This time I'm awake in the police headquarters and almost feeling pain everywhere. I look around me and everyone is lying on the ground. I can't believe I hurt all of these people. I'm finding it hard to breath, but as soon as I'm okay, I scream "fuck!".
There is no way I did this, right? All by myself? I try to walk but I feel an intense pain in my shoulder. It feels awful. I suspect I dislocated my shoulder. I remember once a doctor helped me to fix my dislocated shoulder when I was younger. I take a deep breath, I hold a cloth in my mouth and try to pop it back into its place.
I feel so tired already. I feel like sleeping. But I can't. I need to find him. I just hope he's not dead. So I try to pass by the unconscious bodies and I log into one of their computers and I search for Felix. I found out he's alive. I teared up a little and I memorized the hospital he was in. On my way, I call an ambulance and I exit the horrible place from the back. I could have checked the cameras and erased them. But, what's the point anyway? They remember my face and they might think Felix was helping me somehow.
I need to fix this. I can't but keep beating myself emotionally with memories of everything bad I've done. As I do so, I manage to take a cab run to the hospital and find Felix. I arrive at the hall and I stop in front of his room. Something is keeping my hand from opening the door. I thought maybe I was nervous about seeing him after what I did to him. I take a deep breath and I open the door. I remove the curtain and I don't see him. I'm confused and someone behind me tried to touch my shoulder. I hold her hand and turn.
"Anne? What the fuck are you doing here? How did you find me?" I'm running some theories in my mind but none of them looks realistic.
"My dear Charlotte. How have I missed the real you." She hugs me and I let her. I can't believe she's here. It's been so long. For one second I almost forgot what she just said.
"The real me? what do you mean? And have you seen my...uh detective Felix Avery?" I don't know if I should mention I'm a cold murderer who almost killed her boyfriend.
"He's gone, dear. Probably for the best."
"What?" Anne looks strange to me right now. She seems different.
"Charlotte. We have to go before they come looking for you here."
"How did you know I was here? And if you were in England, why did you call me? I've been looking for you for a long time and you just showed up here?" she's quiet for a few seconds, and then she looks at me.
"We have to go now." she reaches for my hand but I reject her.
"What the fuck is going on?"
She takes a deep breath and starts to step back. "I had a plan. A wonderful plan. Everything was going perfectly until you met this imbecile. Aren't you proud of all the work you've been doing, Mercury?"
"Did I do this, to everyone? Was it really me? I don't understand. How do you know all of this shit?"
"I helped you. With the killings, I mean" she smiles like she's shy.
"What did you do?" Before realising it, I started stepping back like the person who I'm seeing right now isn't who she's saying.
"It's okay. I know you are scared, but there isn't any reason. This has been always you since you left. And you are amazing. You are strong, precise and with so much anger. The pills, work better on you than anyone. Don't you see, sweetheart? This is your destiny. Not some stupid men you met at the bar you work."
She knows everything, the men I have been with, Felix, my house. Everything. Felix was right the day I attacked him. Ann did this to me. But why? I've been speechless for a long time. I try to swallow and try to speak but it comes in a broken voice. "So these pills are making me kill people when I fall asleep? You have been experimenting on me? This is messed up. What else have you been fucking hiding?"
"Watch your mouth, Charlotte", she holds my face. But then, something came to my mind.
"Please tell me I didn't kill Theresa", if I did then I wouldn't be able to forgive myself. I wouldn't be able to look at Felix in the eyes.
"You have nothing to worry about. I made it look like a suicide. I just hated her attitude. She kept saying no to being part of the experiment, a part of the future generation. I did everything to convince her but I had no choice but to use you."
"You were quite smaller back then so she was able to fight you. I found her and I finished the job. It felt good, to be honest, you may not want to hear this, but it's the truth. I couldn't hear her voice anymore nor her smile. She was annoying, Charlotte. You knew that, didn't you? I needed teenagers who were pretty traumatized enough by their families or society. But even with that, she wanted to be good and help people. That's just ridiculous..." she scoffs and starts to get angry at her memories "If someone hurts you, you take them an eye!" she says angrily, squeezing her nails inside her.
The last twenty-four hours have made me want to stay in bed and never move from there. Now I know why this was happening to me. I thought I was crazy.
"But why did you need people harming, aren't you a doctor? What does "do no harm" mean to you, huh?" I take my tears back in and say with certainty: "I don't know you. I never did. You have destroyed your life since you met me. And for what? Huh? Tell me!" I grab the scissors from the table and point at her.
"I made you stronger Charlotte, you have to believe me. I did it for you, you are like a daughter to me. And I couldn't stand how men were treating you. Us. And I was supposed to send you to the facility but I let you leave and stay here. I wanted to help you protect yourself from them. They all deserve what's coming."
"What facility? Do you have more like me in like a lab or something?"
"Something like that." She sounds very proud of her trafficking teenagers' experiment.
"Unbelievable... You are a monster. How many kids have you taken away from their freedom?
"I just do my job, dear. It's none of my business how many they use. We had to do all of these things. Besides we only took kids that were abandoned, sick or traumatized by the world."
"So that's all kids from the entire country. What kind of psycho organization kidnaps kids to kill people in their sleep?"
