Hi!
I hope that you guys will like this chapter since this is one of those that I actually liked myself. As always, I would like to thank the people who reviewed me and those who simply read what I wrote, and to my beta. And now, on to the story!

Chapter 10

It's night once again. You are in your bed, your childhood bed that brings so many memories, good, bad, and worse. You try to slide further inside the blanket, to find comfort and warmth whereas the outside is full of apathy and fear. Yet the blanket is too short so while you burrow under the covers your toes are freezing cold hanging uselessly outside.

You turn around, trying to find a comfortable position, and fail. Lay on your stomach, but then your side is exposed. Lie on your back and your head is throbbing. Lying on your side causes your hands to get that tingly feeling when they don't get enough blood; it's annoying and bothers you to no end.

You count sheep- one sheep. Two sheep. A herd. They are walking towards you and away from you cockily as if knowing that you cannot do anything properly; not to hurt them, not even to sleep. One sheep is looking at you with its gaze penetrating your soul and you feel compelled to turn your eyes from its blaming gaze.

You count the minutes. It is more exciting than it sounds, really, and soon you are lost in the rhythm that you know will stay the same forever. No matter where you look, no matter in which country, time or dimension you are in, the sound will always be the same, waiting for you. A deceitful consistency that you know exists only there, where there are no living beings to ruin the perfection.

You're supposed to sleep but can't. You're afraid. That's right, the mighty you is petrified of the night.

At nights you dream of headless men that are coming to get you and of deceased ghosts that have come back to life just for the lone purpose of hunting you down. You try to get away from them every time, to turn away from their lure and run away, but in each and every night they are pushing you toward a great abyss. One step forward - and you fall.

It wouldn't have been half bad if the dreams just happened and faded away in the morning- joining to the forgetfulness void that is stored in the darkest parts of your unconscious where even you cannot reach. Where nights can stretch beyond time- and you wouldn't have cared. Yet even your subconscious, it seems, does not want to let you get away that easily with the situation afoot. It taunts you and hunts you.
You always remember the dreams. You cannot forget them. Those are the dreams you ignored and wanted, denied as yours and never even once managed to be awakened from by yourself. The nightmares, you remember them as well as you do the good dreams- the hope and revenge and the lust. You even dreamed of trust once when you dared to open up your heart. You remember all of that and so much more. You remember more then just the names of emotions, you can actually feel them in a ridiculous sense of nostalgia, how they felt, how the loses reaped your heart open, and how your successes tried to mend all the piece back together while never even once coming close to succeeding. You even remember the emptiness that was always there, that is still there, and you aren't sure that you want to be rid of it. You are used to that feeling- of the emptiness. So muchthat you cannot be sure that when it is gone one day and it will not be replaced with something worse, something that you can't fight against, something you are not ready for. You have the weapon againstthe nothing but against everything else- you'll lose.

During the days, you act as if nothing bothers you, as if time itself has not become your foe, ticking silently away. You hide your self-hatred, doubts and pains, willing to forget it all. Wishing you could stay like that forever, with your family, in this time and world. Wishing, because you know you cannot have it and know that life will not be merciful to you, it never has been. So you gaze at the top of the swaying trees, and think of thunderstorms and rain. You think of sunrises and paint pictures in your mind in bright colors of destroyed streets and bare footed children who are walking calmly amidst them. And his memories- his, the other you, the one you've come to hate, his memories are haunting you. His dreams are mixing with yours, his ambitions rewriting the ones you use to have. Yet his love for his brothers top everything that you have ever felt, even toward Bianca, and you can't help but to wonder what a fucked up world it must have been that he loved his brothers more than he loved his wife.
Only, he and Bianca never got married in the other reality and the pain he felt for that choice is tearing you apart in the daytime and isn't letting you sleep at night. In the evenings and afternoons, on the brick of exhaustion, you want only to forget, to cease remembering the course of time that was planted in your head forcefully and that no matter what you tried simply refuses to leave. You hate the other you, the one who loved when you didn't and that is now dead when you are alive and love them. You hate him so much that sometimes when you wake up it is the only thing that you can think of; the first thought that creeps into your mind is about him, his life and how to destroy him.

You are tired, always tired. Reality and dreams begin to mix together, integrate into each other to create a greater picture of horror. Some kind of a joke at your expense that you really don't appreciate, even if you had understood what was funny about it. You cannot sleep, not while the nightmares are trying relentlessly to bring you to the edge of insanity. And you are not so sure anymore that they didn't succeed. Because sometimes when you wake up and realize that you are in a time other than yours and that your family and world are different as well, sometimes, most of the time, you are sure you've lost it. Every cell in your mind must have been blown up one time too many while you weren't watching, while you were planning taking over the world, it crept up on you. It won.

For how can it be that the life you are living is actually true? Wouldn't it be easier, you sometimes wonder in the safety of your mind, to simply declare yourself as a whacko?

And when you wake up in the morning and go downstairs, you meet them and just for a second you wonder what they are doing here- is it really possible that they are still alive? So you turn toward the woman who looks so much like Mom that it hurts, wanting to hold her close to your heart to see that she's real, that you are real.

Then you remember.

Everything comes back at once; how you reached here, the plan and how you must control yourself so they won't suspect anything.

So you force yourself to give her a warm hug instead, not allowing your body to hold onto hers even a second more than necessary, even a second less. You force yourself not to hug her desperately in fear that she might disappear, or to flinch away because her sight is bringing old ghosts back to life. But it is not easy to not show her even an iota of emotion when deep inside you are dying; longing with hate, rage and defeat mingling together, forever. She cannot help you, not when even you cannot help yourself.

And the worst thing is that the other Chris' memories are always coming to you at one point or another and you can feel that he had the same craving for her approval and the same ache every time he got near, the constant confusion, just like you. Through his eyes, you see how they treated you. . .him, but he could never be angry with them so you are angry for him. Your desperation and his seep into each other, into one person that simply cannot live like that. Cannot. Because you don't know anymore where you end and he begins, or maybe there's no point searching for that edge anymore, for it does not exist.

You know they are going to ask you those annoying questions when you are separated from her but hope, just like every morning, that this can be delayed just for one more minute. So you steal minutes away from the frame of time, knowing that all those missed seconds will one day come together as a great mistake but in each and every morning, you don't give a damn. For in this second that lasts far more than any second you have ever experienced and that surely has some scientific explanation, something about time distortion and how wormholes pierce through the wrong place, nothing matters. The world could drown and quack with you in the middle, turn into a giant monster of lava, and you would still be standing open mouthed to the wonder that your mind simply cannot digest, not even if it was given a million of years. And you only gave it a minute.

Then you tear your eyes away from hers and it's ok to breathe again while at the back of your mind there's already a new excuse to explain it away.