Breaking Ice

6.

I remember screaming as the trees zipped past my eye line. Perhaps I threw up. I'm not sure. One moment I was stumbling towards the big tree and the next I was being dragged in the air, about five feet off the ground. The rain clamored my face but the cool water was welcomed. My goosebumps had become permanent fixtures on my skin and my teeth chattered like that stupid wind up toy. 

Water clogged my ears which only made the footsteps of whoever was carrying me sound much heavier. I could hear the thump, thump, thump, of their evened pace and tried to match my heartbeat to the rhythm. How were we going so fast? I didn't know. I didn't know anything anymore.

Please, can I just die in peace?

My mom quickly came to my mind. She doesn't know I'm here. She doesn't even know about Liam. She'd be heartbroken for years, never knowing what truly happened to her son.

I wished the rain would wash the thoughts away and carry me off into the ocean. But instead, it stopped abruptly. Or so I thought. I opened my eyes and saw that I was now seated in a red room, handcuffed to a chair facing a man who bore Liam's voice. He crossed his arms in a patronizing way and it made me want to spit. How dare this person look at me as if he knew me? This wasn't Liam. It couldn't possibly be.

I craned my neck to see the room. There were no windows or artwork, just a baby piano in the corner covered in dust. The floor had a black carpet with a giant white diamond shape in the center. I looked at the man again, furious that he furrowed his eyebrows the same way my friend did and tapped his left foot the exact way Liam did when he was waiting for me to explain myself. Again, the piano caught my eye, its missing white keys reminding me of the time Liam played for me late one Sunday afternoon and asked me if I knew how loneliness sounded.

I suppose now it sounds a lot like his voice in another man's body.

"I really wish you didn't run. At least try and listen, please." he began.

"I don't want to hear jack shit from you. Where's Liam?" the venom soaked words stung him. He appeared wounded like a possum playing dead in the street. 

He sighed. "This is how I really look."

"What?" I grew more furious. "What the actual hell. I am so tired of all this shit! What is going on?" I shouted the words at him, silently begging him to either end this or let me go. His face rendered no answer to either unsaid plea. 

"So what," I egged him, "you're telling me you've been catfishing me for an entire year and this is your way of coming out?"

"Two." He responded, eyes locked on mine, tone absolute.

"Two what?"

"We've been catfishing you for two years, Kai."

My mouth dropped. 

"Wait, what are you talking about? I'm being serious as a fucking heart attack here. What are you going on with?"

"Listen, Kai, this-'

"Stop calling me that! That's not my goddamn name!" I hurled the sentence like a dagger aimed at his throat. 

Unnerved, he turned around and muttered a curse right before punching the wall, leaving cracks in the place here his knuckles had made contact.

"I'm seriously trying here," he said dejectedly.

"I don't need you to try, I need you to tell me what the hell is going on. One second my friend is pushing me into a trunk and the next you, a fricking stranger, is telling me that the last two years of my life have been a lie. What kind of bullshit story is that?"

"You're not who you think you are."

"No, you're not who I thought you were."

He paused. A single tear fell down his cheek. The pit in my stomach intensified and that headache came back full force. I couldn't tell if I were shaking with anger or anxiety or fear or just the cold but my body began convulsing beyond my control. 

Breathe in. Breathe out.

"You've been living in a simulation for the last two years. Everything and everyone that you knew prior was replicated into a mock society here on the grounds. The drugs you were taking were the cause of your memory lapses but that's only because we needed to make sure you wouldn't reach full consciousness." 

The convulsions had stopped and my entire body was paralyzed. Suddenly the room was too small, he and I were too close, it was suffocating. The sweat welled up on my forehead and a rush of vertigo washed over me. My gaze landed on the baby piano, again, imagining the real Liam's fingers making beauty out of destruction.

 If only I could use telekinesis to crash the instrument into this imposter in front of me. He took my silence as approval to continue.

"You're very important and valuable to us. We need you. So we protected you the moment your...he went missing. We couldn't afford to lose you. I know this is hard to hear but-"

"You know nothing. You literally have not even a shred of a gleaming of an idea of how it is to be in my position right now. I don't know where I am. I'm shackled. I don't know who you are-"

"I'm Liam." he retorted with such confidence, bile rose in my throat. 

"I am Liam, Kai, and I have always been my real self with you. It's the drugs that had distorted your perception of me."

"Drugs that you gave me?"

"Drugs that you gave yourself."

I couldn't believe it. This phony was saying that I willingly signed up to be fucked over by my only friend. Wow.

"We did our best to ensure your quality of life in the simulation. We only intervened when absolutely necessary..." his voice trailed off. The guilt was written on his face as clear as day.

"You bastard. You're the reason Melanie broke up with me." It all made sense now. Leave it up to the crook to be the reason the pathological liar left me.

"Kai, Melanie wasn't real. She was also apart of the simulation. She...she was assigned to monitor you but grew too attached and compromised the operation...so they replaced her with me."

"Thanks for admitting you clearly never gave a rat's ass about me."

"No!" He lunged forward, grabbing my shoulders in his hands. "That was never the case. I was always against this but I had to. I had no choice. You've got to believe me!"

"Believe you?" I scoffed at even the thought. "You've got some big cajones to be asking me to believe you after you just admitted to what you just did."

His tears landed on my thighs and I wish I could've wiped them off. How disgusting.

"I loved her, you know. I truly loved her." I whispered.

"We know! We know! It wasn't our intention. She was supposed to just be your friend, she went off the rails and we, we, we"

"We, we we," I mocked him with delight. "Who is this "we" you keep referring to. Take responsibility for your actions, dammit!" I could feel the vein bulging in my forehead, ready to explode.

The door flew open and in walked a woman, dark as midnight, hair cut low, draped in a tailored red suit.

"You looking for someone to chew, blood bag. Well, here I am."