"You are wrong about some things, but I'm not telling you more about this. It's none of your business. You are free from them. I made a deal for you. But, it won't matter if you stay here. The cops are coming. We need to leave now. Please."
I almost forgot that I came here looking for Felix. But now, I don't see him. I'm wondering what the hell did she do to Felix. "Felix. Where is he? What did you do to him?"
"Are you joking? Why are you still hanging out with this boy? Stop this nonsense and get out."
"Stop acting like a mother to me and tell me, right now where he is. The mother role doesn't suit you at all. My mother was a sweet angel, too fragile for this earth. You have nothing to do with her". My chest starts to feel heavier and it's hard to breathe. I wonder why. I can't even hold the scissors anymore, so I drop them. As Anne sees this, she helps me lay down in the bed and looks at my chest.
"Sweetheart, you had this wound in your chest this whole time? What did they do to you? You poor thing." I want to reject her offer of healing me but I'm too damn weak. So suddenly.
"You...you didn't kill him, right?" I ask with a lot of pain, physically and emotionally. I miss him already.
"I wanted to, so much. He knew almost everything about me. But I knew what he meant to you so I let him go."
"Where is he?"
"That I don't know. But he's fine. He's... alive. Don't worry too much."
There is silence between us for a while. I look at her and I can't believe the things she said. It's hard to believe that my therapist is the reason I'm in this situation in the first place.
I wait a few more minutes, because I'm hesitating whether to ask the question or not. "Why did you pick me to kill all these men?"
"Charlotte, what we do is a beautiful thing, almost artistic. Men have always had the upper hand in everything. And we both felt the same way towards them. Treating us like objects, using us and then making us feel inferior for some reason. We bring life into the world and we are the inferiors? It hurt so much when I..." Anne stops. I can see in her face that she went through hell and she's in pain. But still, this is wrong. So wrong. "This is our message to the world" she goes on.
"That you are psycho, killing men? The message is loud and clear".
"We women can do anything we want, and if they get in our way, well you know what's coming."
I was about to add something else but we hear voices and we see police officers speaking to the nurses. I see Anne trying to grab something to harm them. "You are not killing these men."
"Fine, let's go." We manage to escape, by dressing as cleaners and we exit the hospital. Anne takes me inside the car and she drives towards my house. "Aren't we supposed to be hiding? Staying here is the opposite of it.
"They already searched the house, the last place they would be looking for you is here, 'cause a criminal never returns to the same place twice. But this is just for now".
"I'm a criminal because of you."
"You were already one before you met me. A killer even. Children learn how to make friends, but you were already fighting for your life. That's why I chose you. You were the strongest one. We can change the world for a better place."
"Not this way, Anne. Killing innocent people will make it worse."
"The men you dated were personal. You shouldn't be with anyone. They will end up betraying you anyway."
As I come in, it doesn't look like my home anymore. It looks like a crime scene. Which it is. No sign of Felix nor my dog.
"What do these pills do? And why is that when I stopped using them is when I started having nightmares and everything?"
"When I was younger like you now, a team at university started studying electroencephalography and as the study went in the fifties, the waves from the brain slowed down. So I thought, why not use this opportunity when humans are sleeping to make them move without them knowing." She sounds so excited.
"You know like when they are in movement with their eyes and muscle movement. You know how babies do some reflexes when they are sleeping? Well, I took that as an advantage and it was amazing. I increased their wave on their brain and it felt like they were suffering from somnambulism. I was able to control them without them knowing. They were asleep. They couldn't remember anything. Remarkable, isn't it? The other drug was like giving them a little more strength.
"In a way of speaking, these "sleeping" pills keep your brain from being active through your sleep."
"What about me? I stopped taking them. And I kept delivering bodies everywhere for you."
"This is why you are special. I operated on you once." I look at her confused. When did she have a chance to see my inside brain? What the fuck?
"During those fights with Jack and the others. They left you unconscious for a while. So I studied your brain. You were my great discovery. Because you have alexithymia, it was so much easier manipulating the waves on your brain. I began with hypnosis throughout music. That's why I kept playing that song. For other people when they sleep, they are only moving eyes and some muscles."
"What else did you do to me?" What else is she hiding? I've never been scared like this. She looks at the window, quiet. Pretending she didn't hear me.
"What else, Anne?" I get mad, "this is just the beginning of opening the Pandora box."
"You will learn everything at the right moment. For now, let's stay together here. We leave tomorrow.
This is an awkward situation, I am hiding from the cops with apparently a therapist who has always been a psychopath, in my house where I used to live with my boyfriend who by the way, I almost fought him to death. I don't even know where my dog is. When did I become so unlucky? I hate myself right now. Everything would be so much better if I wasn't here. If I didn't exist, the man that I love, wouldn't be in this situation. I have never felt this way before. What am I going to do?
I'm so tired, very tired. It's been a long day. I need to sleep but I shouldn't. What if she controls me? I look at her, wanting to stab her in her heart. How can she sleep in this situation?
"Relax Charlotte, you clearly need some rest so just sleep. I won't do anything to you now. You are safe with me." Safe is the last thing that I am with her, but my body is betraying me and I can't help but close my eyes.