Chapter 12 – Revelations
Flynn
"Please, take a seat – i've prepared for your arrival, Flynn." She gestured to the seat opposite her on the long dining room table, but I did not move, still aiming down my sights at her head, ready to take the shot if I needed.
"You know? I'm not even surprised Ms. Hale." I looked at Monika, sitting in her chair as beautiful as ever. It was obvious wasn't it? Why I was obsessed with her, because she wanted me to be obsessed with her. She manipulated me.
"Please Flynn, do sit down. We have a lovely meal to get through." I looked down at the table and a small serving of pate with garlic bread had appeared on a dish. I continued to aim down my sights. Monika sighed and, suddenly, I felt an agonising pain in my wrist, like my joint had been sprained through blunt force trauma. The pain had forced me to loosened my grip on the pistol, dropping it to the floor.
"Sit. Down." Monika stopped eating and looked into my eyes. Without much choice, I complied and sat down. Monika was still staring at me, so I decided to pick up the knife and fork and eat the starter.
"Good. Now, i'm sure you have plenty of questions which I am willing to answer." She looked back down to her plate and began to eat her starter again. She was right, I obviously had lots of questions and I needed answers.
"Where are we?" I asked.
"We are in your mind." Monika replied, casually picking at her starter.
"Could you please elaborate?" Her response had not clarified matters to me whatsoever.
"This is all in your head. I just used the assets present in your mind to construct a reality which I desired you to experience. That is... I can control your brain chemistry. You will see and feel and hear what I want you to."
"I've seen all this before. This room, this table, this food." I looked around, where had all of this come from? I swear I had seen this all before.
"Of course you have, I simply plucked the room from one of your memories, and took the rest of what you see from other memories." So Monika was deliving through my mind, picking out different things I had seen and rearranging them into a new experience – terrifying though her powers may be, magnificent incarnate.
"So where am I really?" I asked. The experience felt so real but, it always did.
"You are in your living room with Natsuki. Well, you were." She replied.
"What do you mean 'you were'?" I asked in return, what had she planned? And most importantly – will my plan work? Only time would tell.
"Like I said, I control your brain chemistry. You're currently on your way to my apartment. You spent the rest of your evening with Natsuki who is none the wiser and, after she went to sleep, I made you begin the journey to my place." Monika stopped eating her starter and a new dish appeared in front of us which was, of course, another of my favourites – a lamb shank with a side of roast potatoes.
"Why? Why are you doing this? All of this?" I asked, baffled by all that had been occuring.
"Because, Flynn, isn't it obvious? I'm doing this for you, for us. I'm doing this because I love you." Monika placed down her cutlery and stared into my eyes, propping her head up on her hands.
"Love? Monika, really? You don't know anything about me." Love. Monika knew nothing of love. This was infactuation – an obsession with the idea of who I am, an addiction.
"I've been watching you from the start and i've been in your mind so many times. I know your favourite food – hence the pate starter – I know your painful past, I know why you ran away, the real reason you ran away." She said, standing up from her seat as she began to walk towards me.
"Don't..." Nobody could know the truth about me. Not of who I am, but what I am.
"I know you ran away not because of what you did to John..." She was making her way gradually towards me, his hips swinging from side to side in a confident and seductive dance.
"Please..." My voice trailed off as I heard the screams of every person whose life I had taken in Afghanistan.
"But because you miss it. You miss the battlefield, you miss the fire of war and you ran away because you enjoyed every second of it. You ran away because you were scared of what you became when you depended on war. Let's take a trip down memory lane." She sat on the corner of the table, next to me, and I remained silent. Everything faded away and I found myself in a completely new environment.
"Yo, Carson, you ready for this?" I turned around and saw a man wearing black tactical gear and a balaclava. Of course. Guilt. What else would she show me? I observed the past version of myself standing in a room with a former colleague, ready to conduct 'business'. It's what I did after leaving the Army – close protection. Except it wasn't really protecting VIPs for a nice pay check, more like carrying out wet work which violated international law, Geneva convention be damned, for sketchy private military contractors. The room had blacked out windows, and in the centre – tied to a chair – was my target. We had been tasked to extract information from the poor bastard by any means necessary. I had removed his finger nails and teeth with pliers, hammered nails through his hands, broken his ankles and shattered his knees among countless other atrocities. The scene melted away, and I was back in the dining room with Monika.
"I know you came here because you thought you could make a difference and give something to the lives of others, rather than simply take lives away." She took my hand in hers, I looked at her hand which was covered perfectly smooth silky skin, and then back up into her eyes.
"And that's why I love you. You've seen ferocity, you've been a warrior, and yet you've come back from the brink and dedicated your life to improving others. How could I not love you?" I continued to stare into her beautiful green eyes, her words were poetic, and it took all of my willpower to resist her.
"So what now Monika? What happens now?" I was still determined to finish this, but I would have to do it in the real world. Incapacitating her in this construction of hers inside my own brain would be pointless, it would have to be done in the real world. Nonetheless, I needed more data, so I decided to test the parameters of her construction now that I was aware of where it existed – inside my own mind.
"I wanted you to be drawn to me with some... Encouragement. I wanted you to have free will and come to me through your own choice. But I think despite everything I have done, despite your obsession with me, your ability to resist has been remarkable. You see, to en-thrall somebody requires them to be broken down."
"So?"
"So now i'm going to break you down. You will be mine Flynn. You might not right now, but after i've finished – you'll be begging for me." Suddenly, the candles in the room blew out. My instincts took over and leapt from the chair, diving to where I had dropped my Glock 17. I stood back up immediately and aimed to where Monika had been sitting, but she was nowhere to be seen. At the end of the room behind where Monika was sitting was a door, and I began to slowly walk towards the exit – looking for her in every shadowy corner. The paintings on the wall had become horribly distorted, with faces which appeared to be melting down the wall. Where there used to be eyes were now empty black pits, voids which lacked a means of sight, but were still staring into me.
"Calm down Flynn. This isn't real." I said to myself. But to me it was real, it was all in my mind after all. There must be a way to escape from this induced nightmare! As I reached the exit, I placed my hand on the door handle and pushed it down, exiting the banquet hall and entering a dark hallway. The door slammed shut behind me and faded from existence. Candles came to life on the wall, providing some luminescence to the eerie corridor.
"Nice try Monika, but I don't have any more fear to give!" I shouted. My voice echoed down the hallway, and a familiar voice echoed back.
"You don't have any fear to give, but you have guilt." John emerged from the shadows, covered in camouflage gear which was flecked with bullet holes oozing a continuous stream of black blood onto the floor which seeped into the cracks of the old floor boards.
"Oh John..."
