Momentary Lily

Episode 8

The silver crucifix glinted in the light as it dangled from Raúl Toress' hand. When he was a child, and he watched it swing from his mother's neck as she kneaded dough in the kitchen or plucked the weeds from her rose garden; Raúl had found so much comfort in its almost hypnotic arc and rhythm. That was a long time ago, though. It had been over a decade since he'd even seen the thing, and the thought of finding much comfort in any of the Church's icons and sigils these days was enough to make him laugh bitterly out loud. It was a terrible thing to laugh at, he knew, considering how much pain his mother had been in during her final days. He would probably never forget the sight of her shaking, jaundiced hands clumsily unhooking the chain of the crucifix from her neck and folding it into his palms. It was one hell of a parting gift from the woman who he hadn't so much as sent a postcard to in the twenty years that followed her kicking him out onto the streets for his sinful “lifestyle.”

That is why, evil as it might be, Raúl let himself laugh a little longer. It was better that he let these feelings out here, in the privacy of his cramped office in the basement of the Literature Building. He had to be so careful with how he expressed himself about all of this stuff with his mother back at home. Eddie was always the most sensitive out of the two of them, especially when it came to grief; both of Eddie's parents died in a car accident a few years before he and Raúl first met back in college, and the depths of Eddie's mourning process were what inspired him to pursue a degree in psychology while Raúl kept slaving over his essays and his documentaries. Having a therapist for a husband had its benefits, to be sure — the steady paycheck sure as hell didn't hurt, for one — but, the last time Raúl had cajoled been shared his sharpest, deepest feelings about his parents, it had left Eddie a sobbing mess for nearly an hour. Raúl loved his husband so much that it sometimes made him dizzy just to think about a life without Eddie, but he also knew that the first secret to a successful marriage was learning which feelings you simply never let out. For everyone's sake.

So. Back and forth, swung the little silver cross. It was getting late, Raúl knew, and sooner or later he would have to get home and explain why he was late for dinner for the third night in a row. But not yet. Aside from the nearly imperceptible whoosh of the chain, the buzz of Raúl's aging computer monitor was the only sound to fill the office's silence. The document file that had opened three hours earlier was still sitting there on his desktop, open and blank, and the blinking cursor seemed to be mocking him.

There was a knock at the door. Raúl sat up sharply, startled, and shoved the crucifix back into his desk drawer before making his way to the door. The janitors had come and gone hours ago, and it was long past the end of office hours. Raúl's breath caught in his chest as he grabbed the old brass knob and turned it. He was certain that it would be Eddie standing there on the other side, shivering and wet with melted snow, demanding (and deserving) answers that Raúl was simply not yet ready to give.

“Honey, I know it's late, and I'm so sorry…”

There was a young woman standing in his doorway. She was shivering and covered in frost, yes, but the cold was clearly the least of her problems. The deep bags under her eyes had practically gone violet, and she flinched violently when Raúl opened the door. Then, instead of introducing herself and explaining what she was doing down here at such an hour, the girl just stood there for a minute and stared, and not at him. Raúl followed the line of her sight straight back into his empty office, which meant that the girl either had an extreme dislike of film discourse textbooks, or that she was deeply unwell.

“I'm sorry, miss?” Raúl said. “I think you might be lost. If you're looking for someone in the Literature Department, office hours ended several hours ago. Students shouldn't even be able to get down here without a key.”

Raúl's words seemed to startle the girl awake, enough at least to get her to finally acknowledge the man whose office she was entreating upon at nearly nine o'clock. “The door upstairs was unlocked, actually,” she said, “and it's you that I came here to see, Professor Torres. I know it's late, but it's…” The girl trailed off as her gaze wandered away from his and back to the corner of his office. Her concentration was so intense that Raúl turned back again, half-sure that he would see something standing there in between his desk and his bookshelves. There was, of course, nothing there.

“Have we met before?” Raúl asked, cautiously turning back to this seemingly delusional stranger. “My classes are all rather small, and I'm afraid I just can't place you from anywhere.” The girl snapped back to attention again, her cheeks flushing red, and she shook her head emphatically.

“No, sir” she said, “We've never met. I'm just a freshman, actually, so I wasn't able to sign up for any of your seminars…though, I've been wanting to since I first applied to Emerson!”

