Kill, Love, Repeat

Chapter Quatro

It's a bad dream. A bad dream. I am walking down the streets, I have strange eyes, dark thoughts and only one thing in my mind. To stop that noise I keep hearing and I am getting angrier.

The more I get close to that house, the more intense it is. It is so disgustingly annoying. I must shut it down. I'm almost there. Now the frequency of the noise is faster and louder. I enter the house through the open window from the kitchen and I go to his room. His? How do I know it's a man? I take a knife with me. That noise...that noise is coming from him. He is the fucking noise. What the fuck?

He is sleeping and I watch him sleep. I get closer, but I can't see his face. I smell him and he wakes up. I smile happily now that I can stop the noise. I grab his hair and drag him to the living room. He is saying something but I can't hear him from the noise. I punch his stomach and his mouth. It feels good. So good that I could cry with happiness. I punch him one last time. I keep dragging him to the dining room. And suddenly, a piece of music starts to play. It was the girl with the flaxen hair by Debussy, the same song that Anne would play for me to calm myself down, after an episode. It's relaxing.

Once the music ends, the noise stops as well. I am so relieved.

I go back to the streets, going back home. I clean my hands for some reason, but I can't see why I'm washing my hands, and then I go back to bed. I have been trying to wake up but I can't. I know I am dreaming but I can't get up. I finally woke up, sweating. I look at my hands, but everything looks normal. I realise it's just a nightmare. And I take a deep breath. And try to go back to sleep. I try to.

Five hours later, the alarm goes off. It's time for judo class. After this, I hit the gym. I start punching the punch bag. Flashes from my nightmare climb through my mind and I hit the bag harder and harder until I get exhausted, my knuckles hurt but I keep going. I'm having a bad feeling about something but I don't know why. The news on the TV at the gym is on. The headline is "Third young male killed at night in his home." I have my earphones on with music so I read the reporter's lips. "His throat was slit with a knife from his kitchen. This is the second murder this month. The authorities are suspecting that it could be a serial killer." 

The dead guy on the TV, I had seen him at the hotel, had I not? He is the guy who likes to watch young women when they are changing in high school and universities in their changing room, he photographs them and masturbates. Any place where women would change, he would be there, taking pictures. The day he told me, I almost broke his nose. I ended up recording his confession and I alerted the detective to deal with the jackass. He even spied on his neighbour, who is just twelve years old. All of these, he confessed to me with just one drink. He was disturbing. He kept bragging about his "art". What I couldn't stand was his comments on how he described women as objects. What a disgusting man. I thought he would go to jail for it. I bet he got a big-ass lawyer to get him out. Well, I guess karma decided to intervene.

I choose to go see my neurologist. But as I'm waiting, I get this chill, as it is a bad idea to go in. As I enter I get more nervous, because I am afraid of what Bracken could say and what is happening to me while I  sit. "Miss Char, how lovely to see you again. I haven't heard from you in a while. How is it going?" says Doctor Stefano Bracken to me. I hate it when he calls me that.

I fake smiled and responded: "Good".

"So, why are you here, then? Not that I'm complaining. It's just that, you usually don't come for checkups, unless I stalk you over the phone to come." By that, he means that when I got into foster care, the social care worker from my case, Patricia Mendoza, forced me to get help. I had therapists, and neurologists due to the injury that Hakim did to me in my head. If I had refused, my life could have been worse. So I was in between hospitals for brain injury and rooms like Anne's for some time now.