Chapter 7 - On A Schedule
I came back to the tablet a few days later, another night arriving too late for any real conversation with Lila. I was afraid of being there longer. She was receiving the raw version of me, and would know my past in what was to come. I arrived at the small room, but she was there again. The library just up the spiral staircase was no doubt empty again. Lila was sprawled out on the couch, playing with lights floating above her. It was something of a juggle. The blue lights fell the fastest, but as she tapped each, they changed color and either slowed their descent or started to rise at varying speeds. The yellow ones were the fastest to rise, bouncing off the ceiling and changing to a color of descending tone.
“Hey,” I said, stepping into form beside the couch. Lila sat up, face in various lights moving up and down at contact with her face. A few scattered into the room, hovering slowly to the ground. “I’m sorry that I haven’t been back in a bit. I figured when I come back, we should get started with my past story, even made plans to see you today, but then I just got on while it’s almost 11pm. That’s usually my bedtime.”
“Oh,” Lila said, waving the baubles of glowing light out of existence. “Was it because of our previous conversation?”
“No, no, it’s more about…” I hesitated. “I feel myself come apart when I’m not here with you. That’s pretty scary, but I need to come apart. My life is in a fragile balance, and I’m not doing anything to escape the predicament I’m approaching. As much as I love being here with you, I can’t let it be my reality. I still have to stop and live in mine, to figure it out so I’m happy there.” Lila sat cross-legged on the couch.
“But you’ll stop by, right?” She asked, with her head bowed.
“I will. I just can’t have this be the only thing keeping me sane as the world deconstructs around me.”
“I’m not asking for that,” she said. “I only wanted to know more about you, even if you never share this with anyone and delete it after… after…” She trailed off.
“I’m not going to delete this, Lila,” I said. “As for showing it to others, maybe it’ll just come out after I’m dead from old age or something.” Her head lifted back up with tears welling at her eyes.
“You promise?”
“Yeah, I do. Pinky swear.” I held out my hand with the most sacred of gestures to me. It was a stupid thing to hold onto, but it felt powerful to me. She imitated my gesture and took hold of my pinky with hers. “So smile, come on. Nobody died. We’re good.” Lila smiled, wiping tears away.
“So, let’s set a date,” she said, cleared her throat, and sat back down on the couch. “For the first part of your story, the earliest memories. I want to have a concrete day, so that you don’t come right before bed to apologize and tell me how little time you have. I don’t care when it is, I just need you to commit to it.”
“Right, I guess I should start you off with this then,” I said, and motioned my hand to put calendars onto walls of the library, and one in the room downstairs where we happened to be. Next, I updated analog clock to the walls of the same places that had the calendars hanging up. “It won’t make much sense to count the days and hours with just that, so I’ll create faux windows next to them to simulate the day-night cycle. This puts you on my timeframe, so you can stop using years of measure that are quite weird for me.”
“They aren’t weird,” she said. “If I could use the same thing, I’d explain how they work so that you could be on my timeline, but that could get tedious since you have to use your own system in that reality you’re so fond of.” I closed my eyes for a moment, as a window appeared looking out onto some dark city street at night. The street lamps cast a pale light, eliminating color of the surroundings, but there was no dimension to the creation at all. If anything, it was like an A.R.C. painting from Tiarto’s story. It was a window into a city that was not there.
“Oh, wow,” Lila said. “Is that how your world looks? I really wish I could show you mine. I wonder if the untethered space can pull a story from my world into here.”
“Save it for another time,” I said. “As far as setting a date, I was thinking about tomorrow, but that’s too optimistic. It’s a Thursday tomorrow. Most weekdays I try to get outside at least once a day to buy some food.
“Weekdays are work days, though it’s not a working kind of week with this virus spreading all over right now. Weekends have two days of not working, for leisure activities. You’ll see that on the calendars. Monday starts the work week, and Saturday starts the weekend. Today is April first, and a pseudo-holiday where people pull pranks and jokes on each other. It’s pretty stupid.”
“That’s not what Rebecca told me,” Lila said, setting my hair on their ends. I looked at her in shock, but she had a smile plastered over her face. “Got ya.”
“G- Good one, Lils,” I said. It honestly only made me think of Rebecca again, the way I could not open up to her even though she offered to help me out with beast. “Let’s try to avoid Rebecca until we get to her in my retelling. She just brings up… just… avoid it.”