“Okay, then…well!” Raúl was sure that this girl needed help, but it wasn't the kind he was in any way prepared or qualified to give. “I'm sure there will be openings once you're an upperclassman! It really is very late, though, so I'm afraid I'll have to see you out. Maybe sometime in the future, when we're open, you can schedule an appointment and we can talk about the future classes that will—”

As Raúl moved to finally flee from this horribly awkward conversation, though, the girl stood her ground. “Please,” she said. Her eyes were glistening wet. “I know this is strange, and that I must seem like a total basket-case. I wish I was crazy. That would make it so much easier. I've been trying to figure out a way out of this nightmare for weeks, though, and it's only getting worse. I think…I think you're the only one here that can help me.”

“Sweetie, I'm a literature professor, not a psychiatrist! It's clear that you're going through…something terrible, but you need to speak to someone who can offer you something more useful than a lecture on film theory with outdated reference points, okay? Look, my husband is a psychologist, and I am sure that he could help me find some recommendations for local doctors that can get you the help you need. That's the best I can do, okay? Now, please, if you would excuse me…”

The girl did not move. Rather, she planted her feet more firmly than ever.

“Actually, Professor Torres,” she said. “I think a lecture on film theory from you might literally save my life.” At this, Raúl had to pause. It wasn't everyday that a liberal arts professor was told that. He knew that humoring this sick girl was a terrible, stupid idea, but he also knew that the more time he spent entertaining this girl's delusions, the longer he could delay his inevitable fight with Eddie back home. Also, he had to admit, the girl's convictions were nothing if not persuasive. He truly believed that she believed she was in danger, and that he could somehow save her from whatever threat she was constantly scanning the shadows of his office for.

Besides, he kept a can of pepper-spray and a claw hammer in the bottom drawer of his desk, in case of emergencies. Raúl sighed, and eased his office door open to beckon her inside.

“What did you say your name was, again?”

* * *

“Is it possible for a television show to be…possessed?” Sarah Downing asked. She had spent the last several minutes explaining the basics of her story, though she was noticeably vague about the specifics. Weeks ago, a package had arrived at her doorstep with some episodes from a TV show that Sarah would neither name nor describe in detail, and it only took watching a couple of episodes for her roommate to have some sort of psychotic break. Ever since then, Sarah had been plagued by visions of characters from this show, in addition to visits from strange individuals who insisted on some larger scheme lurking just beyond Sarah's understanding.

It was a textbook descent into paranoid, conspiratorial delusion, in other words (at least, that is what Raúl imagined Eddie might say about all of this). Granted, he no longer suspected that this girl was dangerous, at least not in any sense beyond the harm she was inflicting upon herself with these anxiety responses. He also now understood why she might be convinced to seek him out, of all people: As she finished telling her story, Sarah reached into her backpack and pulled out a faded old copy of a book with Raúl Torres' name printed in bold, Gothic font on the cover. The title read, Media Maleficarum: Film as Black Magic in Our Modern Age.

“When I found this,” Sarah explained, “I knew I had to come find you. I haven't had time to read it all yet, but I figured that, since you were here in Boston…” She looked up at him with those terrified, exhausted eyes of hers. Raúl picked up the book, surprised at the pang of nostalgia that came from seeing such a well-read and timeworn copy. He had a hardcover edition of it sitting on the top shelf of his own bookcase not ten feet behind him, but he'd never so much as bothered to flip past the copyright page.

“Wow,” Raúl said. “I haven't seen another copy of this thing in…Jesus, maybe a decade. This was the first book I ever published, you know? I was twenty-three years old…” Sarah leaned in closer as Raúl leafed through the yellowed pages.

“In the first chapter,” she said, “You talk about how art interacts with the collective unconscious. How it usually instills fond memories, and cultural touchstones, and the seeds for future art and allusion, and all of that. And how there's another side, too. How it can-can infect us, like some kind of curse.”

“Hm. I suppose I've always had a flair for the dramatic,” Raúl mused.

“I think that's what has been happening to me!” Sarah nearly yelled this, clearly desperate to have someone validate all of these things she had been experiencing. “Whatever my d-...whatever was in that package, it cursed me, somehow! God, I spent my entire childhood having to listen to stories about haunted hotels and freaking poltergeists, and I have to finally admit that he was right all along because of some goddamned evil DVD.” She was smiling now, though, and Raúl hated that this poor girl had given herself this false inkling of hope just because of his silly graduate thesis.

