NOVEL NEXT Chapter 56: The memories
After a long time, Zayn woke up.
He looked around, disoriented, trying to make sense of his surroundings.
It took him a few seconds before he realized he was floating in darkness.
He tried to move, to struggle out of this void, but nothing changed.
In this endless void, he didn't even know whether he was making any movement or not.
'Where am I?' He remembered he was following Xane's command, trying to protect himself from those guys.
Even though it was painful, it worked. He managed to come out without extra serious injuries.
That nightmare should have ended there, but… the scene of Auren's hand touching his chest flashed through his mind.
'My chest.' Even though Zayn could not see in the darkness, he tried to touch his body.
Only then did he realize that in this darkness, there was nothing. 'Did I switch bodies with Xane? Am I inside his head?'
Zayn thought aloud and asked Xane, [Xane, are you there?]
He waited for a couple of seconds but heard no response at all.
[Hey, if you can hear me, speak, man.]
…
[Xane, it's not funny. Come on, say something.]
[Xane!]
Silence!
He didn't hear a single word. The dark void remained dead silent.
'Fck, what's going on here? Am I dead? Did something serious happen to my body? No, wait… if Xane somehow got control of the body, then am I trapped inside his head?'
Zayn looked around once again.
He remembered that every time Xane went to sleep, he always found himself in a dark, confined space for a couple of minutes before losing consciousness.
At first, he thought it might be the dark space, but the more he looked at it, the more he began to notice the differences between the two.
First, while the confinement space gave him a trapped feeling, this void felt more like he was floating in an infinite, vast empty space.
So big that his tiny existence lost its meaning inside it.
Also, even in that confinement, he could still feel his body, but here he felt nothing.
There was no smell, no noise, not even pain.
It was like the layer of darkness had severed his connection.
A chilling fear rose in him. 'Am I trapped here? No… calm down, Zayn. Everything will be normal in a few hours.'
In the worst case, he would just have to wait for a couple of days. The moment he gained control back, he would understand the whole thing.
He forced himself not to think much and just stared into the endless void, waiting.
As the silence gnawed at him, it hit him that he couldn't even tell how much time had passed. It could have been a minute or days.
For his sanity and to get some idea of time, he started counting numbers. "1… 2… 3… 4…"
Time passed while he continued to count. "2502… 2596… 2641… 2881…"
As he continued, the fear inside him grew. "4010… 4180… 4810…"
Soon, he surpassed 10,000, but he didn't stop. Maybe he was counting too fast, so he slowed down.
50,000 passed, and the fear inside him reached beyond his mental endurance.
He started to have different bad thoughts. 'Will I be forever trapped here? Am I dead? Nah, then how come I can still think? Stop it.'
He tried hard to suppress the chaos while counting, but eventually, he stopped at 100,000.
It became clear that something was wrong.
The dead silence around him felt disturbingly familiar.
He remembered the numbness of his body when his father choked his neck.
Same as that time, his ability to think started to slow down.
He could feel that if he didn't do anything, he would black out. 'What if I never wake up again?'
He hated this silence; it was suffocating him.
He started shouting for Xane again.
He began explaining what he was feeling, where he was, and what he remembered, hoping that even if he couldn't hear Xane, maybe Xane could hear him on the other side.
All his shouting might help Xane rescue him faster.
After explaining everything for an unknown amount of time, he started shouting at the void.
He cursed and screamed at anything he could think of. He even tried his best to feel a back connection with his body. Maybe a bit of pain might help him, but everything failed.
He felt like he was just a cluster of thoughts and nothing else.
After cursing for an hour, it eventually turned into him shouting gibberish, making random sounds, and then finally… back to silence.
His thoughts started getting sluggish; even thinking about a single object became a huge task.
Eventually, he just mindlessly stared into the void, and his consciousness faded into the darkness.
…
After a long time, Zayn regained his senses only to find himself back in the void.
He panicked for a moment, but then the memory of last time flashed through his consciousness.
He realized it was not the first time he had gained consciousness in this void.
He calmed down a little. It was a relief that blacking out wasn't the end.
He still didn't know what was going on, but it seemed he only gained consciousness for a limited time.
This time, instead of relying on Xane, he focused on thinking about how to get out.
After all, in this void, he was left only with his thoughts. He thought of tons of ideas and tried each of them, but nothing worked, and then he again started feeling sluggish.
It felt like someone was erasing his existence in this void.
He struggled not to be consumed by the darkness, but his struggle led to nothing, and once again, he fainted.
He woke again with the fear of death.
Every time his consciousness started fading, it was like his mind just died.
He struggled not to be consumed by the darkness and failed. Woke up, struggled again, and failed.
He went through multiple cycles of struggle and failure.
By the 8th cycle, he stopped trying to escape.
Instead, he started thinking about how unfair his life was.
He remembered his childhood. The time when everyone used to praise him for how smart he was.
His father used to teach him all those exciting things. His mother used to praise him for every little achievement, and his sister used to play with him.
He did not know why he was thinking about them, but those were the good old days.
He was not even sure if those were accurate memories or just the creation of his desperate mind, some kind of fantasy that he wanted to live in.
A fantasy that was the opposite of his experience.
As far as Zayn remembered, his family on Earth had always held very high expectations of him.
The little Zayn at that time wanted everybody to like him, so he tried his best.
But in doing so, he made a big mistake, and that mistake fueled the hidden greed of his family, turning them from a loving, warm one into people who only cared about themselves.
The eyes that used to be filled with love changed to those filled with greed.
He didn't know how or when that happened, but in their eyes, he became a tool.
A tool that would work to their satisfaction and enhance their reputation.
A tool they thought would lead them to elite circles.
It all started small, with them forcing him to study more.
But with time, they took complete control of his life.
His father used to push him to the basement so he could study without disturbance.
His sister pushed away all his school friends so they wouldn't disturb him.
And his mother forbade using anything that she thought could be considered a distraction for him.
As he thought about those times, he couldn't help but scream.
[Why]
There was nothing here to stop him from venting, so he let out all of his frustration.
[Why? What did I do to deserve all this? Why did no one ever help me? Why, Mom? Why, Dad?… WHYYY!]
He remembered their faces.
Whenever he used to beg and cry to them, all they ever said was that they were doing it for his sake.
The teenage him even believed those lies and tried his best in his studies so he could get access to a few things… to get access to live his life.
But that worked in reverse, as they doubled down on their methods, all while saying their methods worked.
All of his family members had one dream: they wanted him to attend the very best college in the country.
He thought that if he got selected for that college, things would change.
So he did his best, and in the end, he finally got selected.
He still remembered the time when he rushed back from school to tell them the good news, but someone was already there before him.
He saw his parents at a meeting.
At the time, he didn't think much of it and waited for their meeting to end so he could deliver the big news.
But after the meeting, to his shock, the family, who had always been obsessed with his going to college, suddenly changed.
They started suggesting he switch to the second-best college.
His stupid self thought it was because they had finally understood him. He even hugged them and cried at that time.
Zayn started laughing when he thought about that.
He couldn't believe just how naive he had been, not even realizing those greedy bastards had agreed to sell his college seat.
The very college seat for which they had made his life hell.
They actually sold it for just a couple of chunks.
His years of hard work went to nothing because of their greed.
Zayn just started laughing loudly at that point. [Hahaha, why the hell am I even thinking about them?]
But no matter how much Zayn tried not to think about them, he went back to thinking about every little detail of his life.
From him crying in the dark basement to his revenge that led to his death.
It was not long before the darkness once again brought an end to his misery as he once again blacked out.