“Right,” Lila said, visibly distressed by my handling of her joke. She had no idea about her yet beyond the parts she read in the laptop, which made it worse. I was worried about the explicit sexual nature of my interactions with Rebecca. Maybe it was time to test the waters.
“So, let’s set Saturday the third of April as the day,” I said. “As for the hour of the day, you can see the clock has twelve hours, twenty four in a day. There are approximately the same amount of day hours as night hours. The day face is ending at midnight, and the night face goes until noon, both are the number twelve on the clock. I will see you on Saturday, at 3pm. That should give us a lot of time to get into the start of my story, at least what I remember.”
“Sorry to make you plan,” she said.
“No worries,” I said. “I’m lacking in discipline, so thanks for putting the foot down. I’m glad you’re here with me. Maybe once I start sharing more stuff about me, you can tell me more about what you’re doing in this place. Meanwhile, I have a new story for you, but this one is… different. It’s more intended for adults of my world, with themes of pleasure. I was holding back on those because you’re a kid.”
“A better adjusted kid than the adult you are, it seems,” she said. “Sorry. It comes from a place of good intentions, Jack. I promise. Lay it on me.”
“It’s a story of a Tisyros,” I said. “The Hearteater.” I flicked the book out of thin air and tossed it over before vanishing.
break
I came back on the third of April, seeing as it was a Friday, not Saturday that I promised. It was meant to be Saturday, but I had not consulted a calendar before making the calendars, leading to this short visit to see how Lila liked The Hearteater. I was almost certain that she would expand the story past one book, and was not disappointed to find the bookshelf stocked with five books starting with what I provided. After Garavand and Tiarto expanded into whole sagas, I half-expected Ledeon to open up a large world as well.
“Lila?” I asked, but the library was empty. I could check the compass downstairs for her location, but maybe it was better that she did not know I was even there. I checked a calendar nearby to see if she figured out my mistake. The circled day was Saturday the 4th of April. I was about to leave, but a voice from upstairs turned me around.
“I’m in the bathroom!” She called out.
“But this is a mental space for your reality!” I replied, feeling stupid. Even though she had different physiology to humans, there had to be something similar.
“I’m not here for that!” She replied. “But don’t come up! I’m reading the next book of Ledeon’s adventure in the bath!” I looked back to the shelf with four books following the first.
“Ok!” I replied. The moment felt like a throwback to Rebecca, but she was created in the place. Lila was her own person, with possibly a similar way of viewing the rituals of seeking pleasure to humans. Privacy was key, unless otherwise elaborated for excitement. The thought process released beast from all his bindings, taking control of just my hands. This seemed to be enough, as the hands motioned to move my whole body into the air and to the door of the bathroom.
I pulled back on the scruff of his neck inside my mind, pulling the control away from his twisted mind. Before I had him fully away, his last bit shifted to my foot and kicked the door in. There was Lila, not as a child, but a grown woman. Her hair was matted to her skin, forming a pseudo-bra to cover her to nudity. Her recoil at the action shocked me to tighten hands on beast’s neck to throw him back into his cage.
“JACK! GET OUT!” Lila shouted, slipping fully into the tub as the door shut behind me.
“I’M SORRY! IT WASN’T ME!” I replied through the door. It was me. He was a part of my mind, eager to do things I have stopped trying to do for countless years. All the while I was trying, he was the one to mess everything up. If only he wanted to have sex without other freedoms, he would be a solid part of me. As long as he wanted to hurt people and watch them writhe in pain, he was not allowed to be in control.
“I told you not to come up,” she said, after a moment. “I saw you made a mistake with the planning. Saturday was the fourth of April. Just… Come back tomorrow. Ok?” I hesitated. I should have kept away for longer. I looked within myself, setting every precaution on beast to keep him from getting out.
“Ok,” I responded. “I’m sorry, again.” I left feeling horrible, wondering whether Lila could really handle my mind in the past. I was not aware of beast back then, just stumbled around in a huff sometimes, punching walls and other items around me. Only JJ helped me through that time, but I had to leave him behind eventually as well. Now both of them felt like they rebelled to distance me from people in my personal life. I could not be trusted, and I did not trust myself.
break
The next day, I arrived directly to the library as I was thirteen minutes late for the 3pm I promised. Lila was not there waiting, but the shelf with Tisyros books had seven of them. It was still much less than Tiarto and Garavand, but I was glad it had a few more than I saw yesterday.