“Listen, Sarah, what you have to understand is that the whole “Ritual” thing is a metaphor. I was a kid who had to come up with something interesting to write about so I could earn my degree, and I figured that it would be more impressive if I slathered all of my obnoxious opinions about critical theory and cultural dissemination in a bunch of the Satanic imagery that scared me so badly when I was tiny little Catholic boy.”

Sarah was clearly deflated to hear Raúl tell her this.

“What?” she said. “No…no, I saw, here, in the book! You talk about all of these spells and rituals that people use in black magic rituals! How they connect to the ways that these works of art can curse people en masse!”

“What can I tell you, Sarah? I'm a pretentious academic with too much time on his hands. Overthinking and over-researching for the sake of an abstract, extended framing device is basically what keeps any of us from hanging ourselves in the middle of crunching out these overlong books that are only ever read by other bored, desperate academics.”

“So you…what?” Sarah asked. “Just made all of this up? It's all bullshit?” At that, Raul had to laugh, and he leaned back in his chair while he flipped through all of the diagrams and color plates he had been so damned proud of back in the day.

“Oh no,” he said, “I spent far too much time making sure all of the cult stuff was as accurate as humanly possible. It would have been cheating to just make it all up for the sake of a bit. I had to work with some very interesting characters to find some of this material, and to double-check that I wasn't just publishing nonsense. I must have thought I was being so “punk rock” for it, too, my God…”

“That means that it could all still be real, then! If these kinds of curses work on people when they're being cast through mediums and incantations, then why shouldn't it work through something like a show? That's the only way to explain any of this…” Raúl, not wanting to give this Sarah any ideas that might legitimately make things worse, close the book and leaned forward.

“Sarah, all you've told me so far is that your roommate had a terrible episode that has put you under an incredible amount of stress, and that you've been dealing with that stress by avoiding sleep and drinking too much caffeine so you can stay up all night hunting for ghosts in the pages of a mediocre professor's school project. There's nothing supernatural about any of this. We live in the real world, and in the real world people don't get haunted by characters from a TV show.”

Sarah slammed her fists onto Raúl's desk with surprising force. “I'm not the only one, dammit!” The minute she said this, though, she shrank back, her eyes darting away from Raúl, as if she was revealing something that was meant to stay secret.

“What are you talking about, Sarah?” Raúl asked. “What aren't you telling me?” Sarah said nothing, at first. When Raúl pressed her again, she reluctantly pulled a pile of crumpled papers out of her bag.

“If I tell you everything,” Sarah whispered. “You have to promise me you won't watch it.”

“What do you mean, the show? Why would I do that?”

“Promise me!” Sarah clutched the papers from her bag so tightly that her knuckles had gone white. Raúl, against all of his better judgement, reached his hand out for them slowly.

“Okay,” he said, “I promise.” Sarah handed them over. They were all printouts of different news articles; some of them came from the bigger outlets, and some were clearly from more local institutions, judging by the cheap looking design of the webpages. There were maybe a dozen different headlines from as many sources, though all of them amounted to the same thing. “FAMILY OF FOUR SHOCKED BY SON'S VIOLENT ATTACK!” read one of them; underneath, in smaller print, was, “IS CHILD'S ADDICTION TO JAPANESE CARTOONS TO BLAME?” A different headline read, “LOCAL PROM QUEEN HOSPITALIZED AFTER ATTEMPTED ARSON OF HER SCHOOL'S POPULAR ANIME CLUB.” One after the other, the same pattern of violence persisted, though it was the last page that stuck out the most. It came from a website that Raúl was actually familiar with, though it was the first time he'd ever read something of theirs that wasn't a review or coverage for a convention. The page, which was titled “WIFE OF JAMES BECKETT SEEKS ANSWERS AFTER HIS DISAPPEARANCE” covered the vanishing of one of the website's own writers, which apparently had taken place months ago. There was one line in particular that Sarah had circled over and over in dark red ink, though: “...Mrs. Beckett, who has been demanding answers from industry insiders and other professionals, claims that her husband's erratic and out-of-character behavior began immediately after being assigned to cover the season's new GoHands' production, Momentary Lily...”

“It's been happening all over the world, I think.” Sarah was rocking back and forth in the small chair across from Raúl. “Every week, there's a new episode, and every week someone else is…god, I think I'm probably next...” Raúl didn't know what to do. The dates on all of the articles seemed to support this idea that there was some kind of mass hysteria going on, but that didn't really mean anything, did it? Confirmation bias was the first pitfall any researcher was taught to avoid, and more importantly, evil cartoons that haunt people until they go insane did not exist.

