Momentary Lily ‒ Episode 5

There was a hand sticking out of the dirt in Thomas Downing’s backyard. It was impossible to tell for certain, but Thomas was fairly sure that the slim, dainty palm was attached to the body of a young girl. The nails were perfectly manicured, for one, and bizarrely clean given the circumstances. The hand was pointed skyward, and its fingers were curled in such a gentle and inviting way. You could just make out a sleeve of soft pink fabric just below the hand’s wrist, waiting to be uncovered. There were tufts of chestnut colored hair poking out of the dirt just behind the hand, and he thought he could make out a scrap of pink ribbon in there as well. Thomas could so easily imagine reaching down, grasping the hand, and pulling the rest of the body upward and out of the earth with nothing more than a simple tug.

He did not do this, of course, because the hand was obviously the phantom delusion of his tired and agitated mind. There was no fragile young body buried beneath the oak tree in Thomas Downing’s backyard. That would be utterly insane, and despite what his colleagues would most surely attest to if ever given the chance, Thomas was not insane. He simply understood that there was so much more living beyond the veil of the natural world than most men would ever dare imagine.

A ringing sound came from inside of the house. It came from the old landline that Thomas had stubbornly insisted they keep hanging on the wall in the kitchen. Years ago, after his daughter Sarah came home from a sleepless sleepover with her brain filled with images from old blood-n’-guts slashers, she started affectionately calling the old thing “Billy.” Sometimes, in the dead of night, she would try to trick her father by calling the old landline from her closet upstairs and croaking, “My name is Billy, and don’t tell them what we diiiiiiiiiiiiiid!” Thomas wasn’t sure if he ever managed to convince Sarah that she actually scared him, but they would still laugh and laugh together, all the same.

The thought of his house being filled with the warm sounds of his daughter’s laughter caused such a painful pang of nostalgia to run down Thomas’ spine that he almost forgot about the hand sticking out of the dirt. He glanced back down, against his better judgment. The hand was still there, still curled upward towards the graying winter sky. It was a persistent delusion, to be sure.

Billy’s ringing came floating out from the house again, and Thomas finally managed to turn away from the hand and make his way back inside. He knew he didn’t really have much reason to answer the phone these days. If the call wasn’t from another damned robot trying to trick him into giving up his bank account information, then it was likely his wife’s lawyer hounding him about paperwork that Thomas had no intention of signing. Then again, there was always the chance that it was Sarah. Things had not ended well between them when he dropped her off at the airport after Christmas, but maybe now she missed her old man enough to at least check in from Boston and let him know that she was still alive. The thought of a belated – if begrudging – “Happy New Year, Daddy!” was enough to get Thomas running, and he was nearly out of breath by the time he managed to bolt through his door and snag Billy’s receiver off the hook mid-ring.

“Hello!” he said, but there was nothing but silence on the other end. Another fucking robot, and he should have known better than to get this excited over it. Desperate, he clung to the hope that it was just Sarah being stubborn on the other end of the line. Then, just as he was about to hang up for good, a voice came through.

“K…pp…o…!” it said. It was a girl’s voice, though even through the crackling static, Thomas knew it couldn’t be Sarah.

“I-I’m sorry, what?” Thomas stammered. “Who is this?” More garbled static and noise, and then:

“Ka….pp…o…! Kappou!” Thomas didn’t understand. At least, that’s what he told himself as he slammed Billy’s receiver back into its cradle in frustration. He stood there for another minute, grumbling to himself about all of these damned robots, thinking that he might just pick the phone back up again to give the telephone company a real piece of his mind for even allowing things to get this bad. Suddenly, though, he heard it again: “Kappou! Kappou!”. Only, it wasn’t coming from the phone anymore. It was coming from inside the house.

Thomas turned to see his laptop sitting there on his kitchen island. It was still unlocked, somehow, and open to the browser page he had left it on. The streaming website’s bright orange banner lit the kitchen like some kind of cheap Halloween prop. The video player was paused on an image that Thomas couldn’t quite make out, couldn’t comprehend even though he was staring right at it. For a second Thomas wasn’t sure how it had even gotten there from his upstairs office, but then foggy memories from earlier that morning started to come back to him, from before he found himself standing outside and staring at that hand that wasn’t there. He had been upstairs, yes, sitting at his desk and working on his manuscript. Then, he had gone online to look up a video for his research…an episode of something…

[Kappou! Kappou!]

