Momentary Lily

Episode 14

It is dawn. I am sitting on top of a pile of rubble that I am fairly sure used to constitute the Boston Public Library, but it's been long enough that I cannot know for sure, nor do I particularly care. One crumbling facade is the same as any other around these parts. I sit on my throne of rebar and cracked stonework as the rays of the rising sun begin to peek through the shattered skyline of the city. It is a rather brilliant splash of vibrant color on the otherwise gray and dead canvas of the world. This does not make me feel any particular emotion, one way or the other. It is just another rising sun in and endless parade of them. Soon enough, it will be night once more. After that, the sun will come up again. On and on it goes.

The girls are having fun, at least. They've gathered in the streets below the old ruin, playing with their newest “friend” in a game that must have lasted six or seven hours, by now. I might have felt a little sorry for the poor bastard back when all of this first began, but I've long since come to realize that the fellow getting turned inside out and stretched apart like freshly kneaded pizza dough is actually one of the lucky ones. He found his way out. The scraps that are currently being pulled into strips and woven into ghouslish flesh-knots are just that - scraps of a body. Remnants of a person that is, blessedly, free from this neverending nightmare of ours.

Still, I doubt he was terribly happy to be turned into the Hina-Thing and the Erika-Thing's latest culinary misadventure. Dying is never quick, nor is it ever painless. Not even when it's the kind of instantaneous obliteration that people try to rationalize as being “preferable” to a slow, agonizing end. In his final moments, the poor bastard was probably hearing all of those gurgling “Kappou!” noises for what felt like hours. Death has a way of getting the mind to bend and stretch time into all sorts of inconceivable configurations, and the shock of it only makes you more aware of what is happening, even as the rest of the body shuts down forever.

Trust me. I'm speaking from experience, here.

The (relative) silence of my perch in the library ruins is broken by the sound of the intruder kicking over a pile of rocks and burnt-up books. I do not startle or turn to meet her. This is the visit I've been expecting all morning. All I do as she approaches is wave my hand in a gesture meant to invite her to take a seat next to me, though I know she won't take it. “Speak of the devil!” I say, keeping my eyes fixed on the macabre display below. “I was just thinking about how awful it was, when you killed me the other day. It never does stop hurting. Have I ever told you that before?” Sarah does not move, and she doesn't speak for a while, either. I know from experience that she has her pistol aimed squarely at the back of my head. She knows from experience that it wouldn't amount to very much at all if she fired the thing, aside from a momentary jolt of catharsis, and bullets are becoming more scarce with every passing day. It's an old ritual of ours, though, and with any old ritual it is important to get all of the steps right. So, Sarah goes through the motions of asserting her strength, and I go through the motions of letting her believe that it means something in this place.

“Yes, James, you have told me that,” Sarah eventually mutters. “Many times, in fact. Just like how I've asked you so many times whether or not you think that will keep me from putting you down when you're coming after my people.” I smile at this little twist on our typical exchange, which is when I finally turn to Sarah properly.

“Well, then,” I say. “What brings you to my neck of the woods on such a fine morning as this?” My old friend rolls her eyes and holsters her gun before flipping around her raggedy old backpack and digging up a thick envelope from inside of it.

“You know why I'm here, James,” she says, tossing the envelope at my feet. On the front of it, written in that terribly familiar handwriting that I know so well, is the same message that I get delivered to me every few months: I am waiting for you, still. I stand slowly, with my hands raised in mocking submission, so I can go to the package and retrieve it. Sarah doesn't show any sign of fear as I approach, which I respect. She's probably one of the only humans left alive that could stand to be this close to me for this long. Even when I find the rare survivor that doesn't recognize me as one of the Heralds of the Lillies, they can almost always tell that I am no longer of their kind within seconds of speaking to me, and then they run for their lives. This is smart of them. As for the people that seek me out because they do know who I am…well, let's just say that their motivations are not usually related to sticking around for a good, long chat.

Unless you count the endless, meaningless repetition of the “Kappou!”-shrieks as riveting conversation, I guess. Clearly, in the world of long ago, there were plenty of people working at Studio GoHands who figured that people would be happy to sit around and listen to hideous cartoon simulacra yell that godforsaken word for hours and hours on end. There must be someone out there for whom this ridiculous apocalypse is truly heaven on Earth.

“Your wife told me to send you her love,” Sarah says, “And that she hopes that you read her story, this time.” Despite everything that has happened — despite everything I have become — I cannot help but stroke the envelope with a bit of that old, wistful nostalgia.

“You know perfectly well that I can't do that,” I say, though I tuck the package carefully into my back pocket, so that it can safely join its dozens of unopened siblings in the secret place where I keep my memories. “As always, though, I appreciate your dedication to this routine of ours. Lord knows that most people would have given it up a long, long time ago.”

Sarah blows a strand of graying reddish hair from her face with indifference and then turns to take her leave, which is my cue to return to my seat so I can continue observing the girls and their latest culinary demonstration. The Renge-Thing has shown up, finally, and she is gesticulating proudly in our direction as she tosses the remaining bits of their new friend into her “hot pot” (i.e. the metal dumpster burning with open flame that the girls demand be kept lit at all times). For additional spice, two pairs of Sazana-Things and Ayame-Things begin to grate blocks of moldy concrete into the pot with their giant, rusting blades. Sarah stops short of leaving, and then she turns back to me to say something else.

Now, this is unusual. A change in the ritual pattern. I do not like it. I turn back to Sarah with a decidedly less friendly composure.

“What did you say?”

