Hair Ball Marvin
«Congratulations. You have gained 1 power point from: Flower. Passive sympathetic transference.»
«Congratulations. You have gained 1 power point from: No Name. Passive sympathetic transference.»
«Congratulations. You have gained 1 power point from: No Name. Passive sympathetic transference.»
«Congratulations. You have gained 1 power point from: No Name. Passive sympathetic transference.»
…
Suddenly, Blake's vision was filled with Passive sympathetic transference power points. There were so many, it covered his entire visual field.
He quickly added it up. The tiny single gifts totaled twelve points. He didn't even know there were that many.
Each of the little sprites had given him a single point. Flower was the only one that was named, since he had named her. The rest were No Name.
He suddenly felt humbled.
He had given them nothing and they had given their tiny little bit of energy to him just because he smiled at them and allowed them to sit their feather weight bodies on his shoulders.
As he and Louis reached the outer courtyard, he could see a dozen other adult ghouls, lounging around, eating the ghoul offerings. They ignored him and Louis, focusing on eating their meal and then left the courtyard.
He didn't blame them. It was truly plain fare. There was white rice and some salt plus a little bit of cabbage that was a bit sour tasting, similar to kim chi except much blander.
The little sprites didn't care. They ate it with enjoyment. Obviously, they didn't know any better, having never had anything else to eat in all their little existences.
To make it easier on himself, he pointed to each of the sprites and began naming them. Flower was the girl with the pale pink hair. Then there was Daisy, Lotus, Berry, Pebble, Blade, Wind, Petal, Brook, Stone, Leaf, and Twig.
He couldn't really keep their names straight, but they all seemed to recognize their own names, which was a good thing.
After their dinner, the monks went about lighting the courtyard lanterns. It looked as if they were going to attempt another exorcism tonight. Nobody would be able to sleep until the second ghoul could be extracted.
This time, Blake and Louis found a spot a bit further away from the center where the large bell was located. The little sprites fluttered around Blake, following him everywhere he went.
☯︎☯︎☯︎
High up above the tree tops, Anh Hai surveyed the temple courtyard. He watched with keen interest as they carried the tall blond man on a stretcher and then placed him under the bell.
The toc-tocking of the wood blocks began, along with the bong-bonging of the bell.
The brown-robed monks with their shaven heads settled into their lotus positions on the cobbled stone courtyard and began chanting in unison to the beating of the wood blocks.
As the moon began to rise higher into the sky, Anh Hai watched with engrossed concentration.
The monks had been at it for awhile but there was very little noise coming from the naked figure sitting under the bell. He was unmoving, as if in a trance. If anything were to happen, it would happen now.
As if on cue, the old monk in the yellow robe at the front of the procession ended the chant and slowly rose to her feet. Several younger yellow robed monks followed her as she made her way past the rows of brown robes.
By the time she had passed the last rows of monks, going towards an open archway, the rest of the procession followed suit in an orderly fashion, leaving behind two young acolytes to help the naked man out from under the bell.
They slipped a white robe on his unresisting body as he stood, tottering under the weak lantern light and led him to a stone bench where he was gently seated. Then they left him for a moment as they went to prepare the wheel chair to take him back to his room.
Here was his chance.
Anh Hai stretched his arm until he could touch the man's head. Then he reached a tentative finger of molecules through the top of the man's head and poked about, looking for Marvin's tortured soul.
He found the man's brain waves unusually sluggish and lacking the usual activities indicative of a person in a normal state of waking alertness.
Anh Hai nodded, impressed with their thoroughness in details.
The monks had temporarily disconnected the man's immediate cognizance of himself in relationship to the world, leaving him in a state not unlike that of a zombie.
It would allow the man to be able to retain his sanity while undergoing the horrifying experience of exorcism.
Without this shield, the man stood a big chance of going mad, even as they tried to cure him.
Anh Hai found Marvin curled up in a little hair ball the size of an aspirin tablet. He was trying to hide from the bell's command inside the cochlea behind the man's eardrum.
Constant prodding could not stir the inert form into motion. Whatever life and spunk that Marvin had projected in the past was now compressed into that tiny pill shaped spongy black hair ball. It no longer responded to stimuli.
It did not look like he could save this soul from insanity. He had to leave before his presence could be detected by the monks. Their powers were too strong. He could do nothing against them—at least not by himself.
Anh Hai withdrew from the brain case of the placid man sitting on the stone bench, leaving behind the fur ball that had once been Marvin to fend for himself.
He gathered the loose particles of his wandering mind and refocused his energies homeward.
The dark room that his physical body occupied during his sojourn into the atmosphere remained silent and tomblike. The candles had long since been gutted and the incense had burned down to nothing.
He repositioned his energies and suffused his body with warmth.
Fuck!
It was cold.
Slowly, he sped up his heart until it was beating at half its normal rate before taking his first deep breath, expelling the old stale air from his lungs. His energies pervaded his limbs down to the digits of his fingers and toes, which began to tingle uncomfortably.
This was the worst part of the whole experience. It felt as if his whole body had fallen asleep and was just now getting some badly needed oxygenated blood.
He was one massive tingling of nerves, and he itched in mysterious spots that were unscratchable.
He waited until he could move without feeling the sharp maddening sensations before attempting to shift from his stone-like lotus position into a more relaxed sitting posture.
After his heart rate had returned to normal, Anh Hai stood up on firm legs and flexed his muscles, snapping them back into position. He clothed himself, cleared away the makeshift altar and exited the room.
He made his way back through the covered walkway to his mansion and went straight up the grand staircase to the second floor. Down the hall to the very end, he reached a set of double doors.
He muttered a single unlock command and the doors were flung open by some powerful force.
Anh Hai stood there surveying his new handiwork.
Everything was in its place, down to the tiniest detail. The jonquils looked a bit wilted—he needed to replace those. The fake Monet print would be replaced with an original.
It would be perfect for its new occupant.