WebNovels

Chapter 11 - Chapter 10

Izmir had already been through every floor of the mental hospital. There was nothing left to explore; that thought prickled at him, making him regret coming to the asylum in the first place.

Maniacal patients shuffled through the corridors,some picking fights, some shrieking, some collapsing in fits-yet the spectacle failed to amuse him. The drama had worn thin.

There was nothing left to discover.

A notice had been posted by now: Rachel was missing from the hospital.

Izmir caught a glimpse of Dr. Lupin through the glass of his office window leaning on the receiver, his face pinched as he spoke into the telephone. Izmir kept to the shadowed passage and kept walking; he didn't want to draw attention.

He tried to sleep that night but could not. He toyed with the idea of banging his head against the wall until he passed out, though the thought of appearing like a patient already suspected of too much..stopped him.

---

Mr. Leonard had been staring at his computer for hours. The coffee at his elbow had gone cold. He sat rigid, a sharp kitchen knife balanced in one trembling hand, the strain showing in the redness around his eyes. On the screen, images from a life he could no longer reconcile scrolled past, each frame worse than the last. He remembered.

A month earlier.

"I've decided to go on a trip with Eva," Vivi had announced, casual as a weather report.

"To where?" Leonard asked, voice flat.

"Jeez," she had said, already halfway out of patience. "I'm just staying with a friend for a week or two. Nothing permanent."

Izmir had watched them argue from the doorway. His parents' quarrels always seemed to dissolve the same way, with his mother disappearing for stretches without a call. That was ordinary.

This would be ordinary, he thought, and tried to ignore the knot in his stomach.

"You say a week," Leonard had exploded, voice cracking with something like hurt and helplessness, "and you ditch us for months!"

"Then take a break yourself," Vivi snapped, slamming the door behind her. "Stop interfering in my life."

"That's it. I'm leaving." He grabbed a suitcase and walked out without looking at his son.

Izmir sat very still on the sofa, newspaper folded in his lap, pretending not to notice. After an hour he got up for water. The house was dim; the evening light slanted in through the windows. Passing his mother's room, he paused because something felt wrong.

She sat on the edge of the bed, small in the half-light, murmuring to herself with her head in her hands. When she noticed him she lurched to her feet, hair falling across her face, and stumbled toward him like someone half-awakened from a nightmare.

"It's all because of you," she said, voice ragged. "It all happened because of you!!."

Izmir tried to pull away. "Why...m-mom?" he managed, his voice thin. He reached for the table and then stopped. In a moment of panic and inexplicable rage, he lashed out. The scene that followed unmoored him: a hit, a fall. He muttered an apology that sounded hollow even to his own ears.

Her mom fell unconscious.

He picked up a small stool and struck again. The room grew very quiet.

Afterward, Izmir did what he thought he must: he cleaned, bundled the body in his mother's travel bag, and left the house as if leaving on one of those trips she used to take. He sealed the curtains, washed the floors, and walked out carrying the heavy, ordinary weight of the handbag.

---

Back in the present, Leonard could not speak.

On the screen, the last frames of the footage trembled with the domestic violence he had watched unfold. He dialed a number with hands that would not stop shaking, then deleted the file.

He pressed the blade into his palm and began to stab himself until he couldn't.

He didn't call out; the only sound was the slow rattle of the mug as it tipped and spilled cold coffee across his desk.

Why would he delete the video? Who had recorded it? No answers surfaced. Only a blank ache.

The last image the dying man saw on the laptop was his wife's reflection...her face slanting eerily from the glass, an uncanny doubleness that looked less like memory and more like command. In that reflection, his hands moved by someone else's will. It was her again.

More Chapters