The Secrets You Hide: A Mind-Blowing Thriller (The Psychosis Series) (14 page)

19: Robert’s Journal – Of Today

I can’t recall how long it has been since I wrote anything into my journal. I have tried…many times…sitting opposite my computer…staring at the blinking cursor…as nights have slipped away unnoticed.

Days, weeks and months have passed without accounting for much. I wake up in the morning consumed by guilt and that feeling remains till I go back to sleep…if I ever sleep. I don’t even know if it is the guilt of failing my family or of taking a life.

My therapist tells me that I need to let go…that I need to move on. Perhaps, this is my way of moving on…writing one last entry for my journal…finishing Jack’s story. I hope I can deliver peace to his soul and mine with these words. I hope to find my release when I send this journal entry to Jack’s mail ID–the same one that he had forced me to use before.

I vaguely remember the last few moments of my confrontation with him in that mirrored room. I am only left with a dimming image of his body shivering ever so slightly as one bullet after another had passed through him.

I remember walking out of that room into the alleyway where I was found by a group of policemen and Paul, who had just arrived there looking for me. The moment they saw me and the blood smeared on my hands and my clothes they knew that there was nothing they could do to save me.

In the months that followed, I was tried for the murder of Jack Bryant. And I was acquitted of all charges by the jury. They called it a compassionate decision heavily influenced by what I had lost…by what Jack had taken from me. They did not brand me a killer and yet I strangely feel like one.

Jack was right. Obsessions don’t subside. They evolve. I was obsessed with protecting my family from myself. And when I couldn’t…when I lost them, I became obsessed with trying to understand the man who took them away from me. I became obsessed with trying to understand him and make sense of his actions.

I have been trying to deny him his closure…I have been trying to deny him an end to this story…

The words and pages that he wrote are locked up in police evidence somewhere…gathering dust…waiting to be destroyed when they are no more needed. His story will never find its way into this world. At least, not in his words. It will never be read by the millions of people he wanted to frighten and change.

I suspect he knew, at some level, that this was a possibility. He probably knew that the ending of this story might not be in his sole control. So, maybe, he decided to co-author it with me. Because this was never just his story, was it? It was our story–his and mine.

Jack was supposed to be the writer of these last words. But that changed. Somewhere and at some time…I became the writer. It was a role reversal…perfectly executed.

Jack talked about creating an externality that could show the mirror to the world. An externality that could make the world question its reality, it's obsessions. Jack did not walk out of that room alive. I did. So I have to be that externality.

I do not know who will be reading these words. But whoever it is, there are a few questions I want you to answer for yourself… questions which Jack would have wanted to ask you.

Did my words rile up any emotions inside you? Anything at all?

Do you realize that those emotions weren’t mine? That I wasn’t telling this story alone…you were telling it with me…

What are the secrets you hide? Why do you hide them?

Think about someone you love. Your parents, your siblings, a lover maybe, or a friend. You probably know them well…but do you know them well enough?

Do you feel this…this incomplete knowledge…this feeling of not knowing…this uncertainty? Yes?

Is this what sustains the romance…not necessarily physical, no…but psychological…a psychological romance?

So look in the mirror. Ask yourself. Are you obsessed?

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Other works by the Author

The Kill
is a
fast-paced psychological thriller short story
in The Psychosis Series. It is rated
4.8 stars
after 20 reviews
on Amazon.com!