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?
Head full of small explosions one after another, nausea hit him as like a tidal wave. A token of his wickedness. The ordeal and dread of his victims. All freshly setting on his mind. Mr. Hyde had somehow crossed the border of their mind again and sent that one unremembered memory pulsating through his nervous system. The real reason why his grandparents died.
It was... me who killed them, he thought, eyes running. I suffocated them with a pillow on the night of my eighteenth birthday. They never died naturally. Dimash sniffed and bent over, letting out an animal howl. Any spark of hope of a bloodless atonement he had been harboring went up in smoke, vanished in thin air.
It boiled down to one thing, one sentiment; this was the time when the light had died.
The hundred tears he cried helped the grass to grow.
The thousands of blood drops he drained left the souls astray.
But the pain he felt would only erode.
Hyde's presence felt even more intense than before, filled with derision. He even had the gall to speak ill of Dimash's loved ones. Look at you now, Dimash. Poor thing. How weak and pathetic you are. Tough life has left its marks on you, hasn't it? You remind me of the boy I killed yesterday... You know how loud he screamed?
Fuck you, Dimash responded. Fuck you and every inch of you.
That's a proper way to put it considering we share each one of those inches. But even his normally unrivaled sarcasm lacked its usual bite.
Something caught Dimash's attention from the corner of his eye. The window in his bedroom hung slightly ajar, calling out his name in whispers louder than the faraway din. Silky white curtains were barely brushing the wooden floor, putting Dimash into something akin to the trance. He stood up slowly, suddenly feeling completely calm. This grief had sneaked up on him but he could put an end to it immediately. At the best of times, he had never been this prepared for the evident.
Mr. Hyde had seemed to go through the same state of enlightenment because fright could now be discerned from his shrill voice: Dimash, you thought you could get away from me that easily?
Dimash didn't reply. He just approached the window growing more and more resolve the more Hyde failed to hide his apprehension. Don't you dare. I command you to stop, Dimash. That's leading nowhere. But his words seemed to have the exact opposite effect on Dimash.
At that moment, seeing his own reflection on the window glass he understood the depth of pain that had been sitting below his skin. The dark side of his personality was his reflection in the mirror laughing at him with a dark, evil, sinister, frightening and demonic laugh. That mockery no longer needed to be sustained. He could end it all here and now.
When you grow to hate this place, there's nothing else left. He was almost out of the window, seeing the traffic jam below his feet from the 20th floor. There was a mix of emotions surging through his body. He identified feelings of fear, sadness, and relief as he measured the distance between him and the ground. How long would the fall take? How long would he suffer before hitting the ground? How much would it hurt?
There was no way to stop Mr. Hyde. The only thing he could take to the grave with him was his pride in facing the death like a man. Mr. Hyde didn't want to die. Neither wanted Dimash. But what else was there for him?
Dimash, Mr. Hyde said. Don't be stupid. Climb back to safety so that we can straighten these things out.
I have nothing to say to you. Except for one thing. Fuck off.
The door behind his back cracked open and he felt skinny arms grabbing his waist and harshly pulling him back to safety, back to the ongoing torture and nightmare. A pleasant scent of perfume surrounded him and he recognized it immediately. Layla.
They collided and fell onto the floor in a heap of limbs, Dimash ending up getting a protest from his aching muscles. There was a heavy weight on his chest hindering his breathing and pinning him to the horizontal plane. The girl shifted a bit so that she could lock her vivid eyes of brown hue with Dimash's. Her most unique and beautiful attribute.
"L-L-Layla?" Dimash managed to stutter out despite his voice shaking beyond control. "H-how?
Layla was groping her pockets for a moment. "You gave me your keys, remember?" she said while holding the keys on his eye level. The key chain that represented the turquoise flag of Kazakhstan lolled in front of him and the golden sun that was carved in it made his eyes hurt. The lush, sunny homeland of his that he had turned his back to. He took in the feeling of deep longing. But that was nothing compared to the relief he felt.
"N-no. You're a-alive." Layla was alive. Alive. She was breathing, she was blinking, she was living. Her heart hadn't stopped its beating halfway, nor had her brain shut down with a pull of a switch. He thought she had died.
"Of course I am", Layla replied with a surprised voice. Her expression along with the body language then changed suddenly, resorting to the only approach Dimash could make of in a situation like this. "And what the hell were you doing?!"
Dimash swallowed, bashful at being caught off-guard. "I-I want to die."
"You can go and die for all I care", she sneered. "When you are eighty years old or something."
He shook his head as they sat up. "No... Mr. Hyde... H-he's stronger now. I can't control him. You have to leave. Please."
"So that you could kill yourself? No way."
"...Why do you even care about me?"
"Because I know what it feels like to give up on everything important. Trust me", Layla whispered heavy-heartedly and Dimash saw the girl who lost her ability to fulfill herself musically because of a car accident that happened years ago. "And this time I'm not letting you go."
Again, she had made a simple thing complex. "I don't deserve that..."
"You are not a bad guy, Dimash."
"The irony."
"I'm serious", Layla said firmly. She cupped her hand under Dimash's chiseled jawline lifting his head and forcing him to look at her. Her searching gaze wandered over his features that had met with utter perplexity. "By the way, what happened? You look like you were crying."
"Nothing", Dimash reassured positioning himself in a way that implied he refused to show any opening in his defense. "I never cry." Did I say that to convince her or myself? He didn't want to cry, he was supposed to be strong. He couldn't cry. If he allowed himself to be weak, Mr. Hyde would use that as an advantage to slither into his mind.
Out of the blue, a new rush of water trickled down his cheeks. He couldn't hold back his tears when something broke inside him. Dying of embarrassment, he buried his face into Layla's black shirt. The girl had never worn black before. Almost as though she had been mourning Tristan and his mother's passing, too. Her lap was as comfortable as an old shoe, bringing up hazy memories from his past.
Layla mumbled something to comfort him. In danger of losing his voice, Dimash remained silent. He wanted to pour out his heart to someone but he couldn't. He couldn't tell Layla that Tristan was dead. Being still in denial, he himself couldn't believe it either.
He didn't know how long they stayed like this, fingers interlocked and shoulders resting against each other. The tireless ticks of clock resonated in the dead silence, inky shadows growing longer and creeping up the corners of the room with each passing second.
"Dimash?" Layla whispered when she could no longer hear his heart-wrenching sobs of grief. She resumed the act of fondling his dark hair lovingly yet less intimately.
Suddenly, Dimash shrank away from her in disgust, covering his face. "Don't touch me." Snuffling and shoulders jiggling, he slowly raised his gaze to her. It took a split second for Layla to grasp mentally the sudden change on him. There were no signs of tiredness on his satiny white skin. Those glowing eyes and that malevolent grin looked weird on Dimash, they didn't belong to his face.
"Not anymore", he laughed like a maniac. It sounded like a dog barking. "I am Mr. Hyde "
//Don't be afraid of pointing out any mistakes so that I can improve. Sometimes I get a headache when I have to decide about the usage of a certain word in the context. Hopefully, my text is still understandable.//