Chapter 24 - The beast of Burden
“Hi, Lila,” I said. To catch up, the story had been going inside my brain without you. I needed to find a way to communicate with Lila, so I popped a board that displays my words in the library. From then we discussed being able to free myself from Tarne, the child she gave birth to, which was actually me. For the best part of a week I had been stopping by to create something, any little thing with creationism that I could muster. At first, it was a tower atop the library and a flying vehicle that docked there much like my dream. Due to that creating a very real migraine in my reality, I stopped creating things until Lila dragged me in from a dream and told me that I had to keep trying, no matter how small. Next I created a thumbtack, then a nail, then a ball, then I brought forth a car into the library. Lastly, Lila asked me if I was ok, and not wanting to worry her I told her I was.
The message displayed as green light on the message board, making her turn to see it. She did not reply.
“Are you alright?” I asked, creating writing on the board. She looked up again, but said nothing. There was a mysterious air of unease about her. Tarne was in her crib, standing at the bars as I saw through her eyes. I WAS Tarne, but again, I was not. Lila wanted to have her child to herself. “Thank you for… the suckling.” I was referring to just a few moments ago as I woke up to the infinity of possibility of anything swirling inside my brain as a headache, only to be quelled by suckling at her breast.
“I promise it won’t happen again,” I said. She did not even look up that time, just took on a worried look in my direction. Our eyes met. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but instead waved a hand over the glowing word board to vanish it from the library. For a moment, I was upset, but something remained behind. Lila did not destroy the board, only turned it into a smartphone that received my thoughts as text messages instead of a giant glowing board. “Lila?”
“I’m not ok, Jack,” she said. “Like you weren’t. You didn’t stay to talk, so you might as well just leave now, too.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. The message arrived on her phone with a chime. “It’s better now. It’s less chaos. I’ll keep trying to tear myself away from this body so that you can raise your child. Here.” I focused my eyes on the door into the library and created a doormat with little effort. It said: No place like home.
“The next time you feel overwhelmed, you can talk to me,” she said. “I don’t want any of that sort of feeling to end up residual in my baby when you figure out a way to detach.”
“Ok.”
break
I arrived weeks later, having not come back to Lila in all that time. Stresses of regular life were gnawing upon me too much to put on her. She had her hands full with a child. When I arrived as Tarne, Lila sat opposite me with a spoon full of food. I was aware of hunger, though in my reality I ate a few hours ago. My stomach grumbled at the prospect.
“There you are, finally,” she said, pulling the spoon away from my face. I reached for it instinctively with both arms. Lila smiled, and fed me the spoonful of fruit pulp. “You haven’t been back in a while, and you haven’t come to create stuff. I was beginning to think you were giving up.”
“I think I was,” I texted. Lila put down the jar and spoon, and checked the message. “It was better to leave you be. Having a kid has to be a drain. I’m sorry. I came here tired again, but rewatching an old beautiful anime made me think of you. It made me think of myself, and the reason why we met.”
“I found you in the dark,” she said. “That’s all you need to know. You were there because you tried to find some way to connect without reaching out to others in your reality.”
“Things are swarming my mind, ideas,” I texted. “I need to go. I’ll be back later.” Lila said nothing, and I did not give her time to respond anyway. My vision was slurring itself and I knew it was exhaustion.
break
I came back in the middle of that night, rested from exhaustion I brought myself to in order to sleep. It was great, in a way. When I went to sleep it was because I had to rest, and I could be under for just 4 hours and have enough because it was fully REM. I hated it. Sometimes chamomile tea worked, but sometimes my mind was not lulled by the calming concoction. This was life afraid of sickness out in the world. I was fully aware I needed to find work and get used to how the world was now, but anything beyond my room held dangers of illness spread by others that could rob me of taste and smell, two senses I loved.
I went to see Lila only to arrive in darkness. My heart sank. Oftentimes. I was there to see her, and saw light. This time the darkness was not from a feeding as I had no nipple in my mouth. In fact, I was fully aware I was alone in a dark room with nothing above me. I was laying down somewhere, possibly to sleep, and had to wonder if I interrupted Tarne’s sleep schedule. It was hard to admit that I was this child, though I have reduced myself in darkness and was reborn to Lila. I felt like the worst parasite for this girl. What would I become when she grew up? Would she even grow up?
“Hey,” I sent out a text to the mobile device. Could I free myself eventually, or would I always have to be a part of this child’s life to be in this place? “You up?”
“I was masturbating,” a message arrived in my head with Lila’s voice. I wondered why she responded, rather than stop by.
“I see,” I replied. “Need any help?”
“I already finished,” her voice said, tickling my brain with a relaxed tone. “I think it’s better I don’t come to your side right now so that we don’t disturb Tarne’s sleep. Have you been masturbating?” The sentence rang in my head over and over. It was so basic, but so strange, never something you would hear from someone in my reality. Maybe I wanted to.
“Why?” I asked.
“Oh, no reason,” Lila responded. “Just figured if being a baby girl all this time is cutting down on beast thoughts. I’ve been wondering about that a bit lately. You’ve been so very insatiable before. Or, he has. This thing that happened, it feels like you locked yourself away to keep him from trying to devour me. Am I wrong?”
“I flung myself out into the darkness because I… wanted to give up,” I said. “I wanted to look upon what I made, smile, and depart forever. When I had a moment of clarity, I saw that I was just abandoning you in the dark, and tried desperately to still exist in the darkness for you, even smaller in the encasement of my skin. As I reverted myself, I once again thought I was giving up on being there, but you found me, an embryo floating in that vast darkness.”
“No, stop,” Lila interrupted. “I was asking whether you still think of me in sexual means, but you went off on this philosophical tangent. That’s your problem. Not everything in the world needs to be berated with thoughts. Some things need to be felt. I think this beast problem is you feeling raw and when you cage him from view, he rebels a hundred times stronger. Take it from someone who has freed those thoughts from their barriers, that leads to ruin.”
“But the alternative, the thing you’re talking about, also leads to ruin,” I argued. “You only ended up here because you couldn’t keep those thoughts hidden away, locked down.”
“And now I have a child, and an instructor struggling in reverse,” she said. “In that way, you gave me something I wanted without losing yourself in it.”
“That’s hard to agree with, seeing as I’m locked in the body of a baby girl,” I said. “And even past the realization that I wanted to be female, I am helpless now, fully at your mercy. And you’re someone who wears beast like a cloak, keeping close to your sexuality and passions, easily reaching your rage. Should I be afraid of you?”
“I wish I could just take over your hand and free you from those thoughts,” she said. “I’d lend you my mouth, and release you from the harsh thoughts of stressful fear. I’d hold you, just like I hold my child, but with different intent. And you could come, devour me if you only wanted to.”
“I want to.”
“The next time I seek an escape from my life of caring for Tarne, I will think of you to help me get there.” I wanted to contest her thinking, but felt diminished. “So think of me, too. Ok?” I did not respond for a while, a few minutes spent thinking of the times we interacted like that. I experienced things with her that kept beast excited with just the idea of her. Was I the bad guy in this scenario, keeping beast and Lila apart? Was I the thing wrong with me, in control of two expressive parts of myself that would otherwise lead a fairly chaotic life of open emotion
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