White Puzzle by Max Kaynes - HTML preview

 

30

 

I dream of her often… she was the only person who truly understood me.

Her hair was a golden glow when touched by the sunlight. She always smiled and laughed with me. We were happy together in the beautiful days and sad together on the bad days.

She was the most important person in my life.

We understood each other deeply because she and I had to bear the same torment. Every time her father hurt her she would run to me and dispensed her feelings with me. When I was hit, I would do the same thing.

Our hearts connected.

However, the dreadful events went on. The root of the evil still remained. When she grew up, her body developed into the puberty. It was the time that her father realized of her worth more than before, and the new nightmare began.

She always came to see me covering in bruises. Her lips broke and bled from the hateful treatment. Her legs usually had bloody evident from that lustful beast. I felt pain every time I saw her in such state. Finally, I decided that I had to do something.

She never even once asked me to help. She always came to me in tears before left with a smile, but I knew. I knew that her heart was full of bitterness.

I decided to depend on the law. I told her story to the police. However, when the police came, her father welcomed them with a smile and treated them really good. After the police had done their job, they called me and gave me a warning, telling me that reporting a false case was wrong. If I did it again, I would be punished.

After that day, her father tortured her even harsher. She ran away to see me less often. Sometimes, her father would come to threaten me. He tried to do everything to keep her away from me, but I wouldn’t give up. No way.

If the police wanted an evident, I would find an evident for them. I used a camera to record every anomalous action of that beast. Every disgusting action. Every lustful breath. I recorded everything. I would shame him until he could no longer turn back to the society. He must be in despair from the condemnation and the disgusted stares. This world would never have a place for him anymore.

After I’d done gathering the evident and cut the video to avoid ruining her name, I sent everything to the police. I might be charged for obscenity, but that wasn’t important. If she was saved from that man, it would make me happy.

Everything went according to my plan. That man was arrested and lost on the court. Not long after he was sent to jail, I heard good news.

He committed suicide in the cell, in the place that would lock away his evil soul forever.

However, there was always a shadow within the light.

After the media had played with her stories, her smile faded away. She tried to avoid people because she felt ashamed. She might be the victim, but she also was the main character of those detestable scenes. Of course, the media would choose to make the story even more disgusting to increase their profit.

The added problems made her decided to end her life.

Even now, I still see her screamed again and over again. Her death circles around my mind without an end.

I am the one who let go of her.

I am the one who caused her death.

Her death was my sin. After that, I always blame myself. Because of me, she was ashamed. Because of me, she died. 

However, within the sorrow was a sprout of goodness. Her death made me decided to help the others. I decided to be a psychiatrist to help people who had problems like hers. I vowed in front of her ash that I wouldn’t let anyone be painful like her again. I had worked hard until I was on the top of my career. My theory was published and became the primary reference in many classes. I’d helped so many people from the hands of the demons that the laws couldn’t reach. My life became the life that I had desired. I was happy with what I was doing.

I felt I was free. I had paid for the sin I’d done, or at least I thought I did…

However, the good and the bad aren’t numbers. They couldn’t be balanced out. No matter how hard I tried to make up for my mistake, I always felt that the success I had was far from what it should be.

I sank deep in this endless circle. Sometimes, I tried to help people until I got involved in their personal matters. Many women had similar problems to her. So, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I made the persons who harm them pay their prices. This time I wouldn’t let anyone be ashamed again.

However, looking from a different point, I realized that I’d walked the same path I made a mistake in the past. It was worse even.

I started to use a camera to watch those beasts’ movement. However, every time, I would be enhanced with the life of those women who fell prays as if I was looking at some beautiful plays. Worry turned into adoration. Adoration turned into possessiveness. Those women were no longer someone I wanted to help, but they were preys that I snatched away from the losing hunters.

I am a child from an abusive family. When I look back at myself, I realize that I had absorbed the darkness into my heart.

I have become a monster I used to despair.

Sometimes, even though we understand what we are, we’re too weak to do anything about it.

I sought my preys, played with them a little before got rid of them. I had done it often enough that I got myself arrested and was sent for the therapy.

