Chương 3: Inner Self
Pain, pain from all sides and angles, inside and out. No amount of training or preparation could have prepared him for what's happening.
Vara has been cut, shot, tortured, brain-washed, and pushed beyond physical limits. But all of that was a minor itch compared to what's happening now.
Time passed, but the pain remained. Sometimes he instinctively wished for death, but then the scene of his awakening from years of being under control would flash in his mind. He would then metaphorically grit his teeth and bare it.
'This pain is nothing... it just means I am still in control. This is already an improvement compared that life.'
Soon time passed, and Vara was becoming more and more tolerant to the pain. The pain didn't go away, but it didn't increase either. Just constant and never-ending. He wasn't sure how much time had passed.
It could have been days, weeks, or maybe even years that have passed without his knowledge. He felt he was on the brink of madness if he wasn't already insane.
'Why am I going through this? Why is something terrible always happening to me? Why me of all people'
When he began questioning everything, the sound of something shattering echoed in his head.
The sound was so loud and shocking that he instinctively jumped. Suddenly, he found himself in bed in what seemed to be a small bedroom. Rubbing the cold sweat off his forehead while breathing heavily, he thought to himself.
"What just happened? Where am I?"
He looked around and noticed an open door, to a bathroom to his right. He got up and went to the sink to wash his face and wake himself up.
Just as he splashed his face, he sees something peculiar in the mirror. He quickly turns on the light and in the mirror is a face. The look is different than the one in the dream yet oddly familiar,
He goes and rubs his face and after which he shakes his head.
"What are you thinking to yourself Derek, it was just a dream."
He chuckles to himself as he makes his way back to his bedroom. How could any of that be real, there was a demon child in a void of magic colors with a man who didn't even look like him.
However, when he remembered the pain at the end of the dream, he couldn't help but stop and hold himself. He gripped his shoulders as if trying to keep himself in place. The pain was too real and far too frightening.
He looked over to his clock and noticed that it was already 7:00 in the morning.
"Oh shit, I'm going to be late for work!"
Derek quickly gets ready and drives to his job at the tech company Goliath. He punches in and begins going through the paperwork on his desk. Looking over the papers, however, gave him an odd sense of déjà vu.
Looking over the material, he couldn't help feeling he had seen these exact same papers before. He quickly shook his head, trying to ignore the feeling he had.
'Wow, that dream seemed to have really stuck with me. Now I'm questioning every little thing in my life. How ridiculous.'
Derek tried to put the feeling to the back of his mind and go on with his day. However, no matter what he did, the feelings only grew stronger and became more apparent.
A week passed, and each night, he would have the same dream. He felt anxious and tried to ignore it, even trying to use work as a method to keep his mind busy.
Just as he was feeling terrified and hopeless, a coworker asked him if he wanted to get some drinks. He agreed, hoping to be able to relax.
Finally, after getting himself dead drunk, did he finally feel some peace. Not an excellent coping method, but he was willing to do anything to not think about that pain. He was driven home by a friend and walked to his front door. As he put his keys in the door, a sudden chill passed over him.
Immediately his body tensed up, and his mind completely sobered up.
'Something's not right.'
He rushes inside his house and looks around. For some reason, his senses are incredibly hypersensitive, and he noticed that a chair was slightly off.
He saunters towards the chair, and underneath is a note.
'Number 23, it is time to finish your mission.'
He grips the piece of paper in his hand tightly with fear. Why was this in his room? Who is this number 23? Then a sudden realization hits him.
That person in his dream was someone who disguised himself and infiltrated places as a living. But, why was this note in his house…?
Derek knew the answer but, wanted to avoid and deny it with all his might. However, the memories, the feelings, they were all too real and all too painful.
*Crack*
A sharp pain flooded his brain as he grabbed his head and started rolling on the ground, screaming. It felt like something was eating the inside of his mind. Soon laughter started resounding in his head. He passed out soon after.
A feeling of time passed before he groggily woke up. He grabs his head, remembering the pain he just felt, but then things became blank.
'What was that about?'
