Palinoia

Chapter 23

Cold sweat ran down my face as I stared down at my room in the pitch dark. There was no sound, no light, no movement. Only darkness.

The only thing that could be heard was my beating heart.

"Madness."

Why? Why did she say such a thing? Why? Why? Why?

I froze. "Madness? Yeah, you're really funny you know?"

Her smile stayed right where it was. "Don't deny the truth. All those times you excelled in training as I watched you from a distance? What gave you such a driving force if not the desire to kill?"

I shook my head. "Shut up."

"And the troubled expressions on your face. You don't see a monster in me Sebastian but a person. A person who deserves life and that's makes you confused doesn't it? All the lies and secrets kept away by them, all the brutality. You don't know who the victim is and it's driving you insane," she said.

"Why would I care-"

She cut me off quickly. "You're confused that's why. What I see in front of me is a troubled man who doesn't know what to do with his life and is trying to figure it out."

"Shut up," I snapped.

"You want to be normal just like everyone else but you can't. You can't because you're insane," she continued.

"Shut up," I repeated.

Her voice was like a sharp knife digging into my soul. "Your friends? Oh they will never understand you. They don't think like you because they already have what they want. So why bother?"

I kept repeating the same words. "Shut up."

"But I do. I understand how you feel. I was torn between the thought of what was sane and not sane. What was normal and abnormal. How I should live, the behaviour I should present. All these thoughts came during my transformation. When I truly felt alone," she added.

My body began to shake as I positioned the gun.

"Join me Sebastian. Join my army, my team. We can fix this hate-filled world with the truth. We need to show everybody that the grass isn't always green," she pressed.

I tensed. "Shut up..."

"What are you waiting for Sebastian? You're not a good guy that you pretend to be so kill him already! Don't hide back your urges!" she encouraged.

I shut my eyes, releasing deep breaths.

"Go on."

I kept my eyes shut.

"Do it."

They remained shut.

"Open your eyes."

Bang.

Right. At. The. Chest. How did I know? Because my eyes were wide open. Which also led me to discover that it took more than one bullet shot to do the work.

I ignored everything.

I ignored my morale, I ignored my sense, I ignored what I thought I believed in, I ignored the despair and cry of agony from the Demolisher. I ignored it all.

I could still remember Mari's proud face as if she had accomplished something. What was she trying to accomplish other than me committing my first kill?

My first kill.

I killed it. Or him. I didn't know what to think of anything anymore. I shouldn't have felt so withdrawn about it because from a normal person's perspective, I did a good thing.

But the way he screamed reminded me of a vulnerable person. He reminded me of humans. Come to think of it, he seemed no different from a lost soul.

I groaned and punched the wall. A small crack was created while my right fist heated up. I didn't know why I was feeling like this. If I was going to be accepted into the force, then what I was doing should've been normal. I couldn't afford to behave the way I did.

And I did not want to.

I lay down on my bed and grabbed the book I had been reading for some time. Madness Within Us. The current chapter I was reading was similar to the what had happened. The character's urge and desire to kill...how he showed little remorse.

If there was one thing I couldn't deny was the kill. After I made sure the Demolisher stopped breathing, I had an uncontrollable feeling of adrenaline and excitement. The feeling was nothing like I had ever felt before. It made me forget who I was that time. I needed to leave the scene and I was glad that I did.

So the question stood in front of me: Was I really a mad jacked-up person?

I put down the book after reading the desired pages and tried to get some sleep, wondering what my nightmares had picked out for me.

Your nightmare.

I opened my eyes as if I had kept them closed for so long.

At first I couldn't see anything. There was a bright light until it cleared up and my vision soon became blurry. I had to blink a few times with some occasional squints so that I could make out what was in my surroundings.

The information my sight gave me was that I was surrounded by dust and a barren wasteland. It was all so empty as if there was nothing out there for me. Nothing for me to do.

I had no purpose.

Once my vision cleared up, two very familiar people appeared in front of me. One on my right and the other on my left. And those very important people of mine were none other than my best friend and Mari.

Peter stood on my right and stared at me with a bright smile on his face. It was his usual free spirted smiles which he always had on his face. His smiles were the reason I took so many steps in my life and pushed forward to doing the things I never thought I would have had the courage to do.

And then there was Mari. She also had a smile on her face. But it was that same smile and look in her eyes that caused the conflicted thoughts to occur within me. It was the same auburn eyes that she used to lure me on during that day we met at the café into her world. Her own twisted and messed up world. Her smile and words was what made me see my world differently. I saw something no one else did. Her words opened up my desire and caused me to spill blood.

I watched they both stretched put their arm and they both unfolded their hand. I stared between the two as their expressions remained the same but they were pushing me to make a choice.

One choice. I could only choose one and that was my final decision.

For the first time tears leaked from my eyes and I stared up. If I wasn't wrong, there was also a smile on my face.

Staring up I watched as rain began to fall and touch my face. But it wasn't any ordinary type of rain.

Blood.

It was raining blood. Droplets upon droplets of blood.

I looked back down and saw that they were still there with their arms stretched out. I couldn't move my body.

I soon began to feel a sensation coming from my feet and it was only a matter of time before I realised that I was slowly turning into dust and fading away.

They did not fade away although.

Of course. I still had to make my decision but I still could not move. My mind was telling me to but my body did not. My body was my own person from the mind.

As I continued to fade away, my mind slowly began to do the same. It was responding and mimicking what my body was doing.

Fading.

I had faded. I disappeared.

Gone.