THREE YEARS LATER:
KIX:
I opened my eyes once more, and I was still there in the hospital bed.
I half smiled while tasting the lingering bitter memories of that nightmare inside my mouth. I was just dreaming that, right?... There was no way it could all be true...
I was only dreaming that Jade had disappeared, that Edril was in a coma, and that I was arrested for Jade’s disappearance. It was definitely all just a sick dream…
Or not… Sh*t…
I groaned at the painful wound at my left chest. How could I not die after being punctured by the broken glasses in this part of my body? Why was I cursed with such a fate?
Ever since that fateful day when I opened my eyes after what happened in Jade’s dorm, my life had completely turned upside down.
At first, I blamed everything towards Beta Nathan, Misha’s father. Surprisingly, he was there when the arrest had happened. I even saw him smile a dark smile at me as the police took me away on handcuffs.
Back then, I thought that old, shrewish beta had conspired with the undead from Brooklyn and Burke to kick me out of my own company and out of my own pack.
Now, I don’t even know whether I could trust my f*cking mind when it comes to details like these…
That fateful day of my arrest, I began to learn so much more as I listened to the police and their reason for suspecting me...
Because of my injuries, they kept me at the hospital, but they changed my ward. I was removed from the Intensive Care Unit and was transferred into the Mental Health Unit.
They started saying various things against me, and one of them was that I was the one who kidnapped Jade…
“Mr. Sarmiento, you and Miss Jade had a history together, hadn’t you? You were high school lovers based from what I have learned.”
I was replying to Captain Rigdon’s question in circles for some time already that everything was giving me a headache.
“What does that have to do with Jade?!”
“Please answer the question first.”
“Yes,” I screamed, “I already said yes before! Why are you asking this again?”
“That’s right… Everything turned sour I supposed when you exposed nude pictures of her in the school,” the captain from hell remarked.
“No, I didn’t do that! It was someone else.”
“Suppose it really was someone else, Mr. Sarmiento, but she did have cause to believe that was you, and Miss Sy started to hate you so much because of that incident, right?”
“What are you implying,” I thundered.
“She stabbed you back in high school. She was also kicked out of school because of that. Perhaps her hate in you had grown even more then. That must be the start, huh?...”
“The start of what?”
“Of your obsession towards her. You did follow her in the university, after your parents died, right?”
I couldn’t see where this mock investigation by this sick bastard was going. I only knew that it was turning bad.
“Look, officer, Jade and I had patched things up. I wasn’t responsible for her pictures back in high school, and she only stabbed me by accident!”
“Oh, really? The jugular vein doesn’t seem to be such a very accessible site for an accident, Mr. Sarmiento.”
I was a very impatient person, so I tried to cut to the chase. “Captain Rigdon, what the hell are you implying? What do your questions have to do with Jade’s disappearance?”
The captain finally closed his notes. He stood at the edge of my bed.
“It’s simple, Mr. Sarmiento. You started to develop an unhealthy obsession with Miss Sy. It went way back from high school. When your parents died, you stated acting on that obsession again and began following her around, leading to this crime…”
“Crime? What crime,” I said incredulously back at the captain who liked making stupid conjectures. “Jade has disappeared, and I was in a coma! Where’s the crime in that?”
“Mr. Sarmiento… Have you been having bad dreams lately?...”
Captain Rigdon’s tone and line of questioning had shifted now… What the hell was he up to?
“No,” I lied. “I don’t know… I just woke up!”
“Did you really? Are you sure of that?”
I had totally lost my composure. “What the f*cking hell do you care?!”
Captain Rigdon sighed and pulled his smart phone out. It looked like he was opening an app.
“The doctor told me this wasn’t the best way to confront you, but I disagree. You should see the truth for yourself.”
He played a video from his phone and shoved it into my face.
The video he played looked like a raw CCTV recording based on the minutes and date plastered at its upper right hand corner.
Based from the clip, the date was exactly three months from the day I was being questioned.
It showed an eerily empty hospital hallway. I frowned since I was seeing nothing.
After a few dull minutes, I opened my mouth to protest, but Captain Rigdon continued to glare at me. “Watch it until the end.”
I gazed back at the video, and that’s when I saw it!
A boy in a hospital gown was walking by the hallway. It looked like he was trying to avoid getting caught by the doctors and nurses that passed by in the middle of the night.
The CCTV was clear enough. The boy in the video was unmistakably me.
“What? When was this?” I checked the time. It was six in the evening.
Captain Rigdon took the phone away and tapped on it. He shoved it back wordlessly on my face as he played another video.
The date was the same, but for this video, the time stamp showed it was two o’ clock in the morning.
It was only a quick clip, but on an empty corridor, I saw myself returning to my room…
Only this time, my hospital gown was positively smeared with blood.
“What the hell? T-That’s not me,” I said, unable to believe what I just saw. “That’s not me!”
“The nurses had discovered a stash of bloody hospital gowns in your room recently… It was concealed in a space on the hospital room’s ceiling.”
My mind was in a mess. What was this about? What was this captain saying?
“The lab reports for the bloody gown came back yesterday, Mr. Sarmiento. The blood on those gowns was positively identified as Miss Jade Sy’s blood…. Now tell me again, Mr. Sarmiento… Are you not having bad dreams lately?”