to remove Akier from inside Tarne’s mind.” Gemmy put her hands up, turning the rock we were sitting on into a room with the star’s light beaming in from the side windows. It resembled a classroom, and Gemmy set herself up as the teacher at the chalkboard. Only, the surface was not a chalkboard, but a mental board she could imagine stuff onto.

“This,” Gem said, thinking up an image to put onto the mental board. “Is daddy.” The image shifted to a man, about forty years old, smiling kindly. It had to be Akier, but he was never happy unless he was destroying stuff, or so I was told. Everything I knew about him came through Kara’s bias, the Nth Goni bias, the Rahin bias. None of them even considered that the man could have been hurt by something that happened to him. I was certain most evil started from pain inflicted upon them in some shape or form.

The image on the screen changed to another shot of the same man, further away in grassy terrain, flying a kite. Gem’s hand was reaching out toward him, as if he was running away. The screen flickered to a darker scene, the face of anger on Moredo’s face, almost jovial in delight at seeing someone suffer. Then a look of shock and realization while holding up a weapon just fired, finding Gemmy looking toward him. The last scene held Gemmy in his arms, looking up with a hand vanishing into ash. I felt a deep pain at that last moment, but Gemmy was once again upset at the device for not showing what she meant to show.

“Stupid thing,” she said, kicking the mental screen stuck on the shot of her hand disappearing. “Daddy’s not a bad man. Daddy is kind. He is sweet. His smile could win over anyone.” This was a coping mechanism for being the cause the death of someone close to him. That was why his void leech latched onto Tarne, a shell of a girl who he deeply regretted losing.

It had to be when he had already made enemies in the worlds. If he found a quiet spot where he could be a guardian to someone, he would want to protect that. He would be paranoid and prepare for an attack at any moment, resulting in creating weapons that could very well lose him the things he wanted to protect. I imagined that would make him hate his enemies more, though who he hated most was himself. I wanted to unpack these, but I decided to take some time away from Gemmy and Lila to process. I held onto Lila’s hand, and lifted us out of Tarne’s mind.

Kara was still asleep on the bed, but when Lila woke up, so did the other. They embraced over the subdued Tarne as if we won. There was no winning here. Akier’s latching onto Tarne was at the root of his thinking. He was reliving life for Gemmy who he killed by accident. Even if he did not remember that, that scalding memory would not be easy to remove from Tarne. There had to be another way. I exited before Lila or Kara asked any questions. 

 

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