That’s right. Yes. It was all coming back to him now.

“Momentary Lily…” Thomas spoke the name of the series out loud in a hoarse whisper, and his heart nearly gave out when Billy began ringing again right in his ear, as if on cue. Thomas grasped for Billy’s receiver without ever taking his eyes off of his computer screen, barely able to croak out a dazed “I told you before to take me off of your damned lists…” before the man on the other end cut him off.

“You watched it, didn’t you?” he said. Thomas was still reeling on his feet a little, and the man had to repeat the question before Thomas could muster up the presence of mind to reply.

“What are you talking about?” Thomas said. “You have the wrong number!” A cruel laugh choked out from the phone’s old speaker.

“Come on, professor. Don’t act like you’ve suddenly forgotten who I am. Your favorite student deserves a little better than that, doesn’t he?”

“I don’t…” Thomas began, but then it dawned on him. “Wait, no, it can’t…James?”

Another venomous laugh on the other end was all of the confirmation that Thomas needed. It was the damnedest thing, though: At first, Thomas really had forgotten all about his one-time pupil. Even now, Thomas found it unreasonably difficult to keep a grasp on the details of this entire conversation. The time, the place, the history that he shared with the caller on the other end. It was all slipping away like so much sand through a sieve, and the glow of the screen was so strong.

“You probably didn’t expect me to call you again after our last conversation,” James said. “It’s okay, though. Don’t worry. I’m not blaming you for anything. You finally watched it yourself, after all.”

“How did you get this number?” Even for a student like James Beckett, Thomas would have never given out this number. It was for family only, which was why Thomas had been so stubborn about keeping it connected to begin with.”

“Why did you watch it, professor?” James asked, ignoring Thomas completely. “After all of that talk about needing chumps like me to suffer through the latest GoHands project so that family men like you wouldn’t have to suffer…why did you watch Momentary Lily?” In that moment, Thomas wanted to bark out a laugh and ask how the hell some random internet critic could even tell what he was doing on the other side of the country. If only he could assert some of that old, professioral authority that his more recent students had watched wither and die over the last few years as the grant money dried up and the subjects stopped responding to his requests for interviews.

“I don’t know why…” was all Thomas managed say, instead. “I mean, I didn’t. I didn’t watch anything. You shouldn’t be calling me on this line, James. I’m waiting for Sarah to—”

“Which episode was it, professor? Did you start from the beginning, like I did, or did you drop in cold to the middle of the season, like a madman? Heh. Knowing you, you old coot, you probably thought that you needed more ‘first-hand’ experience with the phenomenon. Maybe you thought the exposure wouldn’t mean anything if you just watched a teeny little bit, without context, even! Then, you could write your little book about the poor, sad idiot who actually sat through the whole goddamned series without sounding like a complete fraud. Is that it, professor? Am I close?”

“Oh god…” Tears were streaming down Thomas’ face. He remembered now. “I thought that I could…I mean, I was so sure.” Thomas collapsed into the chair beside the wall. He did not look away from his computer screen. He could not. It was still paused on that image, but he could see it clearly now. Two women, animated, in a kitchen not dissimilar from his own. One woman stood washing dishes in the sink. The other, younger girl sat smiling at the kitchen table. The pair looked like they were posing for a sweet, impromptu picture.

Except, of course, they didn’t look like that at all. The tacky, computer-generated background. The character models that seemed warped and haphazardly slapped onto the surface of a completely different plane of existence. The lens of the camera itself, which insanely gave the impression of twisting the tableau even further out of proportion despite not even physically existing in the first place. It all looked so wrong. So uncanny.

“What did you see, professor?” James Beckett asked. He spoke slowly, deliberately, and without any of his previous contempt. He was not talking to the professor like a man who was just betrayed by a mentor he had counted on for years. Instead, James spoke to Thomas like a doctor might speak to a patient when the prognosis was especially grim and nobody in the room could bear to hear what had to happen next. In the space between James’ words, though, Thomas thought he heard another familiar sound…

[Kappou! Kappou!]

“I saw…I saw a bunch of anime girls.” Thomas fumbled around the haze of memories, knowing full well that memetic hauntings thrived on memory, fed on recollection and re-experience, and yet he was powerless to resist. “They were…I don’t know, all just sort of standing around and talking. They were in some kind of store, like for books and other media, and they were just…talking.”

