Chapter 15

Draft

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Since then, the door between the bedroom and the living room had never been closed.

Lemuel never mentioned this and never came to close the door, so you also don't mention it or close the door. You're a light sleeper, and if the door isn't shut, the sound of his fluttering on the couch would wake you up. From the bedroom, Lemuel's nightmare sounds like the last few kicks of a hung man. You get up as fast as you can every time, you feel that once you're late the sound would disappear forever.

You push Lemuel awake. Sometimes he'll thank you, sometimes he'll apologize, and sometimes he'll attack you and yell at you to get out. Of the three, the least you want to hear is the apology, because an apology always comes with "please," "no," or "God"— only the word "God" could be said by those with demon blood. Because it's not a Holy Word of true efficacy. It's useless for a person without power to call on the name of God.

When Lemuel apologizes, he'd always grit his teeth. Those words are chewed between his lips and teeth, a small part is squeezed out, most of it is swallowed back. He seems to backtrack once he opens his mouth, turning the apology into a curse. He's not really sorry, his voice shakes and changes tone, full of humiliation, hatred, and fear. He's not apologizing, he's begging for mercy, and he's fighting back with the last of his strength.

In this state, Lemuel's extremely tenacious yet extremely fragile, like the sharp edge of broken china, and you don't know if you can fix him.

You too have dreams, it's as if you were infected. That day you dream about eating candy. You see a group of soldiers surrounding a demon. They fuck it, break its horns, and poke into fucked-up hole whatever they could grab. They tug at the demon's hair, and you see Lemuel's face. "I'm sorry..." he says, "Please, don't..."

With sugar in your mouth your older brother puts his arms around your shoulders. You want to go back, but older brother's hands are like iron tongs. He suddenly becomes your father, you can't move at all. You try to turn your head around, and a few meters away, they break Lemuel's neck.

You don't know if you're in Lemuel's nightmare.

You can exorcise and heal, but driving away nightmares aren't your domain. You're limited in what you can do and you don't know if that's a disservice. Sometimes Lemuel seems to want you to stay, and sometimes he can't stand anyone being around him.

You can't tell the difference between the two, so you have to deal with both in the same way: turn on the lights, push him to wake him up, sit on a chair a few meters away from the sofa for ten minutes, say goodnight to him, and leave. At least Lemuel doesn't insist that you leave after waking up, and he doesn't seem to hate you more than he did before, which shouldn't be too bad.

Anyway, you think you like the door being open. Aside from the nightmares, you'd still be able to hear Lemuel moving in the living room. You hear him wander, pour water, and put the glass back on the table, it make a soft bump. It sounds so good that you even loved the mug for it. It's a plain white mug, a giveaway from a supermarket event that happened¹ a few years ago. You scrub it once a day and fill it with water.

When you got home that day, you found that the TV remote control isn't in its original location.

It's supposed to be next to the living room shelf, with the edge aligned with the seventh floor tile², but now it's been moved two centimeters to the right, and the top is tilted a bit, no longer parallel to the wall. Someone picked it up and almost successfully put it back in place, but you remember exactly where things in your home are in- nothing in this room has been touched ever since you moved here ——You notice that this the first time you've entered the door and truly scanned the living room.

You don't watch the TV, and in means of obtaining information, you find it more efficient to browse the newspapers than to wait for the news. The TV belonged to the previous owner of the house, like most of the furnishings. The old priest who returned to his hometown after retirement handed over the church house to you, including the furniture inside and the flowers and plants in the garden. He left a letter saying that everything was to be at your disposal, you kept everything.

You take care of those flowers and plants left by the previous priest, even though you don't think they're anything special. You keep paying for the TV even though you never watch it. You've inherited the house and job of the former priest, hoping to learn his way of life this way. You lack the understanding for many things, and it's always good to have a template.

You take your eyes off the remote and control turn to look at Lemuel, still lying there facing the back of the chair.

On the second and third day, the remote control remained in that position, two centimeters to the right of the seventh floor tile, at an acute angle of about five degrees in reference to the wall. In the fourth day it's still the same, you try and pick up the remote control, pressing the switch button, but the TV didn't respond.

