Prologue
Life holds infinite possibilities and mysteries for all its children. A grand plan that’s been laid out for every living being. Mankind is the only one that desperately tries to forge its own path, spiraling ever towards an uncertain future. A desire that has died and been reborn as many times as humans themselves.
Through all of these different pathways of life that correlate with each other, a new course is set. Following along one of these endless circles of rebirth, a young man finds himself facing the abyss of his inner self. Setting the gears in motion for what will, once more, shake the world to its very core.
“Why does it always have to end this way?” he whispered, the moonlight illuminating his worn-out body through the large cracks in the chapel roof, while two giant moons towered above the building.
Struggling to keep his voice from whimpering, he looked upon his shaking hands, which held a large metal pole that was stuck into something he couldn't quite make out.
“So many things that could've happened, and yet I still wish for it to finally have an end. To be free from this torment of my own fate,” he said in a broken voice as he desperately sniffed his snot back into his nose.
Even though he was awake, it almost felt like he was in a trance, not remembering the past hours at all. His vision was clouded. The only thing he could feel was his shaking hands, clenching onto the metal pole and the resistance he felt at the end coming from a strange silhouette, seemingly sitting in front of him.
In his mind, he suddenly began to hum the melody of an old music box that took his inner self back to a time where he still felt at peace with the world and himself. A time before he started his absurd journey in search of truth, freedom, and answers. A journey that ultimately led him to feel the greatest despair he'd ever felt, which in turn demanded its price.
“Such a tragically beautiful melody.” He held his breath for a second
“Just this once I want to decide on my own.” He finally said after he finished humming.
“Where did I go wrong? What did I do to deserve such a cruel fate? Maybe all we really are comes down to a failed experiment from God or fate itself.” Irritated by his own confused thoughts, he swept his hand across his sweat-covered face. Completely wiping over the swollen eyes stemming from his lack of sleep, the deep cuts around his cheeks, which already began to form into numerous scars, and his muddy, unkempt hair.
In his dazed state, he unconsciously recognized the silhouette in front of him.
“Don't you have something to say to that as well, my dear wife?” he asked, weary from trying to adjust his blurred vision.
“I hope you've not forgotten what we came here for, have you, my old friend Lohka? The only reason that truly matters in our irrelevant existence.” A familiar voice whispered from behind the man's back, lurking in the shadows of the chapel.
“Freedom.” Lohka obediently muttered to himself.
“Looks like you're finally ready,” the gleeful sounding voice answered him, as the man slowly came to realize what was going on.
As if waking up from a terrible nightmare, his eyes unwillingly started to focus, twitching in terror as he perceived the situation unfolding before him. It truly was his beloved wife sitting there, handcuffed, kneeling and crying. The shining metal pole stuck in her mouth, which he himself rammed into her.
“It's time, Lohka. Cut yourself off from everything, and you can finally be free,” the voice spoke to him again, while a little chuckle followed its words. “I truly wish there was another way, but you know this world doesn't honor any half-assed efforts.”
Lohka’s hands trembled but didn’t let go of the pole. The moaning from his wife echoed loud and clear through the ruins of the unsettling building.
“Don't beg for mercy. You're the one forcing me to go through all this.” His eyes swelled with tears. “If I don't cut myself off from you, I will never escape this world.”
His wife, incapable of moving more than an inch, desperately tried to free herself, before eventually falling sideways with the pole following her, almost piercing through her cheeks.
“I'm truly sorry, Sygyn. For all of this. For all my failures. For all that I've become and never was, which ultimately brought this down upon us,” he whispered in sorrow.
Sygyn slowly closed her teary eyes and, almost as if Lohka was touched by this moment, he pulled the pole out of her mouth.
“I still love you,” she uttered with all the remaining strength she had left.
Hearing these words was the final breaking point for Lohka.
His mind in pieces and his body trembling in despair, he stuttered
“I-I lo-love y-you, too, b-but if I d-don't fors-sake all that I-I've ever l-loved…”
“Shhh,” Sygyn stopped Lohka mid-sentence with her soothing voice, almost as if she was ready to accept her fate.
“As if you knew what I'm going through, just like every time when I wasn't sure what to do,” he recited as his lips curved upward, with his face covered in tears
“This is my biggest regret, and still, being able to receive your love one last time is the greatest gift I could've ever been given,” he whispered in afterthought, just as he was ready to strike.
A loud, helpless scream followed that was instantaneously silenced as the metal pole pierced Sygyn’s skull, leaving behind a lifeless body, lying in its own puddle of blood.
The woman he loved for almost his entire life - slain by his own two hands. Just for one reason, and one reason alone – his own freedom.
"Finally, it's over." he thought, believing that every second was driving him deeper and deeper into insanity. His knees weakened, and he fell to the ground surrounded by the blood of his wife that slowly encompassed him. Every heartbeat made Lohka feel like he was about to burst. In pain and despair, he crawled into a fetal position, as he eventually came to realize something important.
“I-I'm-...-I'm still here.”
