Dating : Inner Demons: Part 2

A week had passed when Tim, driving back from South Avenue Park, heard another grisly murder being reported on the radio. The victim had been killed last night and signs of rape were also confirmed. Mildly intrigued, Tim stopped outside a gas station to listen more.

…….THE VICTIM’S NAME WAS LAURA BROWN. WHILE THE POLICE HAVE REFUSED TO DIVULGE ALL DETAILS, IT’S BEING REPORTED THAT 30-YEAR-OLD LAURA WAS STRANGLED TO DEATH. REPORTEDLY, THE KILLER ALSO RAPED HER PRIOR TO ENDING HER LIFE WITH HIS BARE HANDS. THIS GRUESOME INCIDENT WAS REPORTED NEAR LAKE CANAVERAL OUTSIDE THE CITY. THE VICTIM’S BODY WAS FOUND IN AN ABANDONED RENTAL CAR AND WAS CALLED IN BY SOME PASSERS-BY. WE ALSO HAVE……….

Tim froze in place. His hands were crushing the steering wheel and his face had convulsed into a dumbfounded, absent stare. Was this real? What did I just hear? This was impossible…. No, it was UNREAL, he thought. Once again, the grisly details of the murder were a word-to-word match for the fate he had thought of for Laura Brown. Down to the exact lake which he had written about in his notebook. Unable to think any longer, Tim drove like a maniac to his apartment, rushed up the stairs, ran to his bed and yanked the cardboard box from under the bed. There it was, his blue-covered notebook.

It’s safe, it’s here….it’s always been here. Could someone have looked at it when I was at work or outside the park? But… WHO? Why??…. Who would want to kill them both?……Someone wronged by both of them?….But then why would the murders happen exactly like I had thought of?…… Was it…….ME? Was it really me who did this?……But why wouldn’t I remember any of it?…….Have I finally gone insane……FUCKK!!! …..What the hell is happening?……

Tim couldn’t make any logical sense of it all. He lay down on his bed and decided to sleep, as impossible as it seemed in that moment.

He woke up with a start. Night had fallen. His apartment door was open. Tim remembered he hadn’t closed it in all the turmoil. He could hear the next-door couple arguing. Having the urge for a walk to clear his mind, he put on his jacket, closed the door behind him and started walking absent-mindedly toward the Chinese place. He had no appetite left. He just wanted some fresh air and wanted to be anywhere except his apartment. Turning the corner, he saw a police car going toward his apartment building. Sure enough, they stopped right beside his Esteem and two burly officers got out, heading toward the stairs. Panicking, Tim hastened his pace, wanting to be as far from his apartment as he could. He couldn’t help overhear a news anchor reporting a murder from the Chinese place’s TV.

……JUST IN! AN ELDERLY COUPLE WAS FOUND DEAD IN THEIR CLEVELAND HOME THIS AFTERNOON, BURNED TO DEATH IN WHAT SEEMS TO BE A HOMICIDE. INITIAL REPORTS ARE COMING IN AND AN ACCIDENTAL FIRE HAS BEEN RULED OUT, AS THE VICTIMS WERE FOUND HORRIBLY MUTILATED AND RESTRAINED, INDICATING THE COUPLE WAS TORTURED PRIOR TO BEING BURNED ALIVE. MR. NATHAN SCOTT AND MISS DEBORAH SCOTT ARE SURVIVED BY THEIR ONLY SON, TIMOTHY SCOTT, WHO WASN’T LIVING WITH THEM FOR THE PAST 10 YEARS. POLICE WILL SURELY TRY…….

Tim fled, on instinct, his mind deciding to act before he could process the information. His world was collapsing around him, his worst fears coming true. His parents were dead! BURNED ALIVE!! He had finally realized all his fantasies, exactly how he had imagined them. There was no other way to explain it. His mind had finally broken, making him commit all these murders which he had only dreamt of, never believing himself capable of actually carrying them out. He didn’t know what to call it. Doctors probably called it a case of multiple identities or something, a person’s mind splitting into more than one. He couldn’t risk a trial with a mental disease as his defense. Neither he could afford a decent lawyer nor did he trust the system to take his side. He had already seen the cops going to his apartment. It was over for him. He had no option but to go on the run.

But he couldn’t leave his notebook behind. It was his only possession worth anything. If there was even a possibility that the cops hadn’t broken in his apartment, he had to check it out. He decided to circle back to his building from the opposite end, where he could easily see whether the cops had left in their car or not. The entire walk home, he felt as if people were staring at him, silently accusing him of heinously taking four lives. It was all he could do not to scream in frustration. He reached the back side of his building and nervously stole a glance at the front street. He was relieved to see no cop car there. Still being careful, he slowly made his way to his door, took one look at the stairs, stumbled in and closed the door.

“AAAHHHH…WHAT THE FUCK….”, he blurted out when he turned around. Tim was either hallucinating or the man standing near his bed was Tim himself. His hair slicked back instead of Tim’s ruffled look and not a hint of Tim’s paunch on him, the man was his duplicate through and through. He even had Tim’s blue notebook open in his hand, with a pen in his other hand. He had clearly been violating Tim’s cherished notebook.

“Now you might think of doing something rash, totally understandable, but hear me out”, he said, raising his hands in mock surrender.

FUCK YEAH I’M GONNA GO RASH ON THIS MOTHERFUCKER, Tim thought. But he managed to keep a level head and his sanity intact, his mind threatening to come unhinged any second. He decided to give him a listen.

“Our similar faces might perturb you, but it’s a fairly simple explanation, really! I’m Timothy Scott too, you see. Just from another reality. I’m guessing you aren’t up to date with advances in Experimental Physics? Won’t blame you. Scientists of this world are probably still banging heads over the Unified Field Theory”. The man was leisurely pacing around the room.