Yes, that story isn’t my patient’s story. It is my story.

However, getting into the therapy was my plan, I’d fooled everyone I met so that I could avoid being in jail. After that, the only thing I had to do was waiting for the right time.

The doctor who took charge of me proposed using the interview technique to check for the root of my personality, and if they could fix up the problematic thinking system. They pretended to treat me like I was a psychiatrist as usual. I made them believe that I hadn’t recovered from the illness. Then, when they were numb with the way I was.

It was the time I would get out of there.

After I had exchanged information with my personal doctor, I sneaked off to disturb the alarm system to cause some confusion. I used a patient wandering around there as bait. I created the image to make him seem to be a dangerous person so that everyone would concentrate on him. As everyone knows, the mind of a patient isn’t that stable. When the staff tried to detain him, his fragile mind was shattered. He went wild like I expected him to be. During the chaotic time, I escaped from that place. When everything went back to normal, I’d already gone.

But that wouldn’t be enough for them to stop chasing after me, I had to completely disappear.

I tore off my clothes, cut my hand, dropped some blood on the clothes, and left it on the railing as if I fell dead. Then, I ran away as far as I could.

They looked at what I left behind in confusion. They couldn’t locate me. I had hidden away for five years so that my name would be on the list of the disappeared persons.

Finally, I was free.

I faked my identities; the name, surname, and the educational background to start my new life. I completely erased my old self before started what I had been doing again.

I had to find a new prey to suffice the hunger in my heart.

After wandering for a long time, I finally found my new prey, but this girl was different from the girls I had conquered.

The golden hair when touched by the sunlight. The large eyes. The white skin and the bright smile. The image of this girl was just like her… as if she was still around. As if she had never left me.

But I wouldn’t allow any mistake like before. This girl was the most precious treasure I’d ever found. I had to have her. No matter what I lost, I must have her.

It might be my luck because the time I met her was the same time she had problems with her father. A teenager is an age with a fragile heart. The more problems they had, the easier it was for my plan.

I bought a house in that neighborhood and went to introduce myself to her family. She welcomed me with a friendly smile. As expected, her father didn’t want to see me, and that was the way I wanted it.

I tried to gather information from talking with her, building trust so that she would choose me as her savior when she had any problems. I collected general information and personal information from her and her father. Sometimes, I would secretly take photos from her father’s diary to use as backup information to create my creditability. If I couldn’t find some needed information, I would use some other means to make my story trustworthy.

Choosing a pray was the most important factor. Her father was a solitude man and didn’t have a sibling or relative that would come to mess up with my plan. His strictness affected her lifestyle as well. If my plan were successful, nobody would suspect my background again.

I tried to interact with the others in the neighborhood as less as possible to avoid having them remember my face clearly.

In my plan, I was someone who shouldn’t exist in this world.

After I had all information I needed, the last thing I had to do was to wait.

I cut the electric lines of some houses, including mine, and sent the photos from a distance for the electricians to come fix it. I also reported about the pressing that the problem occurred during the night. Not long after that, they sent people in the area to fix the problem, and that was the beginning of my plan. 

Before that, I stole some emergency appliance and surveyed the area to increase the success rate of the plan. I wrapped a cloth around my hand before broke a window to get into her house. Her father’s room installed with sound-proofed material to lessen the sound from outside. If the sound of something broken was heard, she might be too familiar with her father’s clumsiness. It wasn’t that strange if she didn’t give it a thought. Then, I broke into her room with two knives and another gun. One knife was for me. The other one was for her.

I knocked the door of her room before charged inside, trying to scare her before intentionally dropped a knife there. After pretending to be unable to fight her, I ran away with her mobile phone. I was rather certain that she would be too scared to drive me out to the street. Even if she did that, I already had a second plan. 

To be sure, I knocked the door of her room to drive her paranoid to the top, making the sound of footstep around the house before waited in a dark corner.