Why, then, did Raúl not simply see this girl out and finally go home? Why, then, did the hairs on his neck start to stand up, now, whenever her eyes fell back on to whatever it is she kept seeing in the dark behind him?

“What is this Momentary Lily?” Raúl asked. Sarah stared at him warily, as if certain that he somehow intended to use this knowledge against her, but she also just looked relieved that someone was finally willing to listen to her. She spoke slowly and haltingly, being incredibly meticulous with each and every syllable, clearly intending to reveal no more than she absolutely had to. She spoke of the show's contrived and half-baked premise, which continued to meagerly riff on tired “dark magical girl” tropes even two months into its run. She spoke of how Studio GoHands was simply incapable of producing a cartoon that looked decent in any traditional and reasonable sense; of how even this latest eighth episode, which was almost certainly the closest the show had come to being a “normal” anime, was merely drab and boring to look at until the actively hideous action scene arrived at the end, rather than being actively hideous for twenty-three-minutes straight.

Sarah went on to explain that the dark secret she had realized after obsessively pouring over every episode of the show was that it didn't actually matter if the show looked halfway functional at any given moment, either, because its writing was too sloppy and amateurish to be good with even the most splendid of production values. The girl nearly burst into sobbing when she detailed how the uncanny body-horror of the recent swimsuit episode was matched only by the narrative horror that came from understanding that the cheap plot developments and threadbare worldbuilding were being played completely straight, week after week, and demanding to be taken seriously.

“Last week, the girls just…randomly found a bunch of survivors, out of nowhere, and one of them even reunited with her long lost family like they had just been on a trip to the beach! This week, the show is acting like this stupid mystery about Renge's origins means anything, and there's this whole deal they make about finding Renge's little sister and revealing that Renge, like, died already, or something! Nobody even gives a shit, though! All of her friends just hug it out and talk about the power of friendship like they didn't all just get major evidence that their friend is this bizarre, undead anomaly in a world where Febreeze-bottle looking monsters have killed all of humanity! I don't understand! It wants to be a serious, mystery-filled action cartoon, and a cooking show, and some random slice-of-life thing where you get to perv on teenage girls when they pop their tits out at the bathhouse, and, like, you can't have all three! Right? Right!?” Sarah was in utter shambles by now, heaving wet, shuddering sobs into her backpack. Raúl surprised himself by reaching out to take Sarah into his arms and hold her as she wept.

“It's like these assholes watched School-Live! and thought that they could apply that formula to whatever ridiculous nonsense they want. It doesn't matter that they don't have talented enough writers to make the story work, or the good sense to keep their hideous aesthetic from ruining their show's tone…”

“School-Live!” Sarah asked. She pulled back from him, sniffling in curiosity instead of sobbing uncontrollably. “What the hell is that? Do you…do you know about anime, Professor Torres?

Raúl laughed again, except with none of the bitter nostalgia that he'd held in in his voice before.

“Sarah, I'm a middle-aged Latino millennial. I have two different cousins who have tattoos of Son Goku on their biceps, right below portraits of the Virgin Mary. Hell, the first guy I ever got serious with? I met him at DragonCon in 2008. He was cosplaying Ichigo, and he had the nerve to tell me that my ass was too big to make a convincing Edward Elric.”

It was Sarah's turn to laugh, now, and it was in that moment, seeing her genuinely smile for what must have been the first time in weeks, that Raúl decided that he had to help her in whatever way he could.

“I don't know who any of those guys are,” she said, giggling even as she wiped snot and tears from the corners of her mouth. “I never really watched a lot of anime or anything. I don't know if I ever will again, to be honest…”

The two of them sat there for a while, in silence. Then, still smirking, Sarah asked, “What ever happened to the guy who said you have a fat ass?”

“He said I had a thick ass, thank you very much,” Raúl replied. “And, right now, he's probably sitting at our dinner table, staring at my empty seat, and wondering why in the hell he ever let himself marry me.”

“I'm sorry,” Sarah said. “I should go. I'm sorry I even told you about any of this. I can figure something out on my own.” Sarah stood quickly to leave, but Raúl grabbed her wrist and stood to meet her.

“Wait,” he said. “I don't…I'm not sure how much I can help you. But I might be able to point you in the right direction. Like I said, I had to talk to some strange folks when I did the research for that book, and there's a man I know who might be able to explain what is happening to you.” Sarah nearly broke down in tears again; Raúl was glad when she just embraced him, instead.