A slow, sarcastic clap rattled through the walls of the old stone chapel. Overcome with terror, he panicked and checked his surroundings, like a deer about to be shot by a skilled hunter.
“Superb, old champ, superb.” He recalled the voice from before. The clapping stopped, and a creature ominously stepped into the moonlight. Standing before him was a figure, thin but tall, covered in a dark cowl and something that seemed to resemble a metal object, reflecting some of the moonlight on its chin. A presence that felt human and inhuman alike. The fierce gaze of purple eyes looked down upon Lohka as if to gobble his whole body up in one single glance. All of his worst fears had been turned into reality.
“WHY AM I STILL HERE?” he screamed at the top of his lungs.
“Whew, finally that's done with, right?” the creature answered. “I honestly didn't think you'd have to guts to go through with it, but look at you go – elbowing through the dirt like a real champ.”
“ANSWER ME! YOU PROMIS--”
The creature’s joyful laughter interrupted him.
“You still don't get it, do you? This is no nightmare. This world is just as real as yours. There is no simple way ‘out’.”
Lohka’s body collapsed as he succumbed to the increasingly unbearable pounding of his heart. Every ounce of strength he had mere seconds ago vanished, as if his body said, he should give up right this instant.
“You fool. You really believed that I was your friend? That I would help you out of the kindness of my own heart?” the creature added. Lohka paled, as he was no longer able to grasp the situation in his mental state.
“Was all of this my fault? Is this my end?” he said in a monotonous, lifeless voice.
“It must've really hurt to kill the only person that ever truly loved you,” the figure said with a spiteful smile as his
long, powerful legs were trampling on Sygyn's lifeless body, grinding her into the cold stone floor.
“Nothing matters anymore...”, Lohka whispered apathetically, catching the creature’s attention, while he pulled something from his back pockets.
“Ho?! Maybe I've misjudged you, old pal,” it said, as Lohka drew a small dagger. Though, to its disappointment, just as its eyes started to widen from excitement, Lohka put the blade onto his neck and slit his own throat.
“Hmpf, pitiful and worthless after all,” it remarked.
“Is this farce finally done?” another voice resounded from the bottom of the creature’s feet.
“Yes. You have my gratitude, Lord Envy.”
Suddenly the corpse below him started to twitch and buckle itself up again until it transformed into the body of another man, who quickly escaped from the light of the two moons.
“Good - It took you long enough. After all, there are more important matters to attend to,” the man hissed from the shadows.
“For a Lord, you really make for a great sacrificial lamb. Even I almost fell for your performance,” the creature laughed as he wiped the blood from his black leather shoes.
“What are you implying?! I don't' think I have to remind you who you belong to, Setsu?” he casually mentioned.
“Alright, alright. Just stop calling me by that name,” the creature with the purple eyes answered apologetically. “It’s finally done. Now that I’ll be reborn, I can finally be free.”
“Thyhyhi, so it really is true. You're still here in one piece after all.
Unbelievable. I only heard stories, but never witnessed it with my own eyes”, it echoed with surprise from the dark “I'm truly excited to see what a reborn aspect is truly capable of,” Envy chuckled.
“I know the Akeyanaru still have their doubts, but you will soon realize, that I will prove myself. This is what every one of us lusts after – the materialization of our own existence!”
Abruptly a burning circle made out of ash and ember formed around the corpse of Lohka and a black ray of light shot into the night sky, which almost destroyed the remaining ruins of the old chapel.
“What happens next?” Envy asked with a smile on his face.
“I'm not entirely sure either, but one thing is for certain. This will be a new era for our world and the naive world of mankind alike,” hysterical laughter followed and resounded through the cracks of the cavernous walls of the deteriorated building, losing itself in the endless night, until nothing but silence remained.
Chapter 1 – A day like any other
“I'll start tomorrow, this time for sure.” A sigh escaped a young man, slouched over at his work desk. “Furthermore, I'm quite tired. Everyone needs a break from time to time, right? I'm sure, starting tomorrow everything will be different, and my brilliant mind will shine as bright as the sun,” he muttered to himself, followed by another sigh.
The wearied man sat in his home office on his old, wooden stool, his empty gaze staring upon the white paper sheets in front of him. After a moment of silence, he jumped up, knocking over the chair, and a loud, growling noise roamed through the apartment “AARRRGHH,” he screamed in agony, his fingers tugging at his unkempt brown hair.
“What the hell is wrong with me?! I've told him a million times that I'm not cut out for this. 'Do it for the children,' he said. 'It's a guaranteed success,' he said. But he never mentioned that writing a children's book is such an impossible task. As if that would make me feel any less worthless…” He tucked his arms behind his head and took a deep breath.
Silence returned to the otherwise lively apartment. A little lamp that he had kept since childhood reflected off the empty pages, taunting him, as though making fun of his shortcomings.
Just as he felt the rage taking over, he overheard the usual knocking from the ceiling, coming from his upstairs neighbors, who tried to discreetly signify that it's already past nighttime peace. This happened so regularly in the past few weeks that he could anticipate the number of times being knocked.