The ease with which the man was handling this exchange was making Tim angrier. He wasn’t equipped to handle what he was hearing, not even in his regular state of mind. And his current mental state was nowhere near regular, by any standards.

“Another reality? Physics? What are you on about? How the hell did you get in? And what the fuck are you doing with my notebook?” , Tim replied.

“Oh come on now. I’ve been keeping an eye on you ever since I managed to get here. The logistics of it were a bit tricky, and let’s just say, illegal, from where I come from. You see, I’m part of a group of very curious people, a cult rather, which has been trying to tap into parallel realities since forever. The ‘code’ these people have, bars any member from crossing over to said realities, much less do anything of the sort I’ve been up to”, he finished with a wink.

Tim asked the question that was on his mind. “Did…did you kill those people? Did you kill my parents?”

“Well you weren’t going to do it, were you? And let’s be honest, you WANTED those people dead. So, if anything, you should be thanking me. And I did keep it faithful to your requirements, didn’t I? This helped a lot”, he said, pointing the notebook toward Tim.

“I…..I didn’t…..It’s not the…….YOU DON’T GET TO DECIDE!”, Tim lost his cool.

“Hey, hey! It’s okay. It’ll all be okay. You’ll think differently once you sleep over it. I did you a favor, man! Now don’t get me wrong. You’re a nice guy but….you aren’t really killing it here. All these fantasies you keep reading over and over, you were just hung up on these people. And I couldn’t let it go on, right? Honestly, I crossed over out of pure curiosity, just to have a peek at my ‘other’ self, what you were up to and such! But I had to take it matter into my own hands, Timmy, once I saw your pathetic life!”

“No one calls me Timmy. NO ONE!”, Tim took a step toward the man.

“Yeah, yeah! Except dear ol’ Elaine, right? Look Timmy, she doesn’t even remember you. You’re virtually non-existent to her. And guess what, you’ll owe me one more when I tell you where I just came from…..Better yet, why don’t you read it yourself?” He offered the notebook to Tim.

Dreading what he was about to find out, Tim gingerly took the notebook and looked at the open page.

It’s 7 in the night and Elaine is home as usual. Frank and the kids are out shopping birthday presents and she is busy decorating the house and cooking up wonderful stuff, I’m sure. Sadly no one is going to make much use of all that stuff. Sweet, beautiful, sexy Elaine needs to go. She’s the last link I have to this sorry existence I call a life and as long as she’s alive, I can’t move on. I take my time watching her for a while and silently pick the back door lock to get in. I have my special package safely in my jacket pocket. I feel it just to be sure. Elaine doesn’t notice me creeping up to her. She’s setting up the oven when I grab her from behind, one hand on firmly on her neck and the other restraining her hands. She squirms uselessly as I drag her to the dining table and ram her flat on top of it with a swift blow. She’s out like a light. I securely tie her arms and legs to the table. She looks asleep among the cakes and brownies she had placed on the table, another dessert added to the menu. But not for long. I take out my vial of pure Nitric acid and empty it on her face, preparing myself for the screams about to begin. I enjoy the destruction of her beautiful face and her cries of agony for a few seconds. Bored of it, I grab a kitchen knife from the counter and with a decisive move, slit her throat end to end. I make my exit through the back door and disappear into the night.

Tim’s hands were no longer able to hold the notebook. He didn’t hear it fall to the ground, didn’t hear the man talking over the shrill ringing emanating inside his head.

MY ELAINE. POOR, INNOCENT, BEAUTIFUL ELAINE. MURDERED BY THIS MONSTER. LEFT TO DIE ALONE IN PAIN…….

Tim’s mind distiled all his anger into a single, simple instruction. He dashed toward the man, holding nothing back. The man was ready for Tim. He dodged the incoming blow with ease and trapped Tim in a choke hold.

“Ohhhkay. Are you going to behave or do I need to do something I don’t want to?”

Tim grunted and struggled, waiting for an opening to end the monster’s life, get his revenge for making Tim doubt his own sanity, for burning his parents alive and for taking sweet Elaine away from him forever.

“Looks like it’s going to be the latter. This’ll teach you what happens when you’re an ungrateful little bitch.” The man strengthened his hold and Tim began to fade into blackness. The last thing he remembered was his beside window curtain fluttering in the night breeze.

When Tim woke up, it took him a moment to realize what had happened. He got up and sat down on the floor, rubbing his neck. He stood up slowly and looked around the apartment. The man was long gone. Tim was bested easily, his pathetic attack ending in him falling unconscious for he didn’t know how long. Did all of that actually happen?, he thought. He found it hard to comprehend all that the man had told him.

He remembered his precious notebook. It was not lying on the floor where he dropped it. DID THE MONSTER TAKE IT WITH HIM?, he thought. He checked the only place he thought of. The notebook was lying safely inside the cardboard box under his bed, where it always did. He opened the last page, the page where the monster had recorded what he did to his Elaine. It was written in his own handwriting. He switched the news on. The channel was breaking Elaine’s horrific murder. It was exactly as the monster had written in his notebook.

Tim stared at the screen for hours, his mind going black after a while. He had no reason to go on with his pathetic life. The monster was right, Tim needed to move on!

Tim switched the TV off and took the notebook in his hand. He walked to the stairwell with a purposeful walk of man who had never had greater clarity of thought. Reaching the end of the corridor, he stood watching the street, 6 floors below him, his Esteem parked to the side. Clutching his blue-covered notebook to his chest, Tim stood on the railing, closed his eyes and jumped.