“I know that you're just as fed up with this as we all are,” she says. “I can see it in your eyes. I can hear it, too, in that vacant, hollow laugh that you spit out when you're trying to intimidate us. You're so tired, now. Why don't you just stop, once and for all? I mean, Jesus, you already won!” Sarah gestures furiously out to the wasteland that we've called home for all of these years, now. “The world ended. Those things have gotten to eat their fill a hundred times over. If you actually wanted to kill us all, I'm sure you could have done it by now. So, if you're going to let us survive and continue on, what the hell is the point of keeping up this stupid fucking game?”

I do not respond immediately. Usually, I have some pithy remark or another ready to go in response to her passionate entreaties, though that is honestly because I think I have forgotten how to stop playing the role of the villain. Right now, though, she is asking a question that I don't have an easy answer to. So, to my surprise, I fall back on those painfully predictable human defense mechanisms that came so easy to me, once upon a time: I answer her question with a question of my own.

“The new girl,” I say, “She can dream, now, yes? Real dreams, I mean, plucked from the untainted corners of The Dreaming?”

“Yes,” Sarah says, keeping her steel eyes trained on mine. “They all can, now, and they're getting their dreams back faster every day. They use them to write their stories, and paint their pictures, and make all of the other experiences that are going to cancel the Lillies out for good, someday.” I chuckle bitterly at her shocking display of earnest naivety.

“But not you, right? You still revel with us in the nightmares, every night, don't you?” Sarah doesn't say anything, which is the only answer I need. “It's shown you every episode by now a thousand times over, I'm sure, just like it's shown me. The swimsuit episode. The pointless finale. The brazenly ugly premiere that ushered in this world in the first place. Do you know them all by heart?”

Sarah's gaze remains cold and unblinking, but I can see the water well up in her eyes. “You know damn well that I do,” she says.

“And what episode have you been blessed with, these past few months? Is it the same one that I've had the privilege to pour through?”

“...it's the OVA. The one where Renge and Nerine wander around the empty city for half the episode doing nothing of importance, while the Lillies and their originals just ramble about their stupid fucking cooking videos until the credits roll.”

“Ha!” I can't help this outburst of laughter. I clap my hands and practically do a little jig on the spot when I hear this. “It is the same one! And the very episode that convinced me to go down this dark path, all those years ago. How delightful...

Sarah furrowed her brow in confusion. “What, you mean that self-indulgent waste of time is what convinced you to go all Cthulu on mankind? It wasn't the fanservice swimsuit episode, or the crappy finale, or even that one episode where Erika got brutally murdered while her giant tits flopped around all over the screen like a couple of trashbags filled with feral raccoons? Why?” I am too busy cackling to properly answer her, though I am able to wipe a tear from my eyes and regain my composure for at least a moment when she pulls her pistol back out and plants the muzzle on my forehead.

“That's exactly it!” I said between puffs of strained breath. “The moment that truly broke me was when I realized Momentary Lily was going to waste all of the time and money it takes to produce a full half-hour of animation on an episode that is somehow even less impactful that its completely self-defeating ending. Right then, it didn't even matter if such a wet fart of an epilogue was the result of pitiful incompetence or malicious indifference to human suffering. What mattered was that we were being confronted with some creature from beyond our mortal reckoning that had chosen the most terribly perfect mask to wear for its conquest of this world. It came to us dressed in the tattered skin of the anime industry's most vapid patron saintesses of cynical, capitalistic greed. It came to rend our imaginations in twain with a vision of corporate slop so completely devoid of meaning that it deadens the human soul just to experience one episode. Handshakers may have been uglier. W'z may have been more pathetic, but I cannot think of an anime as spiteful towards its audience as Momentary Lily, and in that respect, Episode 14 might just be its crowning achievement!”

By now, I have collapsed to the ground again in a fit of manic giggling. All Sarah can do is look down on me in disgust. I cannot stop. I am laughing so hard that it rattles my bones and burns my lungs. My letter falls out of my pocket and into the dust, and even when I scramble to pick it up and clean it off, I cannot stop the laughing. In between my choking breaths, I tell her to go ahead and do it, to pull the trigger and send me back into oblivion for a while until I stitch myself back together and we do this dance all over again.

“No,” Sarah says, holstering her gun again. “I don't think I'm going to give you the satisfaction this time. If I see your face anywhere near the school, though, you know what's coming for you.” Before she leaves at last, she stops one final time. “Her name is Lily. Did you know that? She has the most beautiful dreams, and she's developing quite the way with words. Your wife has been helping her with that part, actually. I think she might be the one. I think she's going to write the story that breaks you and my father down and shuts you up forever. Just you wait, James.” I do not have time to gather myself and come up with a response before she is gone.

Eventually, I manage to stand and dust myself off, and I carefully tuck the envelope back into my pocket. I look back at the girls below, and they have of course been happily acting out their cooking show all the while, oblivious to anything else in the world. I almost envy them.

“Just wait and see.” That is what Sarah said. I realize that those words have made my blood run hot in my veins for the first time in decades. Maybe it's because the years are starting to take their toll on me, or perhaps I really would be happy to swap this tired old story out for something new, even if I can never, ever admit it. The sun has fully risen in the sky, now, and it blazes its bright heat down onto the unforgiving wastelands like it always does. Soon, it will set and bring about the bitter cold of the night. Soon, I will be swept up in my own form of sleep, again, because The Dreaming will always demand its due, even from creatures such as us. Until then, though…

Until then, I will wait. And I will see.

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James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on BlueSky, his blog, and his podcast.