James made a sigh that fell somewhere in between disgust and pity. “So it was Episode 5, then. Jesus Christ. ‘Wishing On Mackerel, Oyster, and Egg Zosui Soup Kuzushi Kiritampo Style.’”

“What?”

“That’s the title of the episode: ‘Wishing On Mackerel, Oyster, and Egg Zosui Soup Kuzushi Kiritampo Style.’ Yes. I know. It’s impossibly stupid.”

“I do remember that the girls ate some seafood dish at the end…” Thomas said. “Though, the strange thing is that—“

“That it felt like yet another contrived and pandering way to constantly force those little cooking sketches into every single episode?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Welcome to the world of Momentary Lily,” James said, bitterly. “The bitch of it is, the stupid food non-sequiturs aren’t even the worst part. They’re just there, filling up space to get the rest of the abominable work through to the end credits. You’ll see what I mean, though. When you watch the rest.”

Thomas buried his head in his hands to stifle his moan of anguish. He should have known better! He had been studying paranormal phenomena for decades, and the one thing he had learned through all his trials and tribulations was that there were rules. The things that existed in the space beyond the natural world may be wild and cruel and strange, but even they had limits that bound them to their wretched little corners. If one learned the rules of their worlds, then these entities could be, if not mastered, then at least managed. To break those ancient rules, though, was to invite ruin upon oneself. Thomas had seen firsthand what that meant when his own teacher from times gone by took one too many risks in the face of the unknown. To think he had been so stupid! James, to his credit, allowed Thomas a few moments to wallow in self-pity.

“To be fair,” James said, eventually, “I did try to warn you. I tried to warn everyone. For all of the good it did.”

“Hah!” Thomas was able to laugh at that, finally, though it was a sad and whimpering sound stumbling out of his mouth. “Yes, I did read your ‘reviews’ — if you can even call them that. You always did love the sound of your own voice, didn’t you, James? At least you had the decency to leave my name out of your self-indulgent ramblings.”

“I’ve still got my journalistic integrity to preserve, don’t I?” James chuckled. For a moment, a warmth in James’ voice reminded Thomas of their days at the university café, debating the veracity of paranormal investigations and arguing about the ethics of spreading “unproven” testimonies. Another pang of nostalgia hit Thomas right in the gut. How had he let things get this bad?

“Why did you call me, James?”

“It’s like I’ve been telling you, professor. I want to know what you saw.”

“And what could I possibly tell you!?” Thomas was yelling now. “I saw nothing! This cartoon is about nothing! The green one rambled nonsense about video games and got into some kind of lovers’ spat with the one with the absurd bosom while the rest of the girls just stood around making screeching noises and chattering about inane topics as if they were out on a weekend shopping spree and not desperately trying to survive the end of the world!”

“And…?”

“And what? What do I say, James? Do you want me to say that I finally understand your points about the hideous backgrounds and the stupid lens flares? Do you want me to go on some kind of overlong and needlessly specific tirade about the flashback scene with the insane cinematography that ruins any attempt on Momentary Lily‘s part to make these weird cartoon girls anything more than vapid cardboard cutouts who exist purely to be printed on an endless wave of second-rate body pillows and keychains?” James said nothing. Thomas kicked the chair aside and collapsed fully onto the ground as he continued.

“Or is it an apology that you want? Is that it, James? Well, fine, have it. I am sorry for using your exposure to this…this trash as a means to scrape material out of you for my manuscript. I’m a pathetic, conniving old bastard who’s trying to cling to whatever relevance he has left, and I was willing to throw you to the wolves to do it! Okay? Now, please, God, won’t you just leave me alone?”

“That’s all well and good, professor,” James said, his voice now lilting in an ever-so-gently mocking way that made Thomas want to reach through Billy’s receiver and choke the life out of him. “Except, I don’t care about your thoughts on Episode 5 of Momentary Lily. I’ve already seen it. It’s boring as shit.”

“Then what in the hell do you want, God damn you?”

“I want to know what you saw, professor. After you watched the episode. That’s what really matters.”

Thomas felt his blood turning into ice the second James answered him. For the first time in what felt like hours, he allowed his gaze to drift from the screen to the still-open sliding door that led out into his yard. From where he stood, he could still see that fragile little hand coming up from the dirt. He could just make out the tufts of chestnut hair billowing in the wind.

