Phantom Chained

Chapter 28. Adaptation. Elm

"It's time for a prayer." Caleb put his hands together at his chest and lowered his head.

"Not again!" I rolled my eyes. "Please, anything but that! Are you screwing with me?"

"Memorare, O piissima Virgo Maria, non esse auditum a saeculo, quemquam ad..."

"Padre, please, your words bring unbearable agony!" I said with my most pitiful voice but Caleb, as usual, ignored my pleas and continued to monotonously spew out Latin.

"...tua currentem praesidia, tua implorantem auxilia, tua petentem suffragia,
esse derelictum. Ego tali animatus confidentia..."

"Its confidentia, you idiot, not confidenshuh! Do you understand? Con-fee-den-tee-ah!"

"...ad te, Virgo Virginum, Mater, curro ad te venio, coram te gemens peccator assisto."

"Someone help, I'm gonna throw up!"

"...Noli, Mater Verbi, verba mea despicere..."

"Accents, Caleb! How did you graduate from pastor college with those intonations? Or was it a missionary group in Mumbai? Did you do online speed courses together, 'Exorcisms for Dummies?'"

"...sed audi propitia et exaudi. Amen"

"Is it over?" I rejoiced and with enthusiasm added: "Amen!"

"I don't think it's that bad." Caleb nervously straightened the glasses on his meaty nose. "Thank you for correcting me but how do you know so many prayers? It's amazing!"

"Sure is." Johan's dad joined in. He was hunched over the pool table and didn't appear to be paying much attention but I knew that wasn't true. After our little chat, he only showed up alongside Caleb and always remained silent, save for an occasional sly remark here and there. He just idled around the room and made silent observations; I wonder what they were?

I sighed enviously when I heard a ball clatter into the pool socket. I would've killed for a game but alas Johan did not enjoy that sort of thing, so I had to leave it be.

"Sure is..." He repeated while walking to the other side of the table. "He does know his prayers, back to front and inside out..."

"Father's hinting at a difficult time in my childhood again..." I explained to the priest. "When I took a wrong turn onto the path of self-destruction. We talked about this, remember?"

"Oh yes, can we continue with that?" Caleb practically leapt up in excitement, what an amusing person.

"Later, padre, later. You haven't earned my full trust yet. But I will ask you a practice question: do you know what are the survival conditions for when you're headed for your demise?"

"Enlighten me!"

"In this case 'darken' is more fitting, but whatever... so: the path gives a lot, takes away even more and does not tolerate mistakes, even those that you don't think are 'that bad.' So my advice to you, my curious padre, is to not go anywhere near it; you're not too linguistically gifted. Benefacta male locata malefacta arbitror. Get it? Of course, you don't... 'I consider good deeds towards the unworthy to be malicious'."

Father giggled. Strange, I thought these two were friends, from the looks of it even old ones, yet father did not seem to mind me making fun of Caleb. In fact, he looked quite amused himself.

"I'm annoying, Johan?" Caleb asked calmly but his dark eyes showed anger welling up inside. He was holding back but facial expressions can give away a lot when one knows where to look.

"Like you wouldn't believe!" I confirmed with a deep yawn.

"And what is annoying?"

"Absolutely everything. But if you want specifics, then it's your Indian accent, idiocy, rancid breath and the fact that you're closer than a kilometre away from me. Also, your stomach has gone bad and your intestines are so full of gas they make Jupiter jealous. So forgive me if I find it hard to not dislike you, Caleb."

"Sicknesses are but tests for us to..."

"Is the megalomania also a test?" I inquired. "Do you really believe that someone would care about you so much as to test you with gastritis? Eat something other than curry, for once! I don't understand, just how arrogant do you have to be to become a soul healer when you don't even have enough willpower to heal yourself?"

"Such evil boy!" Caleb threw his hands in the air and looked at Johan's dad. "Is he always like this?"

"He's not evil, just remorseless." Father replied with an air of indifference. "That's where the problem lies."

"Personally I would call it honesty, objectivity and impartiality." I grumpily rebutted.

Father just gave a mocking smirk in response. That's the kind of person he was: unsociable, difficult and untrustworthy.

He did decide to go through with the analysis after all. It took my all to restraint myself from plunging the syringe deep into Caleb's neck when he was talking my blood. What? It's not like I would be leaving any time soon. I got a feeling they didn't quite figure out what to do with me yet. Father even confirmed it a while later:

"There's something wrong about you but I just can't quite put my hand on what. And until I do, you're not going anywhere."

To be fair, I didn't have it that bad. They brought me a clean t-shirt, pants, underwear, socks... even a pair of white slippers. And lots of books, probably at least fifteen. I could barely finish all of them in a year! Oh, I almost forgot to mention the bathrobe! An excellent blue bathrobe: soft, warm and with a hood, which was so comfortable I rarely took it off. I didn't sleep on the floor anymore, but on a sofa with a pillow and blanket. I was still chained to the pipe, however the chain itself was elongated to give me more freedom of movement.

How ironic; I ran from a chain in one world only to end up on a chain in another.

Daddy didn't trust me, probably afraid of his own son. And rightly so! I really had to get out of my skin to erase the suspicion, distrust and assumptions. Even when alone, I had to fully imitate Johan's every kink; how he sits, how he eats, how he shits, so on and so forth. My usual conversations with myself had to be limited to inner dialogue; I managed to feel someone's gaze on me through a hidden camera and vowed to never let my guard down, even in my dreams.

That's right, I started seeing dreams! It's so weird and I haven't figured out whether I'm excited or scared. Or was it the fact that I was becoming more human which truly scared me?

I longed for the part of me that remained in the astral field of the comatose girl, but I have to confess that the partial degradation gave a few benefits to adaptation. For example, food ceased being a punishment for having a mortal body. Not all food, of course, but strawberry jam became quite edible. But on the other side of the coin...

The body prevailed over the mind.

You say I'm angry? Try remaining cool when you have to stand under freezing water time and time again to temporarily dissipate the hormonal storm! My every attempt to establish contact with the girl and activate the deal ended in the rise of crude animalistic lust, creating an impenetrable barrier that required immediate action.

There was a time when I almost succumbed to the temptation but luckily realised how risky it is before it was too late. To waste precious energy on masturbation? Drain it all just for a temporary release? Only a human could afford such a luxury, and human I am not.

Who knew that cold water would become my saviour.