“Oh, God,” she whispered, “Thank you. Just tell me where to find this guy, and I can be out of your hair for good.” Raúl pulled back and gently guided Sarah to the door.

“Oh, no,” he said. “I'm going to take you to him. You're in no condition to be traveling anywhere by yourself, and I don't want you having to navigate his, er, eccentricities without me there. I need a day to get some things situated at home, but if you meet me here in the morning on Sunday, I'll take the train with you to meet him, okay?”

“Okay…” Sarah said. “But what am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

“Sleep,” Raúl said, patting Sarah on the shoulder. “I know that must seem like an impossibility, right now, but you're going to collapse before too long if you don't rest. Just one day, and then I will help you find a way to fix this thing.” Sarah nodded, still a bit unsure, and gave Raúl one last smile and a firm nod to demonstrate her resolve.

“Alright, Professor Torres. I'll try. I'm sorry, again, for involving you in all of this.” As she turned to make her way back up to the surface and the cold, Sarah turned back once more. “Remember,” she said. “You promised me. Don't you dare watch Momentary Lily.”

“I won't,” Raúl said, “Though I do want you to answer me one thing, before you go: What is it that you've been so scared of, here in my office?” Sarah's eyes went wide at this, and Raúl could see her momentarily cast another look back into the shadows behind him, though only for a second. “It's nothing, Professor,” Sarah lied. “I'm just tired, like you said.”

“Right,” Raúl said. “Goodnight, then, Sarah. I'll see you on Sunday morning.” Sarah bowed a silent goodnight in return and shut the office door.

* * *

Alone, again. Raúl paced back and forth for a while, trying to convince himself that suddenly deciding to go hunting after curses and evil cartoons with a complete stranger wasn't the sign of an oncoming nervous breakdown. The one thing that was keeping him from calling off the whole thing entirely was the look of utter relief and joy that had painted Sarah Downing's face once she'd realized someone was finally listening to her. He knew what it was like to feel completely alone in the world, and Raúl might not ever be able to forgive himself if he'd let her slip away when there was even the tiniest chance he could do something about it.

Also, if he was being entirely honest, Sarah Downing was not a complete stranger. Hearing her name had shocked him enough to let her through his door, because Raúl had met Sarah before, though she'd never have remembered him. He'd been honest with the girl when he explained his less than earnest motivations for filling that old book of his with all of the occult analogies, but he avoided mentioning the specifics of who he had sought out for some of his research, and some of the things he'd encountered back then. Over the years, it had been easy enough to brush those faded memories as the exaggerated misperceptions of a much younger man, but hearing Sarah's family name brought those memories flooding back to him.

Just what in the hell had Thomas Downing gotten his daughter wrapped up in?

Just then, Raúl noticed that the glow of his computer monitor had gone from the stark white of the word processor to a strange, luminescent orange. He went back around to the other side of his desk to find that his browser had opened of its own accord, and that it had brought him to the page of a video streaming website he had not visited in quite some time. The layout was certainly different than he remembered it, but no self-respecting enthusiast his age could forget that familiar round logo. Below it, he could see those two words, standing out like gnarled branches floating up from the brackish depths of some long-forgotten lake.

M O M E N T A R Y L I L Y

There was the sharp pang of an ice-cold chill on the back of Raúl's neck. From just out of the corner of his eye, he could see the bright-blond tendrils of hair falling against pair of glowing green eyes. The thing that was not a girl reached out with gnarled, deformed fingers from the shadows, its mouth split wide in a cruel Cheshire grin, gibbering the same nonsense words over and over.

Before it could grab hold of Raúl, he stumbled backwards onto the floor, raising his hands to shield himself from whatever this evil was. His flailing arm collided with his computer monitor, sending it to the floor and cracking its glass into dozens of shards. He clamped his eyes shut for one second, and then another. He counted from one to five, waiting for something to happen. But there was nothing.

He saw it when he opened his eyes. Instinctively, Raúl must have grabbed his mother's crucifix from the desk when he fell. He gripped it tight in his upraised fist; the little cross swung from side to side in that rhythmic, almost hypnotic arc that he knew so well. Back and forth. Back and forth. There was nothing left in the darkness, but Raúl was becoming quite aware of how little it mattered what he could see. “Mãe de deus…” he whispered, pressing the cross against his lips.

For the first time in twenty years, Raúl Torres began to pray.

Rating:

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Momentary Lily is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Thursdays.

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