Chapter 45: Chapter 45

I am struggling.

Sometimes I feel things that are not possible to exist or feel, see things that are not there, hear words that have not been spoken. These hallucinations, these mind riveting moments, make me further believe that something is truly wrong. I am being pushed into an empty space of a puzzle that I just don’t fit into. I am the wrong piece of the picture.

This feeling goes on for several days. The interval between the episodes are almost non existent, blended into time by a stubborn finger, tainted in all dark. Perhaps, only when I am asleep, do I feel some kind of peace and solace from this painful heaviness that is wound around my head like a tight band. At times, it worsens as it transforms into an itch inside my head that I can’t reach to satiate.

I wonder if my brother felt it too. Or my father and mother. Did all of them feel this way or was it just me that was cursed with such a mind that made living so much harder than it was supposed to be. The marked black sheep. Not to be killed. But to be tortured.

“Dimitri, are you ready?” I wasn’t aware of my uncle’s presence even in this small room. It was funny, how easily and subconsciously I was able to block out the painful reality, only to be shackled by my other nemesis. Fate is inevitable after all and if this is how things are supposed to play out in my life then I was merely just a puppet dangling from threads controlled by uncle.

“Yes, Sir.” I stood up from the bed and turned to look towards him. Attentive and sharp. The man that was given the responsibility and authority to grow me into a man from a boy through methods so…unusual I suppose, so that I matured before my time and lived through lessons of life earlier than most. My father preferred being ten steps forward than others, and this was one of those steps.

He stepped away from the doorway with his hand still on the door knob, waiting for me to get out of the small closet of a room. The whole family was invited to a house party hosted by a family of four people. That was all the information I had and was provided just like the previous ones I attended. This was going to be the eighteenth one. A test that I was required to pass where I must observe the sample of  people as thoroughly as I could and study them to understand what the rest of the world was filled with.

I had to identify people and describe them to my uncle with every intricate detail that they possessed, both behavioural and physical. Time was limited. As soon as we came back, he would go to the office and I was under the compulsion to follow. If I answered his questions correctly, then I didn’t get any punishment. Otherwise, what lay ahead and beyond in the future was anything but desirable. Sometimes it was inevitable and without any reason as well.

The last one went well. It was not the hardest, and practice truly did make perfect. Especially when the twisted motivating factor existed all too vividly. And I was really starting to get good at this game. I was even more confident at this one as I quickly spotted the three people that were possibly the people that belonged to the hosting family who lived in this all too bland house. Mustard wallpaper, glass windows, vintage furniture, wooden floor.

Trained smiles, plastered faces, dramatic stories and fake personalities. It was not just them, but everyone. Including my uncle and his family as they switched their personality too quickly and noticeable in front of me. I was expected to do the same, but fortunately no one ever approached me, and I was not going to go out of my way to talk to anyone either. I preferred keeping my lies to a minimum. Such wastage of time and effort was just not my taste, unlike these three people that did it so well.

I wondered where the fourth one was.