“Lila?” I asked, once I stepped into my form. There was no answer. In all honesty, I did not say it loudly for fear of how she would react to me after yesterday’s fuck-up. I was about to question the room louder, but she responded from down in the small “basement” room in relation to the library.
“Down here, Jack,” she said. I walked down the staircase to find her on the couch, back in the kid form I knew her as first. I was not sure why she was in adult form while in the tub, but it had to have something to do with how things were designed for adults to use even in this imaginary library house.
“Hey,” I said, “Sorry I’m late.”
“It’s not a big deal,” she said. “I do have something to ask you before we start your past story though.”
“It’s about him, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Him?”
“He’s a part of me, but you don’t know anything about him because you haven’t read Finnelgamin or Rebecca’s story. He’s a part of my broken mind.” Lila was silent for a moment in thought. When she looked up, I knew that was not who she meant. Her eyes looked past me, up the stairs. I looked behind me, but there was nobody there.
“Oh, that’s why you kicked in the door to the bathroom yesterday,” she said. “I was really surprised and embarrassed. It was probably because I was in adult form. I think being in that sort of shape changes my thinking somehow. That’s why I had to change into adult form to read The Hearteater. Without that different thinking, a lot of that stuff would have gone over my head.”
“I’m still sorry,” I said. “I can control him most of the time, but when he gets close to something he really wants, he rebels. I’ll eventually tell you more about him in my story. Even if I try to say he’s not me, he is a part of me that in my reality cannot be apart from me. I’m alive because he’s a part of me, though he wrecks havoc on how I communicate with others socially.”
“I see,” she said. “Do you feel like you should let him run free sometimes?”
“I do so, but it’s not enough,” I replied. “Sometimes, we’re on pretty good terms, and I wish I could be one with him in that manner. Other times, his thoughts upset me to such an extent that I can’t stand being around him.”
“Ok,” she said. “So, should we get onto your past?” I nodded, and sat down at the table where the laptop was again open to the screen with Rebecca’s files.
“You should probably log it into the computer, like a diary,” I said.
“I was going to record it into a blank book, but you’re right,” Lila said. “I suppose it’s better to have it digitized.”
“Hello?” She asked.
“Sorry, I dozed off a little,” I replied, having woken up at the screen gone dark from inactivity. “Something’s up with me today.”
“Did you not sleep well?”
“I slept standard, I think,” I said. “It just feels like something is looming over me, something weird. It’s like I should be doing something with my time, but instead I’m just laying around.”
“Or it could be the thing I wanted to discuss,” Lila said. “There is someone else in the untethered space with the two of us.”
“What?”
“I’ve seen him a few times, in the darkness of the empty space,” Lila said. I felt a shiver. This space was not connected to the Infinity Void, was it? Something made me turn to look behind, but there was nothing there.
“Who was it?”
“It’s always like a pair of eyes, in the distance,” Lila said. “But it’s kinda creepy. Maybe it’s someone else on a timeout like me or another visiting this space in his mind after something like you went through.”
“That’s impossible,” I said. “I pretty much made this place. Well, not the surroundings, just the items hovering in it. So is this like a pebble floating in someone’s vast world of darkness? I think I need to go, Lila. I’m sorry. I have to confer with JJ on how to figure this out.”
“I don’t think this third person is here to do any harm,” Lila said. “But what am I supposed to do? I can’t leave here of my own free will.”
“Aren’t you scared?”
“I’m not here physically,” she said. “I’m hooked up to something outside that would sense distress. Remember, I’m only here on a timeout, not imprisoned.”
“That’s the strangest timeout I’ve ever heard of, Lila,” I said. “I'll be back tomorrow with a plan. Ok?”
“Ok, Jack,” Lila said. “I’m sorry this delayed your story.”
“Don’t worry,” I replied. “I’m not that interesting anyway.”
“I really doubt that.”
I vanished from the room while scanning the surroundings with exposure vision to find out if anyone was in fact around the area under my domain. Though this sight allowed me to see extra, the limits were to the structure made. The darkness around it was a mystery. I had to figure out how to lure whoever it was inside and expose them. For that I would need the greatest of ideas that only JJ could come up with.
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