You wake up with blinding sunlight on your face and hands on cold rugged wood. You hear creaks and the wind slaps you awake. Glancing at your spread-out legs, you notice the torn fabric of your pants. One of your dress shoes is missing. It happened again, and this time you were gone for a while, it seems. You stand up and the wooden steps under you creak more. You are on a pier and the waves are loud beneath you. Your eye catches a glimpse of your missing shoe near the opposite edge of the dock. You walk there, limping on the way.
After putting it on, you feel something heavy in your pocket. You pull it out and it’s the knife. You saw it somewhere yet you cannot recall where. It’s dripping with blood, and you drop it with a gasp. The red has seeped into your dark jacket and it’s fresh. Now your hands are red. Running aimlessly ahead, away from the knife, you spot your red car smoking and totalled on a nearby tree, just at the start of the pier. Your brain tries hard to remember, but you don’t know how you got here.
Your last memory was you drinking vodka through a bottle, lying at your house, lamenting about the rose sitting in your patio chair. There are no bottles in your car any more. Suddenly, a faint ringtone plays inside your car as you hurry to find your phone. It’s one of your friends, Omar, whom you haven’t talked to in a while. You pick up the phone and say “Hello?” and Omar tells you “It’s done,” and hangs up. You did talk to him, but you cannot recall.
Pathetic.
Someone tells you in your mind, and you are sure it wasn’t you. You feel dizzy and the world around you blur. You want to stay, but something is telling you to leave.
You wake up, driving on the road, sirens of police cars blaring behind. In the rare view mirror, you notice the three cars on your tail. You are in the middle of a long straight road, in a chase, and you scream as you take control of the wheel. How did you get here? You wonder, stressed, driving at 90kmph. Your car is fixed now, and your jacket is gone. You don’t know what you did and why you did it. Grabbing your phone in a hurry while keeping one eye on the road, you look at an unknown number you last called. Ignoring it, you browse through the contacts to call your brother. He is not your brother by blood, but because you said so. The phone rings in your ears in between the sirens and keeps ringing. “PICK UP!” you scream as you drift around some long trees and start driving off-road onto a hill.
Stop. Hang up the phone.
The voice in your head talks to you again, but you don’t want to comply. You are scared of it. You try hard, but the dizziness is back, and you start to lose control. He takes over again.
You wake up and moan in pain. Your eyes focus on the metal cuffs on your hands chained to a table. You are sitting on a chair in an interrogation room. Your stomach hurts and you groan again. The lamp above your head is dimly lit, and you hear footsteps approaching. An officer enters the room and sits down in front of you. “Well, Ivan, are you okay?” he asks you, and you want to tell him everything so bad, but you lie, “Yeah.” “So, Officer Dix is ready to play your game, but we have our own conditions that you must obey,” the officer tells you, and you have no idea what he is talking about. You think hard again but cannot remember what happened in the chase. “Ivan?” he calls you again, and you get progressively nervous, sweating, bouncing your leg up and down, foot tapping on the floor. You have to say something, but you don’t know what. He knows.
How pathetic. How weak.
The voice tells you and laughs evilly. You cannot hear your thoughts, only his laugh. “Stop,” you murmur, and the officer looks at you baffled. “Stop? Do you not want us to do the game?” he asks you, and you barely hear it over the laugh. Your head smashes against the table and your eyes close.
You wake up with your right cheek touching cold concrete and a grey-brick wall before your eyes. After standing up, you look around, and you are in a cell, a solitary cell with no window and a thick barred gate in the front. There is only a tint of light that enters through, and you can barely see the off-putting bed and toilet beside you. You don’t even know how long it has been, and you are wearing different clothes. There is nothing else in the room except the bed, the toilet, and you. That’s what you believe, at least. An officer, the same one as earlier, walks up to your door with a tray of food. “Here, I am giving it to you this time since you requested, but this won’t happen every time, Ivan. I mean sorry, Idris.” He slides the tray through a slot in the door, but you are stunned by the name he called you. “What did you call me?” you ask him, staring at him, making him uncomfortable. “Idris. You told me to!” he yells at you in response, still holding the tray. Your breathing starts to pick up, and you start sweating again. “That’s not me. He is— was me, but now it’s not me. I… I am Ivan, I am not him! I am really not!”
HaHAHHAHhaHhah, just look at your pathetic face. I am not you? Then who am I, my friend? We are one and the SAME! Get that inside your head, the sooner, the better.
You grab your head aggressively, trying to make the laughter stop, but it keeps going. You fall on your knees, hearing muffled words from the officer, and you scream for it to stop. For him to stop.
You wake up. You are standing, and your eyes meet Omar’s. He is wearing a mask, but you recognize it. You know it’s him. He looks awfully scared of you. His lips shivering. You look to the right of his head, and there’s a gun that your right hand is holding. Pointed at Omar, your friend. Your finger is on the trigger. The edge of your mouth goes up, and you start smiling, then you start laughing. Omar’s eyes start to tear up and you laugh louder. You know who I am, my friend? you ask him, pushing the gun more towards his head.
“You are not… Ivan.”