As expected, she was too scared to do anything. Her father was the first person that stepped out of his room. I swiftly hit him before switched our clothes and used some black clothes to cover his mouth and eyes, and tied up his legs and hands. Then, I used another knife to threaten him, warning him not to uselessly struggle. I told him that if he struggled, the knife I was holding would be pierced through his body. The dark makes us unaware of what is happening around us. The unknown makes us scared. He stayed still submissively. The last thing I had to do was to lure her off the room.

I made her scared and used her habit to my benefits. She always cared about the others. No matter how much she hated someone, she would always worry about them if they were to need help. I knew of this from disguising myself and pried the information of her bothering ex-boyfriend.

After she had left the room, the first thing she saw under the moonlight was an intruder who twisting around suspiciously.

And that was the time the piled up paranoid in her mind did its job.

When her father heard the approaching footsteps, with fright, he charged at her.

When the culprit charged at her, her paranoid forced her to react to survive.

The blade stabbed right in the middle of his heart. Thick blood dirtied the place. She stood still, looking at the death in the front with a broken heart.

She…, a girl who always lived a normal happy life, had become a murderer. She killed her own father in a blink.

When I heard her scream, I ran in hurriedly with a candle holder in my hand. I wanted to create an unclear image to increase the confusion in her mind. She stared at her father’s pale face before turned to look at me. I hugged her swiftly before whispered in her ear.

“Do you want to forget it?” I asked.

She looked at me in blank before slowly nodded. The condition was now completed.

I took her to her father’s room to create the desired atmosphere.

This was the most important step.

However, my plan was ruined.

The door burst opened abruptly. The unexpected factor had appeared.

Max, the boy living next door, was looking at me in shock. He knew everything immediately after he saw me.

He tried to leave to go for help, but I wouldn’t let him do that. I caught him fast before tied him up, using a cloth to cover his mouth to prevent him from making a sound. Then, I took him in the ritual that was about to begin.

After I had laid her on the bed, I took off a pocket watch and swung it to bring her under my control.

This was the time that her mind was at its weakest so I could change her thought or her memory as I wished. However, I wouldn’t be able to completely change her memory if she didn’t want it.

But now it was her wish to change it.

The desperate sound from the boy who watching his beloved changed made the whole ritual more satisfying. I gradually erased the images of her real father from her memory. I swung the clock back and forth until she was completely hypnotized before blew out the candle.

Both arms of the clock pointed at twelve.

She reborn in the second that the new day started.

After she had fallen asleep, I moved the boy to a deserted building before came back to the girl in the morning.

The first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was me in her father’s clothes.

“Who are you?” She asked me with a blank face.

I moved my face closer and gave her the warmest smile this world ever had.

“It’s me, Dad, Dream.”

Her brain couldn’t bear the pain from what happened, so it escaped by creating the twisted memory. My job was to create a crack for the brain to put a reasonable memory. Her father’s face was replaced with mine. She didn’t suspect anything because, when she still remembered everything, my image to her was a brother who came with warmth and happiness. She didn’t question what I told her in any way.

I got rid of her father’s body by crunching his bone into powder and chopping his flesh into a mash before threw them away. I erased every evidence except the blood stain on the wall. I couldn’t do anything about it, so I let it be like that.

I moved away from that place as soon as possible. From the information I gathered about the photos she had searched for, she saw the image of herself being stabbed in her memory when looking at the picture of that house from a distance. It was because she saw it as the whole picture of her terrible memories. The brain had fed false information so that she wouldn’t feel guilty. She believed she was the victim.

While I drove away, she looked at the old house longingly. We ran away from that area, leaving the house behind until it couldn’t be seen.  

For that boy, I didn’t want to kill him. Killing will cause too many troubles shall it to happen. So, I chose to torture him in with various methods, forcing him to forget before forced a fake memory into his brain.

At first, he tried to plead for his life and resisted with everything he had. Every time he did that I would use the more severe method to torture him. What I wanted to plant into his mind was fear. When he was scared, he would do everything I said.

After a period of extreme torment, I saw some interesting reaction. He started to dim down and followed my orders submissively. His character severely changed. Fear traced in his every movement. I gradually decreased the severity of my punishment. At the same time, I inputted the information I wanted him to believe to prevent the police to track me down.

