My footsteps out of the café didn't feel like leaving a room.
It felt like slipping out of reality itself.
The night wind sifted through my hair like the fingers of a memory—unfinished, lingering, gently grazing wounds that had never healed.
The city curled around me like a shadow, reshaping itself just enough to ensure I would stay lost.
The streets were wet, yet no rain had fallen.
Streetlamps flickered—blinking like eyes that had forgotten how to stay open, how to illuminate.
I walked—without aim, without purpose.
Each step a desperate defiance against stillness, which felt far more dangerous than madness.
And then, at the far end of a silent sidewalk—I saw him.
Leaning against a lamppost.
His smile unchanged.
Calm. Captivating. And utterly foreign.
My friend.
The one who once pulled me away from the doors of rehabilitation.
The one who shared coffee with me in silence.
The one no one ever truly knew the name of.
He raised a hand and waved slowly.
As if we had only just said goodbye yesterday.
"Ray," he said, "you look like someone who's just been told the world isn't real."
I stepped closer. "Are you… are you really here?"
He chuckled gently. "Ray, you already know the answer."
Silence settled between us like smoke.
Then I asked, quietly, "You're not real… are you?"
He exhaled. And nodded.
"I'm a piece of you, Ray. A fragment you built so you wouldn't drown alone."
I stared at him—and for the first time, he didn't look heroic.
He didn't look invincible.
He looked like me.
Worn down. Confused. Trapped somewhere between versions of himself.
"How many of you have I made?" I whispered.
"Many," he said. "But not all of us stayed."
"What do you mean?"
He looked up at the starless sky, as if trying to remember what it felt like to wish.
"All of us—me, even the voices you no longer recognize—we're pieces of you. But not every piece wants to remain."
My knees faltered.
"Then why are you still here?"
"Because I still can't let you face this alone. I…" he hesitated, "I still want you to live."
I bit my lip. My eyes stung.
But before I could speak—
Something shifted at the end of the street.
A silhouette. Heavy steps.
Boots slapping puddles.
Breath short—laced with fury.
And out of the darkness emerged a figure.
Tall.
Thin frame wrapped in a vandalized black jacket.
Hair wild.
Eyes—sharp, wounded, furious.
He walked toward us like fate on two legs.
My friend tensed.
My heart tried to outrun itself.
The man stopped just a few steps away.
"Ray," he rasped. His voice was gravel and broken glass. "I finally found you."
"Who are you?" I asked.
He let out a breathless, bitter laugh.
"Me?"
He pointed at himself.
"I'm the part of you you tried to bury."
My friend stepped forward, shielding me. "He's not ready."
But the man raised his hand—
and in it, a gun.
"He has to be. I'm done being denied. I'm done being called a monster just because I wanted to survive."
I froze.
"Who are you really?" My voice broke like glass.
He stepped closer.
"ask yourself dumbass!"
And the gun?
It wasn't pointed at me.
It was aimed at my friend.
"I know who you're protecting," he said. "I know who you fear losing the most.
So I'll start with him."
"No!" I screamed.
But the gun spoke before I did.
A single shot cracked the silence.
My friend's body dropped.
Blood spilled across the pavement like ink from a poem that never passed censorship.
He looked at me… and the last pieces of his smile flickered, like fading candlelight.
"You must… remember everything, Ray…" he whispered, before his eyes closed.
I collapsed.
The man looked down at me—not in triumph, but with a hollowness that swallowed the street.
"You'll remember who you truly erased," he murmured.
Then turned.
And vanished into a fog that no weather ever created.
And I…
I sat on a sidewalk too cold for a night that never truly existed.
Blood mixed with puddles.
And I realized—
I was losing control over the world I once made.
---
My name is Ray.
Yes.
I am Ray.
Not a shadow.
Not just a fragment.
Not an invention of trauma or fantasy.
I am the core. The one you buried.
And I'm the one who remains.
---
They call me a killer.
But before that—
I was a boy who saw blood long before I ever felt an embrace.
I was raised beneath the fracture of my father's voice—
shouting at my mother for turning the TV up too loud.
I was born from a cry that didn't stop even when my mouth did.
I saw the dead before I ever learned how to write.
And when I first saw blood—I laughed.
Because it was the only color that made me feel alive.
---
Ray—the Ray you knew—was an illusion I carved from my own ribs.
A sanctuary with soft eyes and quiet corners.
A gentle soul who sat at the back of the class with flowers in his mind and fake sorrow on his lips.
He wasn't me.
He was a prison I constructed.
And I hated him.
I hated him more than anything.
I hated how he forgave the world.
I hated how he built a little universe in his head and locked me out.
I hated him the way I hated a mother who hugs after letting me be hurt.
I hated him the way I hated God—if such a thing ever existed—who let me live.
But more than anything…
I hated him for pretending we weren't the same.
---
There was a night we held the knife for the first time.
And when blood flowed—
You knew, Ray.
You knew it didn't feel like sin.
It felt like coming home.
But you denied it.
You called it "an accident."
You called it "a shadow."
You called me an infection.
You said I was crazy.
Then smiled at me through the mirror like I was just a crack in your reflection.
You thought I'd stay a whisper?
A ghost?
No.
Tonight, I returned.
I shot the part you guarded most.
Because I know—losing one imaginary friend hurts more than burying a hundred real people.
I knew the fastest way to break you was to kill the one you trusted never to leave you. Yourself.
I knew—
Because I am you.
---
But this isn't the ending.
Not yet.
Because when I saw his body fall,
and watched his blood darken the concrete—
I felt something deeper than revenge.
I felt the truth.
You hate me, Ray.
But more than that—
You hate yourself.
Because I am not a monster you created.
I am you.
---
And now, we begin to merge again.
I feel it.
Behind your tears.
In your trembling footsteps as you walk away from the body you once loved.
You saw Maria again—in the face of the illusion you let die beside you.
I feel myself waking.
Infiltrating.
Filling all the cracks you stuffed with fake smiles and pretty lies.
You can try to resist me, Ray.
But in the end—
The one who pulled the trigger… was you.
The one who bled… was us.
And all that remains is one final truth:
You hate yourself.
Because deep down…
You know—
You are a murderer.
You killed Maria.
I killed Maria.
I killed her because of you.
We are murderers.
That's why i hate you, Ray.