He shakes it off and gets up out of bed. In a sleepy stupor, he gets up, moves to the bathroom, and starts taking a shower. The cold water feels refreshing and has a healing touch to his cold, weary mind.
As he tries to recall what happens, the unexpected occurs.
"Honey. Mark, it's a Saturday. You don't need to shower so early."
A tired woman's voice rings out from his bedroom. His eyes widen e as he stands there stunned, not knowing what to do.
'Was that a woman…?'
Suddenly his head starts to hurt again, but soon it quickly fades away.
'What am I thinking, that's just Becky.'
He quickly finishes his shower and looks in the mirror. Again, it's a familiar face but somehow also very different.
"Hmm, Ah, I know."
He goes back into his bedroom, wrapped in a towel and picks up his glasses. Looking back in the mirror, he smiles.
"Much better."
Mark quickly gets dressed and heads downstairs. Since he woke up so early, he feels he might as well make the family breakfast.
An hour passes by, and his wife and two daughters are surprised to see a stack of pancakes and Mark making eggs and bacon. The girls are excited while Becky has a shocked look on her face.
She goes up to Mark and kisses his cheek.
"Oh, wow, what's the occasion. It's been forever since you last cooked."
He smiles at her.
"Just happy and thankful for my life."
They sit down and eat with a smile on their face. The week goes as usual. He goes to work and helps take his daughters to school, He has some charming nights with his wife. Life is perfect.
However, a week passes, and it becomes Saturday again, Mark starts having a nightmare. A nightmare of constant suffering ended by extreme pain. He wakes up in a cold sweat breathing heaving waking up his wife as well.
"Honey, are you ok?"
Becky asked with concern on her face. He looks down towards her and fakes to smile to hide his feelings.
"Yes… I'm fine; it's only a nightmare…"
He stays awake to try to get his mind off the dream, however, it never entirely goes away. Night after night, the nightmare haunts him. Until finally one day, when he arrives home, the place is a mess and his family is missing.
Panicking, he starts to look for clues to what has happened. He starts looking and searching places in ways people would never have thought of. Behind old pictures, inside televisions, on ceiling fans, there was not one space he left unchecked. He searches until he finds a note hidden under the floorboards.
It reads 'Number 23, time to enact the plan.' Suddenly a sharp headache pierces his mind, and he screams in agony. He recognizes these specific events and remembers that this has already happened once before.
He then hears a laugh in his head. The same smile, mocking him and enjoying his suffering; followed by falling unconscious. These sequences of events repeat.
He wakes up with a new face each time. The look can be African, Russian, Asian, Hispanic, it doesn't matter. Each face has a new life, sometimes he's alone in an apartment, sometimes he has a family with children, and even times he is just a son of a single mother.
With each new life, the time before the nightmares occurs become longer and longer. However, they all end the same way. With a note calling for Number 23 followed by a headache with a complete recall for who he is. Then finally, a voice laughing at him, mocking him.
This torture repeats over and over again until finally, the last life occurs. He lives this life for years and is completely absorbed into it. He starts single, finds a girl, marries her, and has an experience of happiness.
That is all until the note finally arrives. The headache this time is intense, far worse than all those before combined. Vara thrashes on the ground-breaking everything he collides into until through a chain reaction a cabinet falls his head. The blow struck him, causing all the memories of the past experiences to flood his mind at once, including the pain from all his nightmares.
He screams in pain as it feels like his body is being ripped to shreds. The pain of having his body infiltrated with chaotic energy and the anguish from all his past lives just becomes too much. As pain, if flooding his body and mind, he yells into the air.
"WHO AM I!?!?!?"
With those words as a trigger, a large snap occurs, and the space around him shatters. Vara's face, which was just wrapped in pain and anguish freezes, before slowing becoming expressionless. His eyes turned blank as if he lost something, something important. Just as he was going to lose complete consciousness, a voice speaks, pulling his soul from the depth of the void.
"Finally, you start to ask the right questions."
A mouth with jagged teeth appears in the air above him, smiling down, with a broad grin.
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