The false information, if insisted long enough and repeated often enough, a new believing would be born.

Max was my masterpiece.

He became a doll that was ready to do anything according to my will.

After I had released him, I let out a rumor that he ran away from home because he had some problems with his family. The bruised body and the suffering mind of the boy made his mother a victim of the society without realizing.

I’d hired a homeless to live in the house I used to stay and ordered him to make it as clear as possible that he was my relative. He’d done his job well. He made everybody in the neighborhood believed that I’d died because of a terminal illness. I had him recreated the image of my face in people’s mind so that they wouldn’t be able to mess with my plan later. This was the reason I avoided meeting people since the beginning. However, I was unable to change everyone’s thought, but it was the nature of rumor that some information might be wrong.

About the blood stain, I covered it with the smoke before told my employee to started a rumor that the house was haunted, using the belief of Thai people to create fear. After that, the house was unable to be sold and became the place to trade drugs for the girl’s ex-boyfriend.

After he had completed his job, I got rid of that man. He was the only person who could confirm my identity.

The girl and I moved into a new home. I tried to be a good father, but I also chose to keep some bad habits of her father to create the familiarity. Moreover, human always felt at east if they met someone who wasn’t overly perfect. I chose to act as normal as possible. 

I tried to listen and repaid the things she’d never received from her old father to make her trust me. The most important thing was listening to your prey. I tried to look out at the information and listened to her to plan for the unexpected.

I used information from the diary that her father left behind to live a life he had. You might think I had a miserable life but, for me, owning her was what made me triumphal.

I always took care of the photos that might cause problems, pretending to burn them to the deceased wife. I knew that when I was destroying the evident, she secretly watched me. I had to put up a play to deceive her. 

For the lost memory, I usually repeated it to her continuously. I placed the photos where she could see them clearly to control the way of her memory. I refused her old memories and replaced them with the memories I wanted her to have. This made her uncertain of the memory she had. After I’d done that, she believed she had a problem with her memory and started to write a diary to cope with it, and that became another valuable source of information for me.

Everything went as planned, she became the young woman I wanted her to be, the white pieces I’d put together before added colors however I like.

If I had to say, everything wouldn’t be this successful if she hadn’t wanted it.

I didn’t lie to her. She had been lying to herself.

She was my most perfect theory. She was the proof that if you lied to yourself with enough control and drive, a new character would be formed.

She became my ideal girl, a reflection of the woman I loved when I was young.

I wanted everything to be like this… forever…

However, the unexpected did happen.

My theory was destroyed because her memory hadn’t been completely replaced. She reacted to those photos. The memory might be wrong, but it could lead her to the truth.

I had to make a new plan with the variable I had in my hands.

Max, Bill, and Ton. They were the variable I chose.

Max was a young man who was tortured until his mind was broken. As I said, his heart was exceedingly fragile. So, I pushed and controlled him to work in my place.

For me, Bill was just another pawn that would make my replacement worked better. He was a good distraction that would make my daughter confuse.

Ton… this kid was interesting. I admire his intelligence. He made me confused a few times, but I think that what made everything, even more fun.

But my plan this time was risky. I had to watch it carefully. After she had chosen to pursue the truth with the help of that boy, I used words that would arouse Max, forcing him to do what I wanted.

The reason I could use him because I could see the uneasiness in his eyes when my daughter took him home with her. Even though he couldn’t remember me, he still subconsciously scared of me, and I used his fear to control him. 

I was obvious that he had fought between his old character and the character that was forced in by me. Being tortured was similar to a child being violated by his father. He absorbed the violence he received from me. His actions were the reflection of my actions. The pictures he drew were from his subconscious screaming from the suffering he received from me at that time.

He was truly my replacement.

Using Max might have some risk but I already had a second plan in case things didn’t go as I expected.

After he knew about her determination to seek for the truth. He believed was the culprit she was looking for. Of course, that was through the information repetition from me. His memory was mixed up with what he saw that night. This part was rather risky, but I woke it up and was able to make him believed it finally. 