“It's frustrating how someone can lie this much to himself,” he murmured, alone in his room, as if someone or something would listen to his rationalizations.
Meanwhile, the sun was already setting in front of his window and immersed the room into a red-yellow veil.
“Another day in paradise, huh? Another day with the exact same thoughts as yesterday,” he moaned as he picked up the wooden stool from the ground.
“I cannot possibly be the only one, can I? Every day I wake up with memories of the grandiose words from yesterday, where I proclaimed all my wrongdoings and that I will change everything. And then I wake up. Not one ounce of my enthusiasm remains and when nighttime rolls around I realize once again, that I haven't done a single worthwhile thing,” he whispered hopelessly, as he nervously picked at his white shirt and blue jeans.
Lost in thought, scratching the stubbles of his beard, he patrolled in his office, all while talking to himself.
“Tsk, who am I exactly trying to impress anyway? I always thought myself as above average, though reality doesn't seem to work in my favor,” he said as his eyes wandered once again to his desk where the empty sheets were waiting for him.
“Go ahead. Make fun of me. Nobody ever said life was going to be easy, but I'm starting to think I'm just not cut out for it.”
His steps began to widen as he walked over the parquet floor, past the couch in the middle of the stuffy room, that he lovingly called his home-office. The further he got away from his working desk, the more every step needed to be thought through. Because the further he moved on, the more the ground was littered with notes, slips of paper, and half-finished manuscripts. He had long forgotten their exact contents or why they laid there, but he knew precisely where to put his feet and when he had to pull up his legs to never touch any of it ever again.
"If I don't touch it, I don't have to deal with it," he always thought when he lurched past it. With spread legs and an awkward walk he finally reached the kitchen and went straight to the can of coffee, which stood directly next to a mountain of unfinished dishes. He noticed the missing weight from the can, and just as he turned it upside down, he caught a glimpse of the last drop falling to the ground.
“Ugh, empty. Why is the coffee always empty?! Today is one of those days,” with another groan he strolled back to the working room and threw himself, in all of his grace, onto the couch, and its upholstery.
“I can't concentrate without coffee anyway. Let's see what the TV's got going for me. At this point I can't be any more unproductive than I already was, can I?” His peace of mind seemed to return a little as he uttered these words. “One more day won't change a thing. I still have so much time. I'm still young and brimming with energy.”
With a deep grip into the cushions, he found the remote and dusted off the dust-particles in search for the first best channel he could stumble upon.
“.. a tragic incident, don't you think, doctor?” a feminine voice blared out of the TV screen.
“Indeed. Researchers around the globe started to research this phenomenon even more in-depth since that day,” a much older man with receding hairline, and a white coat started to chip in. “You could argue that it wasn't the first time such an incident occurred, and they would be right, my dear Linda. Though the way this case horrified the civilians of this small town, and the following media attention, helped that even the medical field started to show somewhat of an interest in the topic. Quite the jump from before, I'd have to admit,” he ranted as if the sound of his voice was a God-given gift to the world.
“Why do I even watch such garbage? Sometimes I believe I'm the one at fault here,” commented the young man, who tried to turn off the television, but slumped back down in a half-hearted attempt of standing up.
“Ladies, and Gentleman, once more we cover the tragic events of a young couple, which found its misfortune too early. Everything began today, on the 12th of October, ten years ago,” the host of
the show explained in a screechy and conceited voice.
“I could almost believe you weren't dishonest right now,” added the shiftless figure between the couch cushions. “But maybe I shouldn't be one to judge,” he added as the program went on.
“In all of my time as a specialist I've never seen something so unreasonable traumatic”, a new person emerged from the audience and gave his opinion. From there the show would continuously find new ways to introduce new assumptions and eyewitnesses, which increasingly lost their relevance by the minute. Like the chirping of crickets, their words echoed through the young man's head and left through the opposite ear in which they came. The interviewed people where shown one after another, almost without pause.
“I believe she was also pregnant, wasn't she?! Something important like that should've been mentioned way earlier.”
“In the end, all of us seek a sense of acceptance, right? Who knows why.”
“Those poor fellas. They seemed to be so perfect for each other.”
“Well, the only thing I knew, was that they were a couple in their early thirties.”
For a change the host of the show rose to speak. “How would you explain this case Dr. Swanyslav?” She hastily gave the microphone to yet another man in the audience, who tried his best not to storm the stage to present his humble opinion.
“Thanks, Linda,” he said after impatiently receiving a microphone. “After accumulating all of the facts we all came to the same conclusion. It had to have been a multiple personality disorder, which was asymptomatic in both of the victims,” he said while adjusting his glasses. “Both individuals lead a quiet life and were never reported by the police, neighbors or their family. It was a huge shock for the little community of this town. Such an incident feels inconceivable to have occurred so suddenly without any prior hints.” His nose wrinkled up. “That's why they started to speculate about a psychological disorder in this example. Both seemed to be just your average, everyday person, but no one noticed what was going underneath.”
My Insanity Page 1
