I'd been here before. So many times, over and over in my head. It was that scenario that I had prayed to God would stay in my nightmares. But slowly, it clawed its way from the figments in my imagination, dominating and overpowering the rest of my thoughts until it was born into reality. Born into life itself. It wasn't a hard, tiring labor, either. It took moments. Mere moments. And mere moments turned the world upside-down.
The room was warm. It's always been cold, but, now, it seemed warm. Maybe it was because my blood was rushing so fast. But my thoughts were ignorant of the situation. You could have even called them happy. Blissful. There was a bounce in my step. A laugh in my voice. When things got dark, they always got better. Better... I had found the light, I thought. I had found it at last.
"I'm leaving," I said. And I explained why.
"Oh..."
Something was amiss in her voice. But it didn't take a rocket scientist or a psychiatrist to understand that. There was confusion in her eyes. Perhaps shock. Yes. Shock. She was shocked about something? I tried to review what said. It didn't make sense. The puzzle piece didn't fit there. I frowned, cocked an eyebrow, tilted my head to the side. I don't understand. And, ironically enough, even after the event, I still didn't understand. I didn't understand where I had slipped and I had fallen into the proverbial river of "being screwed over". I didn't understand, though, and it angered me to even think about it, why I had expected anything other than what had happened.
"Sorry."
Why is she apologizing?
The warm air faded. And it grew cold, but I knew it was all in my mind. Even though my heart was racing, it was the arctic. It tore at me and destroyed everything it touched inside. And the fatal words had not even been spoken yet. Perhaps it was because a part of me had the strangest suspicion as to what was about to come next.
"It was me."
The harmony was shattered. The silence in my head overbearing. I saw flashes of things I'd never seen before. Dots and patterns, as though someone had bludgeoned me in the head. I blinked and they began to fade, leaving behind the perfect image of the now frigid room. Her words continued, but I merely stood there, rooted and stunned.
And oddly enough, I don't know why betrayal comes as a surprise every time. Often, as readers, movie-watchers, video-game players, and just citizens in life, we see it. In every piece of grand work, there's a character that turns his/her back on the protagonist. Brutus betrays Caesar. Anakin betrays Obi-Wan and the Jedi. Benedict Arnold betrays Washington. Fernand Mondengo betrays Edmond Dantès. And even Judas betrays Jesus. And yet, I wondered if it was for thirty pieces, or for something more. God. I hoped it was for something more.
When her words rang in my ears, my blood lost its warmth, my heart lost its beat- for that split second of time, I was dead, but the rush in my skull told me I was alive. I was more alive than ever. And the world spun for a moment, flushed and draped in tendrils of blinding light that was all in my mind.
"What?"
I didn't know if the words were in my mind or were actually spoken. It was the final words of the pious innocent, the victim. And, in some lost compartment of the soul, something died, decayed, and was left as dust in some empty shelf of the spirit. Maybe, on its way into its demise, it dragged a few more things down to Hell with it. It left when the nightmare was born. Clawing. Scraping. Biting. A disgusting, animalistic departure. And, I felt something stab at my heart- stronger than anything else that I could've fathomed.
Why are you surprised? Didn't you see this coming? Some sarcastic part of me sneered. But my mind couldn't wrap around it for those first few moments, so crucial and blinding. I backed a step, though my bones and joints felt as stiff as a cadaver's. But I suppose that metaphor was not too far from the truth, because, my mind was slowly accepting something, something very numbing and chilling. I was dead. I was dead to the world for that moment, possibly permanently dead in the near future.
No... No, no, part of you isn't surprised, I cautioned myself, almost throwing in one of those insane chuckles. Just to reassure myself. No. You saw this coming from the beginning, didn't you? You saw it all in your head. Even maybe a bit in your heart. You knew... You knew, you knew, you knew... I wanted to slam my fist into the traitor's face and demand a decent reasoning. But my blood ran cold, and I was dead to the world, a victim to that elaborate sensation of shock.
You're dead now.
I was dead before then, wasn't I?
Well, you're certainly dead now.
So many concepts were running through my mind. I saw images. I heard voices of what could happen. What they could say. What reasoning they could give, but there was no reason to give. No explanation. There was just that feeling of death. The shattering of something intangible between us as it fell like pieces on the floor of my memories. And I couldn't believe it- yet I had to. I forced myself to. I forced my feet to move, though they were cemented to the earth, and everything surrounding us seemed to fade into some gray veil that didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Nothing but us. Nothing but what had happened. Nothing in the world but us.
