I Am Mr. Hyde

X ♛ 𝕴 𝖍𝖆𝖛𝖊 𝖗𝖊𝖌𝖗𝖊𝖙𝖙𝖊𝖉

I play, I get checkmate. Game over for you, Dimash.

Yesterday's horrific images covered his mind so clearly now that even his eyes couldn't erase them. It was like a horror movie playing on repeat within his head. Out of everything that had happened over the years, this was simply the worst. This had been the last drop. Dimash had entered into a state of utter hopelessness and depression. He had fallen into despair and had no way out.

He had killed a child. One of the kids that had loved him. He had suppressed one innocent smile, destroyed one future. No, not only one but hundreds. It took him long to recover from the first shock.

He was able to recall Tristan and his mother's final moments as if he had killed them himself. Their screams of pain, terror reflecting in their gazes numbed his heart. It repeated many times over, eventually getting the best of him, followed by a feeling of total annihilation. Being deeply shaken to the core, it wouldn't be an easy task to patch up those rifts that had taken years to occur, less time to grow. Lies can only do so much after one had been face-to-face with the omnipresent truth and stared at its ugly, deformed mug.

All the afternoon, Dimash was just moping around in his apartment. The profound void in his heart grew bigger and bigger with each step, making it harder to move on, to keep pushing. The physical pain was unbearable. As if he had been stabbed with the same knife that had ended a child's precious life. A torrent of thoughts swirled around in his head as he tried to fathom the happened. He prayed for a miracle to happen. That this was just a bad dream...

What if I was born normal? How would it feel?

Why am I always grieving for the life I never got?

When Dimash closed his eyes, the sadness came snowballing. In-between the floods it sat heavy on his heart. Real men never cry. They bottle up their feelings. The salty release cleansed his cheeks as it flowed into his mouth so that he could taste his own sorrow. His willpower wasn't enough to stop the tears from falling. Why was everything so hard to bear? Why was he even born like this? What was wrong with him? Why couldn't he just kill Mr. Hyde? Why couldn't he just kill himself? What should he do now?

This is the S.O.S. A soul's plea for help. The man in distress. A song of his own. The lyrics had never felt as true as it felt now.

The only reason Mr. Hyde had saved him was that he would die with him. A bullet in Dimash's skull would be in Hyde's too. A knife in Dimash's flesh would be in Hyde's too. But a crack in Dimash's heart was only, only in Dimash's heart. This inseparable connection between them was truly an unseen phenomenon. And to end that connection, Dimash knew what he had to do.

All of a sudden, he was swept up by an uncalled chain of memories he hadn't revisited in a while. His slender fingers that had been pulling the strings of dombra were the same blood-painted fingers that had cracked someone's neck. Looking at his hands like this, he felt that all this had happened once before. That history had come here to repeat itself.

Déjà vu.

The faces of his grandparents emerged out of nothing, materializing in the form of crystal-clear images in his mind. And he remembered something that would've been better not to become unraveled. The mystery long veiled by the darkness unfolded in front of him, triggering so painful memories that made him land on his knees. How could've he forgotten about that sin?