I want to destroy him. To wipe away every memory of him. To kill him, just like I planned from the very start. To punish him for everything he's brought about. To avenge every crime he's contributed to. I want to turn away, leave with this child and finally be able to live my own life. To live. My own. Life.

I know I won't make it without him. I can't take care of myself, even less of this child. I don't know how to take steps. I don't know where to turn. I can't tell the directions. I don't understand the situation. I lack what a person needs to be able to live. I don't even know what it is. I can't name it. I only know I lack it.

Hundred voices shouting in my mind, and even louder those that whisper. Thoughts constantly flood into my head and then break off before I manage to make any sense of them. For how long has it been like this? Ever since I met that man? But had there been anything before I met him? I can't remember how my life used to be. It feels like it's always revolved around him, around that name I hate nearly as much as I hate myself. I don't know another way to live. I don't want to live another way. I can't imagine changing myself... but I can't imagine to live like this, either. I don't even know where I am. It's a different reality... Different? Different from what? From when? From who?

Sometimes I wonder who I am.

My reality is this child I hold by my chest. It brings me down to earth. It makes me stay here and now. It helps me to focus and control my senses. Yes, when I look at this tearful face, at these eyelids, pressed tight and only occasionally revealing blue eyes, at these curved lips... Then, just for a moment, I forget all insignificant matters. When I feel this little body next to mine, when these small hands wave anxiously and grasp my hair, then I concentrate of this creature and try to help. It needs milk, it needs warmth - and this is all I can give it. I don't want it, I don't know what to do with it - but thanks to it I don't need to hear unpleasant things.

For the very second I forget about this child, the name of that man begins to bang at the surface of my mind, penetrates my thoughts and my body, fills me from the inside and destroys my personality. Destroys? Or maybe emphasizes it? His name sounds in my ears until I'm unable to hear anything else, it resonates louder and louder with every heartbeat, takes away my breath. It fills me with hatred, fear, satisfaction and fulfilment. Or is it just my conscience, reminding me of what I should do... should have done? Once. Long ago. One day. At some point. In another life.

I'm an avenging angel. I bring justice. I inflict penalty. I am in the right. He is a demon. Embodiment of cruelty. He brings death and suffering, and causes tears. Angel and demon. Good and evil. Everything is simple with only black and white.

But then, what is this child?

Will it help me to have my revenge?

Or will it bring him peace?

Is there any meaning to it?

I see this child only as a means. Even though it is flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood, it seems merely something that accidentally appeared in my life. It seems it would disappear as accidentally, too, when I put it aside. It is a fruit of my sin, and my fall. It is a gift from him, and his part. It exist only as a fragment of him. Although I hold it by my chest, it is like water and air. My hands cannot grasp it. It escapes my perception, as if it wasn't here in the first place. As if it belonged to someone else. It's much less real than the image of that man in my mind.

I couldn't kill him. He couldn't kill me. After that, the world went crazy, and nothing was normal any more. Nothing will ever be normal. Or maybe the world became defined anew? Maybe it was given new fundaments and new rules? I won't kill him. He won't kill me. Is it easier this way? Is it more difficult? Is it clearer? Is it more complicated? Is there hope in it? Is there damnation? Is it what I feared? Is it what I desired? Would I give anything to be a normal person again?

Sometimes when my mind can no longer bear it, when it stops functioning, when all voices calm down - just like that final hour before dawn, when waking ones weaken and fall into lethargy - it becomes perfectly silent. Those moments are less and less frequent, and I know that soon I won't experience them any more and the chaos will absorb me completely. But now, still, just one more time, I can see his face, so clear in absolute darkness. Cold arrogance wrinkles his proud forehead. Cruel cynicism twists his sensitive lips. And in his eyes - those odd eyes that express his deviant nature better than anything - I can see my reflection.

Those times when I stare at my own face in the shades of violent brown and gentle blue, I feel like it's the only place - at the junction of two worlds - where I belong. So peaceful is that my own place, the only one in the whole universe. At the junction of two dimensions, there is no longer any angel or demon - only two people we have been from the very start. He and I. When I realise it, my chest hurts, and I it's hard to breathe. I feel like laughing and crying, and shouting. But I can only afford a resigned sigh.

Maybe we both are worse than we imagine.

Maybe we're not so bad as we think of ourselves.