“It’s different for everyone, I think,” James continued. “You already read about what I saw, at first, though it’s even changed for me since the show started. It’s not just dreams and echoes anymore. The nightmares weave themselves into flesh when given enough time. And enough…” He trailed off.

“I’ve seen…nothing,” Thomas said. “It’s just a bad cartoon about lame characters trapped in a story nobody gives a shit about. That’s all I’ve seen today, James.” Thomas was certain James knew better, though. Years ago, when Sarah had called on Billy to bid make-believe warnings of monsters lurking in the night, Thomas had never been able to convince her he was afraid. Now, Thomas found himself on the other end of the spectrum of fear, though his ineptitude remained as consistent as ever.

“Sure, okay, professor,” James said. “Say, do you remember what you wrote about memetic hauntings in Rituals of a Darker Kind? It’s your best book on the subject, so far as I’m concerned.”

“I’ve written a lot of things about hauntings of all kinds,” Thomas said. He blinked hard and rubbed his eyes. Did the hand in the dirt just wave at him?

[Kappou! Kappou!]

“I’m thinking specifically of the chapter on the hauntings that develop from the traumas experienced by an entire culture. I have the passage right here, actually.” Thomas could hear the rustling of pages through the phone. The hand in the dirt waved again, and this time, Thomas was sure of it. That awful, squeaking voice was still ringing

[Kappou! Kappou! Kappou! Kappou!]

in his ears. James continued: “Here it is! You said, ‘There is a grim but seemingly inevitable occurrence that is shared across all peoples and cultures when it comes to memetic hauntings, and that is the matter of the self-fulfilling haunting. We, as a people, you see, have this uncanny ability to take the stories and the shared experiences that shape us and twist them into something that is both instantly recognizable and utterly personal. In positive cases, a warm memory of joy and laughter can erase the flaws of a work and create a kind of ‘positive haunting’ that warps the victim’s perception so that they are unable to process any criticism or rejection of the source. More negatively, a movie that supposedly ‘ruins’ someone’s life becomes a dangerous obsession that fills the victim’s soul with rage and spite, so much so that it no longer bears any resemblance to the original source of the pain. Either way, the fact is that, when memetic hauntings occur, they are as much borne from the broken pieces of the individuals who experienced the source materials as much as the source itself. The calls, as they say, are coming from inside of the house, and the ghosts will lay claim to it.’ Man. It’s powerful stuff, professor, even still.”

“What’s your point, James?”

“My point, professor, is how it ends. ‘The ghosts will lay claim to it,’ you say, ‘Until. Until the victim of the haunting has shared his joy or pain with enough others around him, the twisted shape of the world that the haunting leaves behind has become the new reality. When his pain has become everyone‘s pain, then, it is no longer a haunting, is it? It is merely the new truth of the world.”

“So,” Thomas concluded, “If I am haunted, as you are, then you may be one step closer to ending your pain. Or, at least, trading the nightmare you’ve been trapped in for a more novel kind of hell.”

“That, professor, is why I want to know: What did you see?”

“To be honest, James, I’m not quite sure, myself. She’s a young girl, I think. A tiny little thing with chestnut hair and a fondness for ribbons. She says, ‘Kappou.’ She’s digging herself up out of the dirt behind my house.”

“Thank you, professor. I wish you and your family nothing but the best.” James hung up the phone. Thomas let Billy’s receiver dangle from its spiral cord as the dial tone buzzed.

After a few seconds of regarding the screen one last time, he stood and made his way back outside. As he walked towards the hand in the dirt, Thomas thought of the phone calls that he had to make, of the letters he had to write, and of what he might ever be able to do or say to make up for it all. As he reached down to grasp those slim, dainty fingers, he thought of his daughter Sarah and of how much he wished that things had ended better between them. As he pulled the strange and uncanny thing-that-was-not-really-a-girl up from the dirt, he wondered what the others would see once it was their turn. As the creature cracked its bones and shuffled off its dirt to greet the innocent air of January with its profane smile, Thomas realized that it might be nice to have someone back in the house again to laugh at all of his jokes and keep him company when the silence became too sharp. As it embraced him, Thomas could feel it dig those dainty little fingers into the flesh of his back, and he was surprised at how little it hurt in the end.

“Hello,” Thomas said.

“Kappou!” it said.

Rating:

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.

Momentary Lily is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll on Thursdays.