Chevallier

Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Matter Manipulator ver. 2.0

                The damn dream again, I was still standing there, alone, my hands frozen still frozen in mid reach, I look at her uncertainly, the thoughts in my head still trying to make a decision, should I take the hand or not? A few more moments of hesitation and she lowered my hand, I lowered mine, felt a twinge of disappointment, a longing to know what could have happened if I took her hand. She looked at me, smiled and turned around, “Uh!” I uttered a sound, she did not look at me but answered “Come with me, I’ll show you something.” The voice stirred something in my memory, I don’t know what but I found her voice to be eerily familiar, just like how I found her to be familiar the first time I saw her. She walked away and I instinctively followed, our steps echoing around the empty chamber. She was heading towards the door, I quickened my steps and was soon beside her, walking with the same rhythm that she has, like a shadow cast upon a wall. She stopped and so did I, looking at the door with two handles and with the strange symbol in it. She reached forward and grasped the handle; she looked at me and motioned for me to do the same, I reached out my hand and grasped the other handle.

                I felt a tug in my hand, the one not holding the handle, I tried to let go of the handle but I can’t, it’s as if my hand was stuck to it, glued, or it could be that I just lost control of my hand. I struggled, turning my arm in many ways, unsuccessfully trying to loosen my grip. The girl beside me seemed to be untroubled from all of this, she twisted the handle and I felt my hand do the same; the tug became stronger, stronger, stronger, more and more stronger until my other hand was raised, the girl was also experiencing the same but she did not show the surprise that was on my face. Then she looked at me and I did at her, our eyes met, and I was sucked through the strange symbol…

                After what felt like a few million years or maybe a few millionths of a second, I landed on my feet on what seemed to be transparent glass, I looked around, I seem to be alone; the mysterious woman was nowhere to be seen. I scratched my head in confusion; does that mean I am the only one sucked through that strange symbol? What place is this anyway? Is it heaven? I remembered being killed a few hours ago so I think this must be the afterlife. But where are the angels, the trumpets, the singing choirs, if this was heaven then where the heck are the other dead people? Is this purgatory then, my own personal hell to think about all the things I have done? Yes that must be it, so that is what I did, sit down on the ground and think about my life, my memories, there were so many, I can barely remember them all; my childhood, the twins’ experiments, the countless injuries I received from that time, I chuckled, I guess even if they felt horrible back then they seem funny right now. I continued on in that style, now reaching the middle years of my life, the fateful meeting with a bum that turned out to be a martial arts master who taught me everything I knew about fighting, I still laugh out loud at how silly that encounter really was and now was not an exception, the day when I tested my newfound skills by confronting the local gang who had been harassing the students for quite some time, ironically, I was able to save a damsel in distress, tragically, I did not become more than her friend. I recalled my bitter emotions back then that ended up alienating her from me. I thought about the regret I felt back then when I found out that she was also nurturing feelings for me. A bitter smile crossed my mind at the other more painful memories that I manage to recall; the incident at school, the very unfortunate lottery where I won more than a billion but lost it all when the gang sought it’s revenge in the form of the five hundred strong army they have amassed, I still marvel at how many people I defeated that day, and then, after that almost all the people avoided me because of my “inherently violent nature” I guess you can call it that because I have retracted even farther into my shell of hostility, shunning all that came to me. All these ran past me until I reached the cache holding my most recent memories; those that happened this year. I sailed past my memories, occasionally stopping here and there to reminisce about a small detail I have overlooked.