It was a few minutes after you've just finished eating, Lemuel still has a few mouthfuls left to finish. He looked at you holding the remote control, paused for a moment while chewing, and then lowered his eyes to continue to eat. You press several buttons on the remote control, one by one, and then check the power supply, there's no problem with the power supply. You flip the switch on the TV, and a hymn comes over you, you turn it off immediately.

Only then did you find that the channel adjustment button on the TV had been sunken in, it's obviously no longer usable. The TV's remote control doesn't work, you can't adjust the channel, and the TV just stays on the priest's channel. It's no wonder that Lemuel only tried the TV once and didn't attempt again.

The next day you go to the electronics store, where the staff takes the remote apart and observes its contents. "This battery's rotten!" the repairman yelled, "Father, how long has it been since you last changed the battery? Hopefully not a year or two?"

It's been five years, in fact. You're not familiar with TVs, it never even occurred to you that remote controls needed batteries, and you've just learned today that the batteries have an expiration date. You casually dodge repairman's question. It's not difficult, the other party doesn't really want to know the answer, just habitually talking to the customer. You pay for the new remote and batteries and you take them home with you.

Lemuel stares at you as you put the battery in, you equip it, try to turn on the TV, change the channel, turn the volume up and down, and then turn it off. You put the remote control on the coffee table in front of Lemuel and say, "It's alright now."

Lemuel seemed stunned for a moment, he glanced at you, and just as quickly returned his gaze to the plate. He responds vaguely, poking a potato with a fork.

For two days after that, the TV's remote control wasn't used. On the third day, you come home and see Lemuel sitting on the sofa, holding the remote control with the TV on, watching you. You look at the screen and then at him. He's looking straight at you with a sense of tension, like he's waiting for you to say or do something.

An advertisement plays on the TV, a freckled child recommends a cookie. You ask with uncertainly, "Do you want to eat this?"

Lemuel's expression looks a little subtle, like he's about to pick up an apple, but you throw him a duck that's still alive. "No...?" he says, his voice as hesitant as you, probably trying to figure out what the other meant and what reaction he wanted, just like you. You look at him suspiciously, he looks at you suspiciously, you look at each other for half a minute, Lemuel turns his head back, like he's lost interest in you.

His nervousness in waiting for something to drop fades away now. You don't know what he's waiting for or why he's relaxing, but it turns out that this is a good thing.

The TV started being turned on all day.

Every time you come home, you hear the sound of television. Lemuel's sitting on the sofa, no longer tucked into a blanket. You've seen the channels he chooses, and there doesn't seem to be any preferences. When Lemuel watches TV he often seems to be in a daze or switching channels on whims, and he didn't pay much attention to it but liked having the TV on. He turns the volume down after you say goodnight, and you think that's his "goodnight."

You wake up one night for no apparent reason, stare at the ceiling, and realize that Lemuel hasn't had a nightmare for two days now. You tiptoe out of bed and walk into the living room, the lights are off and the TV is on. The light from the screen flickers on Lemuel without disturbing his sleep in the slightest.

Lemuel's laying on the sofa with his feet dangling from the armrest on the other side, his heels hanging in the air. The TV's playing a late-night commercial, the host's lips moves, and cheerful music mixes with her sales pitch. The volume is too low for it to be heard clearly, it has become an abstract, pure "sound". You don't turn off the TV, Lemuel's well covered in the blanket, he obviously took the initiative to turn on the TV and fall asleep to it, instead of falling asleep halfway through binging.

The light of the TV goes on and off, Lemuel's eyelashes casts shadows on his cheeks, the shadows appearing and disappearing with the light. You glanced hurriedly, not daring to stare for too long, so as not to disturb his sleep.

You go back the same way you came through the inaudible white noise. You feel calm.

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Notes:

1- Added some things

2- I assume it was talking about a floor tile but it honestly just said floor

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PastTimer: You know when you're at the edge of a breakdown but it just wanted to flirt with you?