The Inescapable Dream: Dark Facade

Chapter 1: Yuri

Yuri Mikhailov-Karahawa. Yuri Mikhailov-Karahawa was his name. His mother was Lisa Mikhailov. His stepfather was Chihiro Karahawa. Yuri never knew his biological father.

Yuri was 7. Yuri did well in school. Grades mattered to him. He would always bring home straight A's.

Yuri went to his mother to tell her about his grades. She cheered shortly, gave him a kiss on the cheek and put his report card on the fridge. He went home one day to tell Chihiro about his grades. Chihiro replied with a slap to Yuri's face and pushed him away. Yuri ran to his room upstairs and wept. "What did I do wrong?" he asked himself. He wiped his tears, climbed to his bed and went to his tablet to check what his closest friends were doing.

Brent was offline. He told Yuri at school earlier that he was off to fix some errands with his parents. Julianna was online, though she was doing homework. Wyanne (his crush) was there, and so was Erin. Yuri set up a group chat with the two and asked them what they were up to. Wyanne texted, "Oh, I'm listening to some music. Erin, have you heard the new track in my Random Findings Playlist in MeTube?" Erin replied, "Oh yeah! Gave me a bit of a flash at the end, but I loved the graphics and the sounds themselves. Who's the artist?"

"I don't know," said Wyanne, "it was just blank."

Yuri had a tendency to be a detective at times, inspecting the smallest details in anything as much as his ability can enable him to. Yuri asked, "Was there a profile picture?"

"No."

Yuri wondered to himself, "What could this be?" He asked Wyanne for the link to the track. Wyanne obliged with an ellipsis. Yuri grabbed his headphones, pasted the link, and listened to the track.

As expected, Yuri investigated the artist's name. It was blank and the profile picture was black. He listened to the track and heard weird binaural beats that gave him a bit of a headache. Then suddenly, at the end, Yuri saw a white flash. He was knocked out for a few minutes, and as he awoke, he heard Chihiro shouting at his mother. "They're arguing again, aren't they?" Yuri muttered. What was next widened Yuri's eyes so much he felt like his eyeballs were popping out of their sockets.

BANG! A gunshot. A loud ringing gunshot. Yuri was in immense shock.

As soon as he stepped off his bed, he heard another gunshot. His ears rang out the binaural beats again, though he didn't have his headphones on. He dropped to the floor in pain, writhing and gritting his teeth. He ran downstairs as soon as his ears stopped ringing. He saw his parents on the floor, lying in a puddle of fresh 3-minute old blood. Lisa had her gunshot in the forehead, and Chihiro had his under his jaw and upper neck. Yuri could still see the blood flowing from the wounds. He saw in his mother's hand the progress report drenched in red. Chihiro had a Colt 1911 .45 Caliber pistol in his left hand, which was also in blood. Yuri dropped to his knees in front of his mother's body. He held her head, soaking his hands in blood in the process. He hugged the now dead Lisa Mikhailov, sobbing and mourning the loss of the person he loved the most and who loved him the most. He almost grabbed the Colt and put it up to his head. As he grabbed the gun, the door slammed open and two police officers shouted, "LAPD! FREEZE!" Yuri put his hands up as the officers saw in shock the crime scene that had taken place.

"I'm sorry, Yuri," said one of the officers at the door, Colin, to the now clean and blanketed Yuri, who was holding a cup of chamomile tea outside the house in an ambulance, "You had to see that at 7 years old! 7! I haven't seen that kind of violence since my trip at Moscow, when I was on a trip to go undercover and to go sightseeing, but all I saw were..." Colin hesitated as Yuri stared into the door of the place he had once called home. Yellow tape lined the door, and camera flashes blinked at the windows. Yuri slinked down onto the medical cot's lower end. He heard once again the gunshots of the Colt 1911. But he closed his eyes and fell asleep. Little did he know that a chain of events would change all of what he knew and how he felt.