Demon Stories

Saya: Jeel-mei, 1800, France

Saya

Jeel-mei

1800, France

"Jeel-mei...jeel...jeel-mei-"

My brow creased further in my worry. Jeel-mei again. What was "jeel-mei"? I leaned my body over my Beau protectively, trying to protect him in the dream though I was out here, helpless. But he was more helpless in there.

"Gerel...gerel...jeel..."

He rolled over, a half-hearted thrash. His hands were in clawed poses, soft but sharp looking, dangerous. It was now I realized he was sweating. 

I wanted to wake him up. But I knew better than to wake him up when he was speaking Mongolian. When he spoke Mongolian, he was not the Beau I knew. But it could not be better to leave him there, wherever he was. My heart...my heart was breaking as like his heart was breaking within the dream. 

Small tears fell down, so I knew his dear heart was breaking. His face was unanguished, but he tears told me a story, however all a mystery. 

"Jeel-mei..."

When he said "mei", I could not tell if he was saying "bei" or "mei". These two letters sounded as the same letter. It was something he only ever said in his sleep, nowhere else. 

And because it was in his sleep, I could not ask him what he was talking about. I wondered if he'd even remember. And these things. They seemed too painful for him to relive. Too painful in sleep. I'd never want him to have to relive them waking. It could break him in half, such was the strength of the pain. Rashing pain, pain with no words.

Over these past years, I had wandered from him but now... He was my Beau but he was not my Beau. This vulnerable little thing before me, rolling on the bed under our white covers. My very hands wanted to protect him, needed him. This defenseless creature in the bed. I did not know him, but my hands...my skin knew him. As long as this feeling was there, I would stay here. I'd watch over him in the bed.

Due to his tears, I did something I had never done. I could not take it anymore, his thrashing and silent tears in the dream. I did it because my heart twisted as like his body, in impossible positions that would break any human. My heart. It was human. He broke me. It was my fault.

"Beau... Beau, wake up... Wake up... You're dreaming... Its just a dream..." My feeling hands rested on his shoulder, the skin bonding with his sticky sweat. The skin remembering my love, rushing into me everything I had forgotten. Tenderness. Overwhelming warmth. Forgiveness.

Slowly, his eyelids opened. Inside them was somebody else, as I knew. His dead green eyes stared at the wall, unblinking. His mouth was open mid-word, jeel. For a few moments, all was silence. Not even wind rippled the curtain of the open window. My breath was still, waiting for him. 

But too quick, his eyes turned tiger. Blood red flooded into them, his lips became red, cheeks flushed the darkest color as like with fever. Against my body, his lucious, shiny black curls seemed as if dipped into a painter's inkwell, crimsoned. 

And as like with a tiger, I found myself against the opposite wall not knowing what happened. His hand, clawed as in the dream, gripped around my throat. There was already blood on my chest as his nails dug into my skin, too deep. 

His eyes. They stared at me blankly, an unbridled creature.

He was not Beau at all. 

"Bb- Bb-" I tried to speak but I could not. He would not let me. Just staring, wild and with such hatred. It brought upon the feeling all over my body as if I were about to die, the doom. But he just stared at me.

Then as slowly as his eyes had opened, he said one word to me: "Gerel." The other word in the dream. One I did not know and could not identify, as a mystery to me as the first.

The world was a standstill. Nothing moved but for our hearts. The blood pumping through his veins, the angry blood.

"Bb- Boh-" I whispered his name through the vice. 

In miracle, the red flooded his eyes and so innocent, a red tear fell on its own down his fevered cheek. A small one. 

Instantly, the claws released me and I fell to the floor in a crumble heap, unable to get up. My body would not work. Painful tingling appeared in my hands and feet, behind my eyes, the blood flowing back. 

I watched him from this pose turning around. He became a crumbled heap himself, fetal position. Hugging himself. 

Unable to do a thing, I watched him begin to rock. I watched him begin to cry. And the horror in my mind, as I realized what I had done. 

"Jeel-mei, I did not mean to," he said to himself, cryptic. "I did not mean to..."

Before my eyes, he was reliving his dream awake, and there was nothing I could do. Nothing I could do as he crumbled, as he sat in pain. 

It is better to live it in dreams, because at least one can awake and often there is nothing scary there to harm oneself. But here, now, with the dreams coming into the real, there was no waking up. There was no escaping it.

I did that to him. And there was nothing I could do to escape it.