From my daughter’s note, he started threatened her by sending mysterious messages. He was the one who put those Milk Jigsaw pieces on my house’s wall to present the offer as I wanted. I changed it a little after he ran away to make it more specific before did the same to the other houses to avoid the police to pay particular attention to our family. What I really wanted was some witnesses. I needed people to know about this disturbance as many as possible. I wanted to make use of it in the future. 

I went back to that house to cover the blood stain with the smoke again. This time was to make her felt suspicious. I used her and Ton’s careful attention to my benefit. I was sure that my daughter would go to seek for the culprit when she knew that he was still around and recently tried to erase the evident. Max’s threatening and breaking in the house was the encouragement for her. Everything was necessary for my plan.

Her determination was what had caused her pain.

While she was seeking the truth, I’d done a small experiment. I tried to ‘tame’ her. It was to make her realized that I was the person she should seek for. Knowing the truth meant suffering. When she knew who I was, she would immediately know who killed her father. Every time I ‘tame’ her, she would choose to forget the truth and turned to look at me with warm eyes again. She did that so she could hide the worse truth. She decided to stay with the lie to avoid the pain.

‘Taming’ her had a little side effect. She often had nightmares or saw strange illusions. Those illusions were the truth that was twisted and added more flavor by her own worried.

Lying to herself was her only way to survive as a human. So, she took good care of this lie.

What surprised me was Ton. He was too close to the truth for me to let him go. I had to do something.

But if you think that I killed him, you’re wrong. He was the one who ended his life.

While he was about to give the information to my daughter, I disturbed his signal and contacted him. I called him anonymously and made him an offer. The offer that he couldn’t afford to refuse.

I offered for him to die with the information he had in exchange for his sister’s safety. I made him knew that who had been waiting for his sister. He asked me whether he could trust me. I could break my words anytime.

I used his cleverness to answer his question. He was well aware that killing someone now would get me into trouble. The police might pay more attention to that bloody jigsaws case, and then I had to face complications. He also knew that I didn’t want to hurt Dream. Dream was more important for me to destroy this plan. He knew that I had to do what I promised. So, he accepted my offer.

For me, killing without dirty my hands was a lot more satisfying.

What he didn’t know was that living might be worse than dead.

I watched my daughter closely, especially when Max took his actions. When Max was about to ‘tame’ my girl, I offered her my help when only when necessary. I placed a wrench for protecting herself and went home. I used a cloth to dry my umbrella to cover where I was at that time.

Everything Max did was to create fear. Human, other than having faith in the good, also believed in his own fear.

When my daughter knew that Max was the culprit, she absolutely believed it.

I tried to avoid the police’s suspicions by hurting myself, making they believed that I was a victim, and also making my daughter believed that Max was the real culprit.

When everything ended, my plan was completed.  

The police recorded our case. It was the evidence that it had actually happened. The media reported about this case a bit. It was enough for me. This fake story I created had become a page in history.

I have created a permanent fake memory for her. No one is able to confirm it for her anymore, and she will never suspect of who I was.

Between the clear truth in front of you and the faded memory, which will you choose to believe?

After my plan had completed, I insist on continued to ‘tame’ her. Her body was in my control. I used it repeatedly until it was ruin.

The best thing is she has been willing.

Her life from now on will be in torment. I can use her to quench my thirst. Nobody can tell her the truth. Nobody can help her, including herself.

Her life will sink into this loop forever.

Our life is something from our own decisions. It what turns the good into the bad or turns the bad into something beautiful. That night, if the boy decided to ignore what he saw, letting the girl faced a terrible fate alone, his life might not end up so miserably. If she chose to face the truth, she might have a different future. Her life might be ended in my hands immediately, or she might be able to walk on a brighter path.

However, she didn’t…

Because every choice is painful, so she chooses the less painful way.

Without knowing that it would be the forever nightmare to her.

My hand caressed her golden hair with a smile on my face. She pressed her face on my chest with a happy smile. She believes she is safe.

Yes, she is safe…

Nobody will take her away from me now.

I lower my head a bit, whispering my mind to her.

“You’re mine alone…”