Blame my Shadow

What You Hide Learns How to Hunt

He didn't see me at first.

He walked toward the water with a body over his shoulder.

The victim was limp.

Unresisting.

Already gone or very close to it.

The moonlight fell across the man's face just enough for me to see the same shadowed eyes I had seen in flashes of my own erased nights.

I tried to move.

My body wouldn't answer.

The pressure in my skull surged violently.

My vision warped.

The edges of the world bent inward.

"What do you want from me?" I tried to say.

But my voice never reached the air.

He lowered the body to the ground with ceremonial calm.

Adjusted the limbs.

Arranged the position.

The same way every crime scene had been staged.

The same patterns.

The same precision.

I watched my nightmare walk outside of my head and commit another act I would later be blamed for.

He turned.

And for a brief moment—

He looked directly at me.

The blackout hit like a loaded gun to the inside of my brain.

When I woke up, I was in my bed.

Morning light filtered weakly through the curtains.

My clothes were clean.

My shoes were gone.

My hands were uninjured.

My body was untouched.

The house was quiet.

Too quiet.

I sat up slowly, heart thudding like something heavy and wet against my ribs.

Every muscle in my body ached the way it only ever does after a blackout.

There was no blood.

No dirt.

No proof.

Only the memory of the lake burning behind my eyes.

Sarah was in the study.

I could tell by the faint sound of pages turning.

Paper.

Case files.

I stood in the doorway and watched her without announcing myself.

She was seated at the desk, surrounded by folders. Timeline charts. Photographs. Notes written in small precise handwriting that made my stomach coil. Her face looked calm. Focused. Controlled.

Not the face of a woman who had just betrayed someone.

Not the face of a woman who had just hugged another man in a rented room.

For a moment, my grief turned into something darker.

Something quiet and lethal.

She turned and noticed me.

Her eyes softened instantly. "Why did you go to the lakeside ?," she said gently.

No guilt.

No fear.

No hesitation.

Perfectly performed concern.

"I just needed some fresh air" I said

"Why didn't you tell me ?" she asked.

I wanted to tell her what I found out that night. I really wanted to, but I couldn't. I can't accept the fact that Sarah...My Sarah would do that to me. 

It's all in my head, right ?

That wasn't true, right ?

My mind replayed the hotel hallway like a wound that wouldn't clot.

The door.

The hug.

The way she had held him.

The same way she once held me.

I nodded slowly.

"I'm too tired to talk" I said.

She stood and crossed the room toward me. "You should rest."

Her hand moved to touch my arm.

I flinched.

Not violently.

Just enough for her to notice.

Her hand froze in the air.

And something unreadable flickered across her face.

That night, the police reported another lakeside murder.

Witnesses described a man matching my silhouette seen near the water just before dawn.

I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at my shaking hands.

Sarah stood in the doorway pretending not to watch me.

And inside my fractured mind, the truth formed into something monstrous and unbearable:

The man who has haunted my blackouts...
The man who commits the murders...
The man Sarah met at the hotel...

They are the same.

And whatever Sarah is hiding—

It now knows how to hunt me.

So does that mean, Sarah is framing me to protect her lover ?

So that guy does all the killing and I take the blame for it..

Sure, Sarah is capable of doing it.

Sarah is working on this case, and she is already manipulating the evidence.

Why ?

She knows I didn't kill anyone, then why ?

I get it now.

That guy and I, we share the same silhouette. We look alike, it would be easy to convince the police that I am the actual killer and he is not.

Wow!! Brilliant!

What if all my blackouts are also induced by her ? I take only medicines prescribed by her.

She knows my childhood trauma, and it would be easy to blame and mentally unstable person as a criminal, my medical condition can vouch for it.