I halfway expected some grand battle music to begin, something akin to Uematsu's One Winged Angel (preferably the Advent Children version), but nothing. Nothing but the silence ringing in my skull. The sound of my own mind wasting away in panic. The drumming of my heart as it trembled in my chest. The inhale-exhale of someone who felt very much like a convict being spotted by the police helicopters. The rage that fired up my freezing veins, jump-started my thoughts.
No. Not dead. Not dead yet.
My mouth was opened, but there were no words. The concepts that scattered my mind were too strong to be put into words yet. My feet shuffled backwards, just like in the movies. Somewhere, there was a cry in the chaos, demanding why this had happened. But there was nothing. No words. Nothing that came out except horrified gasps of air. I think that was the first moment I had ever hated something so strongly. And it wasn't even tangible. I couldn't hit it, couldn't kill it, couldn't even make it bleed. But I loathed it with every fiber of my being, the word 'betrayal' a sickening collection of syllables on my tongue.
So... What are you going to do now?
The only thing my heart could tell me to do was run. And so, with as much haste as I could muster, I ran. Not literally. But, in a way, I was spiritually running, and definitely emotionally and mentally running. And, perhaps I wasn't physically bleeding, but my emotions were gashed open and flooding the room with red. I backed up. I fumbled some excuse and left, a few biting tears stinging my eyes. Run? But where are you running to? The sardonic voice was as persistent as the feeling of wanting to faint. I stumbled and scrambled away. Away. I just need to get away. I always knew my fight or flight instincts were very sensitive. I just didn't know how much.
Out of the frying pan and into the oven. I knew that phrase so well, but this was the only time I'd ever actually experienced jumping straight into the oven. So much for a leap of faith, I thought bitterly, climbing the stairs with a hasty, almost paranoid tossed look over the shoulder. Already my mind was formulating some way to figure a loophole in the enemy's movements and schemes. It was like chess. Only, she was about to declare checkmate and I felt- and knew- that I could do nothing to stop it.
Don't think like that. There's always a way out.
Always a way- always a way... I knew I had to calm down. It took some breathing. Some classical staring into the mirror and gazing into the despairing green eyes that didn't seem akin to my own. And, the words of something reeled through my mind, so familiar and bitter that it almost warranted a chuckle.
"Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me.
There they lie, and here lie we.
I sold you and you sold me."
It was from 1984, and I couldn't think of anything more appropriate. Except, then I laughed because I had never sold her. And she had sold me. Like some antique lamp or piece of crusted jewelry, she had sold me. As if there were no attachments. Nothing. Cold as death itself. I never sold you... My thoughts were jumbled again. ... You sold me. I never sold you.
That's when I realized they were all statistics. Each and every one that had come before and had followed. Like little grains forming bread. Like birds of the same flock. Numbers in the charts that only seemed to show how my life had been. Numbers in the charts that made me realize- and maybe even laugh- at all of what had happened. At everything in general. All of the lies we had been telling each other, all of the secrets we had kept in the dark. We'd done so many things to damage each other, it was ridiculous. And yet, as much as I told myself none of it could be true, and I'd snap out of whatever nightmare I was living, my heart knew it was all reality. My mind knew it was all reality.
This was the game I had been introduced, deadly and perilous. It was the game that I'd been playing all this time, except, it never occurred to me how real this game was. It wasn't like Sorry, where you could start all over again. It wasn't like Clue, where the evidence always pointed to one specific person. It wasn't like Monopoly- you didn't collect cash when you passed Go, you just kept going until what you had done faded behind you. It was the game that killed. The game that was merciless. The game where you were out against the world, like some bloody free-for-all that just didn't care how long you lasted. It tore at your conscience until you forgot what it meant to have one of those. It murdered your faith in others, destroyed your trust. And, just as those words did, it killed a part of you. A part that could never be brought back into life.
And, through the ones that would follow, the ones that would lie, and cheat, and fire more bullets into my chest, I came to one of those ironic epiphanies. All of the people that had come before, I knew without a doubt, that had played this game had died. They had lost, inevitably, and I knew that I was no exception. There would be a downfall. But not until fate allowed there to be a downfall. And my plan and mindset was certain. Until the downfall came, I was an adamant contender. All I could do was wait for the challenger to appear, and stubbornly fight back the urge to sink to my knees and despairingly succumb to the final blow of the knife. The blow that would end the game for me, and everything that had related to the game. The blow wielded by a hand that was not mine, but by someone who didn't understand why this had all fallen into place to begin with. Knowledge would be felled by ignorance.
And, in my heart, I knew whose hand it would be.
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