I opened my eyes and saw terrifying darkness all around me. Wet clothes stuck to my skin; I was cold and sick. I lay on the wooden floor, not knowing where I was. All I heard outside was the sound of falling rain. At that moment, I recalled what I had learned before I had passed out.
"Have you woken up, Selena?" His voice coming from the other corner of the room pierced me to the core.
The light from his phone fell on his face.
"Felix, where are we?" I asked in a trembling voice.
"I don't know. Some abandoned house in the woods," he replied grimly. "Why did you follow me?"
"Because I noticed something bad was happening to you. I wanted to know what caused it."
A sour smile appeared on his face.
"So I had been masking my feelings for a whole year and became transparent the moment I came back to the place where I killed my parents? I was hopeless if I wanted to meet them."
"Felix, how…" I couldn't get the words out because it was still shocking to me. I couldn't imagine that my boyfriend was willing to murder his family, and I had lived with him for an entire year, being happy and not noticing anything. I had laughed alongside a murderer, not knowing that I was in a relationship with a man who had committed such a terrible crime.
"I just couldn't help myself when they told me I was the biggest mistake of their lives, that I should never have been born. At that moment, I hated them to the point that I was unable to stop myself. The pain that tore at my heart was so strong that aggression rose in me and the desire to eliminate them from my life completely so that I would never meet them again and experience the same thing."
"Felix, you killed them. You murdered your parents. Do you know what that means? You frightened me. Not every man was capable of this…" I said in a trembling voice.
He laughed under his breath.
"Selena, I had never been and would never be normal. They created a monster in me, and that monster eventually devoured them."
His words were frightening. I felt that only now the real Felix was opening up to me, now that I knew his darkest side.
A thought popped into my head: would he be able to kill me too? Was he capable of murdering every person he loved and by whom he would be hurt?
Chills once again shook my body.
"How were you going to live with this going forward?" I asked in a whisper.
"You made me not think about it at all. During the day I was able to be happy; only at night those demons returned when I didn't have you by my side."
"Today they returned, even though I was next to you."
"Their souls were trapped here, stalking me."
He sounded like a madman. I was scared as hell. I sat huddled in a corner, just talking to him. I was afraid to do anything else because I didn't know how he would react.
"Now that I knew the truth, was I still your safe haven?"
"No," he answered right away. "Because I saw how scared you were. You were afraid of me, as much as I was afraid of myself."
This answer surprised me.
"What did you mean when you said you were afraid of yourself?"
"The fact that I didn't know what else I was capable of. This place gave me the answer to how lost I was."
"Were you going to confess to the crime?" I asked in a whisper. For a long time, he did not answer, simply looking at me. His gaze was blank, terrifying, like that of a sinister doll.
"I had to bear the punishment for my sin."
I stifled a cry inside me. With all my strength, I tried not to burst out, strenuously suppressing it inside me.
"Felix, you hurt me so much. You made my heart break in half. The pain was so strong that I felt sick of living," I said with difficulty. "I thought we would always be happy again, that nothing would ruin our future, that things would only get better, and you…"
"And I screwed everything up because I got mugged and killed my parents."
I took a deep breath and closed my eyelids.
"How... how did it happen? How did you kill them? I wanted to know if you did it premeditatedly or under the influence of momentary emotions."
I sounded like a crazy person, but I wanted to know this harrowing story.
"Nothing could justify me because I hid my crime for a year."
"Just tell me what really happened," I said in a broken voice.
"They were the ones who picked me up from the psychiatric hospital. They announced to me that their last gift to me was a house by the ocean in the middle of the forest. They concluded that a person like me did not deserve to live among humans." A sour smile appeared on his face again. "They brought me to the place where we were currently resting. I couldn't explain to you what kind of amok I was in that day. Not only had I left the insane asylum that had sucked the life out of me, but moreover, my parents took me to a desolate place, announcing that they would disappear from my life forever. Any moment then, they would go abroad. I would remain invisible in that place, as if I didn't exist, because I was the biggest mistake in their lives. Honestly? I didn't know myself what I felt at that moment. It was strange. Seemingly there was relief that I would never be controlled again, but on the other hand, I felt like trash. Something inside me snapped, and it snapped hard. I panicked. It was all happening too fast and…." He paused for a moment and took a deep breath. "I was terrified and hurt by their words. I wanted to leave them in that place and get as far away from there as possible. I grabbed the car keys that were on the table and got behind the wheel, locking the door. I didn't have a driver's license; I didn't know what drove me. They ran out of the house, and instead of backing out of the car, I pressed the accelerator and headed straight for them. The force of the impact was so strong; it all played out in seconds, and…"
"So was it an accident, or did you do it premeditated?"
"It was an accident because I didn't press the clutch," he said in a low voice.
"Felix, were they still alive?"
"I didn't know; I didn't remember. I panicked. I didn't know what was happening to me. In some strange amok, I checked to see if they were breathing, but I felt nothing. There was blood all around them; my father was lying with his eyes open… I still saw this image in my nightmares!"
I put my hand to my mouth, feeling my heart beating hard with fear.
"So you just dragged their bodies deep into the woods and buried them?" I asked with a shout, and then he burst out crying.
"And what was I supposed to do? Call the police and report that I killed my parents? I would have spent the rest of my life in a lunatic asylum or, worse, in jail!"
"After all, you didn't do it premeditated! It was an accident!"
"But I killed them! I got out of a psychiatric hospital, so no one would believe me that it was an accident!"
"Felix, for God's sake, remorse would kill you! You couldn't handle it! After all, I saw what was happening to you!"
"I was already dead, Selena! Since the day I killed my parents, I had been dead! Only with you did I try to live! You were my only hope! Now there was no hope for me anymore!" he shouted desperately.
I picked myself up from the floor as he unexpectedly ran out of the abandoned house. The rain still hadn't stopped, and I ran after him in the darkness, paying no attention to literally anything. I was terrified that something crazy had just shot through his mind and I wouldn't have time to help him.
"Felix!" I shouted, still following him. I was terrified when I saw that he was running directly into the sea. "Felix!" I stumbled over a tree trunk and fell, smashing my knee, but this pain couldn't stop me. "Felix, I begged you to stop! Come back!" I screamed, running lamely.
I fell into the water, ignoring the pinching pain in my knee. I embraced it tightly, not allowing it to sink deeper.
"If you were going to die, I would die with you!" I shouted, turning him to face me. Then he completely fell apart and burst out crying, putting his face on my shoulder.
"I couldn't handle it anymore, Selena. I just wanted to die," he said in a hysterical voice. "I wanted to die…"