Chapter Forty-One

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The faceless man I had been 'employed' by for the better portion of my teen-and-adulthood worked in strange ways.

In one moment, he could be there, standing before me, his words echoing in my mind. His degrading words, constant irate behavior, and ability to fully clear any thoughts of my own from my head and replace them with only the ones he wanted was draining.

Though, this time, it had been a bit more interesting than draining.

I was sitting against the wall adjacent Jeff's bloodied corpse, allowing my thoughts and tics to take full control of my mind and body. I was alone, desperately grabbing into a void of darkness for an ounce, even a single shred, or light to pull me back to reality. But what really was reality? It was exactly what I made it. 

If I wanted to be Tobias Erin Rogers, husband to (Name) with a baby on the way, I could be. We were supposed to be at an appointment with a realtor to close in on a home for the two of us, the third on the way, in only a few minutes. We had been together since we were teenagers; she had rescued me from an assured death should I have went through with my original plan of ridding myself and my mother of the degenerate I had the displeasure of calling my father. Had I not told her, I surely would have died in the fire I planned to set in my childhood home.

Except, she didn't save me. She didn't even know me when I was a teenager. And I wasn't Tobias Erin Rogers.

My true identity was pulled to the front of my mind as well as my true, factual reality when ear-piercing static vibrated through the shell of my ear, down into the ear canal, and finally, dangerously rattled into my eardrums.

He was here, and he wasn't happy.

I could feel his eyeless stare fixed on me; the sound of him grew higher in pitch the longer he glared down at me. He knew I couldn't feel physical pain, but he had powers beyond physical tangibility. His need to cause me pain sunk deep into my skull, rewiring my brain in order to forcibly enable my nerves to receive it in full force. I could almost feel wires in my brain disconnecting and reattaching somewhere as he re-wired me in his strange, incomprehensible way.

You've dealt me a hand in the suit of disrespect, Tobias.

His temple-shattering noise trickled from deep within my eardrums into the nerves beneath my very skin; my body was engulfed in searing, red hot flames.

I had made my bed, and now, I had to lie in it. I was more than allowed to punish an associate if it was within bounds; murdering one with an axe over a woman I hadn't even had a conversation with definitely wasn't included within that right.

You allowed him to not only disrespect you for far too long, but myself as well. Why is one of my proxies not only allowing such blatant disregard for authority, but taking part in it himself?

Snaking its way from beneath my skin, it trailed its scorching path up into my veins and pulsed behind my eyes, pulsed from deep within my teeth, beginning to blacken its way into my fingertips.

"Make it fucking stop!"

A hand that was not my own harshly grabbed at my hair, making sure to grab more than a fistful as he used it as leverage to firmly thrust my head back into the wall. The awakened nerves throughout my body felt every bit of the hit.

But the great thing about not having to feel pain was that if by some chance, I did start to feel it, I could completely block it out.

My vision, tickled black around the edges, was littered with hundreds of tiny stars. Though they only shone down on me dimly, they shone nonetheless.

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