Echo of the Past

28. Nivan, Marcin

Translator: Schiotka

Editor: Pasadera, JacquelineMonaie

Red night.
Red moon.
Red hair.

Red.

Red madness.

Nivan

________

He couldn't bring himself to go home.

He felt a stinging disappointment. His mind was in chaos.

Helplessness.

He hoped he'd overlooked something, something that would give him an excuse not to leave.

A reason to avoid seeing the people who treated him with animosity.

He wanted to sit on the floor of his office and wrap himself in the comforting light of the computer screens; to just be left alone. The bitter looks thrown in his direction bothered him. The unspoken words, the demands, the constant questioning.

Expectations he wasn't able to meet.

It was exhausting him.

Tormenting him.

He was angry that he had to inform him where he was going, and give some unsatisfactory reason as to why he wasn't coming home. He didn't like the restrictions that were now placed upon him.

But at the same time, he was aware that his feelings of resentment weren't normal. He should have been happy to be with people who cared about him, who were simply there for him. Next to him.

But sometimes he just wasn't.

He was disgusted by himself. It worried him.

Clutching the ancient diary he'd found in their old hideout, he scrutinized the first couple of pages. The letters had bled and become blurred with time. Poems. Thoughts.

And other crap.

He tossed it on a pile of paper to be thrown away. A growing pile of his failures.

He stretched out on the floor and sighed.

Not caring about the crumbling world around him, he fell asleep bathed in the glow of the monitors.

Alone with his weird dreams.

Sonia
________

The same night.

She couldn't remember how she found herself at the flat, nor how she got the locked door open.

Fear filled her head with ice.

When she woke, she found herself squeezed tightly in a corner of one of the rooms, clutching her knees in desperation.

Trembling.

She felt her body going numb from the cold.

She felt the fear paralyzing her.

Once again, she became the helpless little girl scared of a monster in the closet. Except her monster was real. It had materialized.

In the form of a person.

She wasn't deluded; she knew she'd done a lot of bad things. But it wasn't too late. She wanted a chance to at least try to mend all she'd screwed up.

She fell too deep into the plan. She was too quick to switch off her feelings, her morality.

She had explained many times that it was necessary; that if she didn't, all that would be left of her psyche would be a pile of stinking mess. But that wasn't true.