The Criminal Diaries

      Peter opens his eyes widely with the thought that he has been sharply dragged out of deep sleep. He feels amazingly calm, nothing hurts… He feels warm and good… Silence is all around. Soft, without pressure. He looks up and sees the clear blue sky with no clouds in it. The slight wind shakes slightly the strands of hair fallen on his forehead and caresses his skin nicely. He understands that he is now lying on the soft ground in the middle of the desert field, where there are only a few trees and bushes, as well as wild flowers.       It turns out to be amazingly easy for Peter to sit up. No weakness, no dizziness, no nausea, no lack of air… After looking at everything that surrounds him, he notices that he is all alone here, and all of this really reminds him of the places where he lived before moving into his own apartment. It seems that he is supposed to be happy with such a long-awaited sense of relief. But this kind of bliss tenses Rose a lot. He remembers clearly that he fell into the water several moments ago and barely got out of the canopy that pressed him to the bottom. He remembers that his lungs literally burned from pain as they filled with water. He remembers that an absolute calm came after the wild panic. He remembers every detail of what recently happened to him.       Being a little tense, Peter looks around himself, noticing silently that he is wearing the same clothes he wore some time ago. And a little later, he gets up on his feet without problems, looks around again, and takes several steps on the fields he knows so well. Where everything is really the same as he remembers from his childhood. It’s much safer here. There is no wish to run from here immediately. Vice versa, he wants to stay here longer, walk in these places with no rush, and breathe in the light and incredibly fresh air.       There are half-ruined one-floor buildings covered with a thick layer of dust and webs. There is trash lying around as if no one cares. There are buildings that can stand for a little longer. There are trees with sweeping branches that grow up to the sky. There are many kilometers of fields covered with grass not far from him, where you can run a lot, with small hills and sharp slopes. The river, overgrown with reeds and with little muddy water, stretches far, far away, and there are some buildings where he hid from those who could harm him and where local alcoholics often spent time.       Looking around, Peter walks slowly on the straight path, while a quiet crust is heard after every single step he takes, and his feet can feel every little rock on the ground. Even after he passes some distance, he cannot find anyone alive: no people, no animals, no birds. It's like he is all alone in this world. As if he ended up in the middle of nowhere. As if he can scream as much as he wants, but nobody can hear him anyway. And it starts to tense him more and more every minute, not letting him enjoy the feeling when his soul and body do not hurt for once.       But when he finally gets up to the hill a long time later, Peter sees a century-old tree placed in the middle of the grass path with a thick trunk and sweeping branches. The guy tries so hard to remember if there was something like this at the place where he was born, but he cannot do it. As if this tree was never there. Anyway, he shows a true interest in this tree, coming to the one closer slowly but confidently and looking at the one from top to bottom closely. He walks around the one with no rush, touches the trunk a little hesitantly, and pulls slightly the sticks that shake slightly due to the slight warm wind that starts blowing his hair and face at some moment.       When he decides to go around the tree for the second time, Peter looks at one of the places better and sees a blond-haired guy, who reminds him of himself so badly, sitting on one of the thick sticks in a relaxed pose. Letting one leg down, bending another at his knee, leaning his elbow on it, and pressing his back to the trunk, the stranger looks into the distance blissfully as he has a wheat spikelet in his mouth. But he looks way younger – at first sight, he is supposedly thirteen or fourteen. Rose comes closer to him and looks at him closely, not finding the courage to say anything. However, he does not have to do this because his twin moves his eyes to him at some moment, smiles slightly, and says quietly:       “M-m-m, you again. Glad to see you, buddy.”       “Again?” Peter frowns slightly.       “You come back to this world too often, huh. And you manage to get out of it all the time.”       “Where am I?” Peter looks around. “What’s this place?”       “Don’t ya recognize it? These are your home places! Those places where you spent a bigger part of your childhood!”       “Am I…” Peter shakes his head in mistrust. “Dying? Or I… Am I dead already?”       “Hm, good question…” Peter’s twin pronounces thoughtfully, stroking his chin. “Very good…”       Peter’s twin removes the wheat spikelet, throws it aside, and strengthens himself slowly, letting both of his legs down.       “Well, what can I say?” Peter’s twin moves his thoughtful glance aside for two seconds. “You’re technically dead, yeah. But you’re still alive, in fact.”       “What do you mean?” Peter asks surprisingly.       “You’re stuck in the middle. I mean, you’re in the world of the living, but you’re one step away from the world of the dead.”       “But… Since I’m here… And it’s… Kinda… The afterlife… It means… Am I dead, after all?”       “Not quite. You have a chance to get out of here. Again.”       “But now?” Peter throws his hands up. “I don’t know where to go!”       “You won’t find a way out,” Peter’s twin says quietly. “Because there is no one.”       “And what do I do? How do I get out of here?”       “I think… You need help. From that world.”       “Help?”       “Otherwise, you’re gonna stay here forever!”       “Oh…” Peter turns aside sharply and sets his gloomy glance into the distance. “There’s no hope on it… Nobody will help me…”       “Why not?” Peter’s twin rounds his eyes. “Anything is possible! Yes, you couldn’t set yourself free and drowned. But it doesn’t mean you’re dead.”       “Nobody wanna help me. I messed up everything.”       “Anyway, you have very little time. You’re in the middle yet, but if nobody helps you, it’s a dead point. You’ll be buried in the world of the living.”       “And… | Peter turns around slowly on himself and swallows nervously. “How much time do I have?”       “Fifteen minutes, maximum,” Peter’s twin replies thoughtfully. “If nobody saves you for this whole time, you will never get out of here.”       “I can count on nothing… And get ready to die.”       “Never say never, Peter.”       “You think I may really be lucky so many times? How many times would they get me outta the world of the dead? My time is supposed to come someday.”       “You know, you surprise me too!”       Peter’s twin jumps off the stick on the tree easily and starts walking in circles.       “Can’t remember how many times you’ve returned here! How many times you’ve been between life and death but come back to the world of the living amazingly.”       “Yeah…” Peter crosses his arms over his chest. “Someone’s always saved me. Again and again.”       “Yeah… You’re lucky, huh! You’ve come here so many times and been kicked with the words about your time not coming yet.”       “Someday your luck comes to an end. And now this moment has come. I am dying.”       “Hey, hey, buddy, don’t be so confident. Let’s wait for a while. Maybe someone will think about you and see you’re lying half-dead at the bottom of the pool. Get you up and revive you.”       “Yeah, you’ve always been a freaking pessimist. You never think positively. You find some shit about everything.”       “Because I have no reason to.”       Embracing himself with both arms, Peter starts walking straight in a slow step, while his twin follows him shortly.       “The thing I do all the time is to make mistakes and ruin everyone’s life. Turn everyone against me. Reject everyone because I still can’t trust anyone.”       “There’s always a chance to change your life for the best if you want it.”       “I wanted. And I tried. But I suffered a major defeat.”       “Yeah, you haven’t always behaved worthily. Especially, over the past several weeks.”       “I was just struck by the thought that my girlfriend was dead. Life seemed senseless to me back then.”       “She’s been here only once, when she almost drowned. When you managed to revive her and bring her back to life.”       “That’s good I managed to put myself together. I knew I had nobody to count on. She would’ve died if I’d kept blinking my eyes and screaming like crazy.”       “And your girlfriend has a whole supportive group in the world of the living that’s gonna help her and make her calm down and do her best to save you.”       “I don’t think someone would get outta the house in the hurricane that started outside. Everything falls, everything crashes, something burns…”       “Don’t you have any hope of being saved? No hope on the girls not being afraid of the hurricane, and on the man forgetting their offences and saving you?”       “Saving the one who almost killed them?” Peter chuckles ironically. “It’s funny! And absolutely stupid!”       “If the men didn’t care about you, they wouldn't be mad. When we hurt someone who leans a lot on us, it can’t be gone easily. It’s much worse to get a hit in the back from your close person than the one you don’t know at all.”       “Yeah, but I’ve gone too far already. I couldn’t stop in time. And I did my best to screw it up. Again.”       “Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone’s got their sins: someone’s sins are big, but someone’s sins are little. But there are no holy people in this world.”       “I wasn’t born holy already. And actually, the decision of my birth was a mistake. My real mother shouldn't have agreed to do that crazy thing.”       “As I understand, you’re ashamed of your own father and everything he has done,” Peter’s twin assumes.       “Why do you think so? His sins are his sins. But you need to pay for yours.”       “Yeah, but I’ve been hated and despised since I was born. They tried to get rid of me, they tried to sell me, they gave me to a random woman, who betrayed me in the end. Nobody supported me, nobody showed love and care. Everyone gave a fuck.”       “Yeah, you’re not lucky to live among assholes. But then everything changed: you met cool and decent enough people, who were ready to comfort you and take care of you.”       “Sadly, I started to understand it too late. I understood I messed up everything too late.”       “At least, you admitted your fault. It already makes you a fine fellow.”       “Who needs it now?” Peter sighs tiredly. “I’m no longer able to fix something. They’ve turned their backs on me. Those who meant a lot to me. I am alone now. And it’s all my fault!”       “Why? Your girlfriend! Her friends! They said they’d keep supporting you!”       “Yeah, but it’s not enough. I need the men, too. They mean a lot to me. These guys think Helene is the only one to make me happy, but they ain’t right. I wouldn’t live for so long without them.”       “Give them time, Peter. And make no more mistakes. If they see you’re trying hard, all their offences will be gone.”       “Oh… It hurts… It hurts to die without getting forgiveness from them. My apologies have been ignored.”       “If you come back to the world of the living again, you will win their trust back again.”       “No… I can’t… I can do nothing…”       “Alright, man, let’s not talk about it in advance,” Peter’s twin says confidently and claps Peter himself on the shoulder. “Since we’ve got some time, let’s walk here and talk. And I can show you something very interesting you’d have to run into early or late.”       “Erm…” Peter stutters and bites his lip slightly. “Don’t you mean…”       “You’ll know everything soon. But now let’s just enjoy these views.”       “Alright, I agree. But please, don’t make me do what I don’t want to.”       “If you wanna come back to the world of the living and fix your mistakes, you’ll have to face your fear. Which’s gonna help you find out many things about you and understand where to go.”       “No… Please, don’t…”       “It’s okay, Peter, I’m gonna be near,” Peter’s twin smiles slightly. “Just trust me.”       “Maybe I’d just rather give up and finally stay where I belong?”       “When the time of saving is gone forever, we will talk about it.”       Peter’s twin falls into silence for two seconds and listens to something better.       “I can’t hear any voices from that world yet. Nobody knows you need their help yet.”       “Or everyone knows, but they’re waiting for me to die,” Peter throws gloomily in a low voice.       “It’s okay, we will wait. Yes, you have a little time in that world, but there is a lot of it here. No need to rush. We can walk everywhere, talk about everything, and look at everything.”       “I must confess that it’s a much calmer place. My soul doesn’t hurt… My body doesn’t hurt… Nothing hurts. I think… I’ve never felt this type of feeling before.”       “This is the afterlife, dude. Soul and body never hurt here. But if you’re in a paradise, you’ll live like in a fairytale.”       “Ah, I wish I could stay there forever…”       “Everything will get clear in fifteen minutes in the world of the living. Let’s wait for someone to think about you and run to save you.”       “This place isn’t so bad. It’s too empty and quiet, but it’s good anyway.”       “C’mon, Peter, let’s walk,” Peter’s twin calls with a gesture. “Enjoy everything that surrounds us before you leave this place again.”       While Peter’s twin fastens a step and keeps moving straight on the path that seems literally infinite, Peter himself stands like a column and just watches him for two seconds. At some moment, he turns back, seeing that the path leads somewhere into the unknown, where there is nothing and nobody. And then he exhales sharply and follows his young copy slowly and a little hesitantly, looking at everything around him with a tense glance. While he gets sadder and sadder at the thought that nobody rushes to find and save him. That his friends and girlfriend let him know that he does not literally mean anything to them.       

***

      There is a possibility that the hurricane that started in the city is just Peter’s hallucination, which is about to defeat him. But it’s actually not the truth. The strong gusts of wind really frighten the inhabitants. And some of them did not manage to find a hideaway and hide from the disaster on time. Several thick trees have been struck in the whole neighborhood, nothing is left of the signposts, and all the constructions of wood and some cheap material became the victims of the hurricane. The owners of the cars suffered a lot too, since they could be pressed so that the transport could not be restored or repaired for a lot of money.       Helene, Natalia, Raquelle, and Anna stay in the house and try to keep themselves far from the window, being afraid that the glass may shatter at any time and wound them. The doggy Sammy twirls in a curl from fear and whines quietly every time defeating claps of thunder are heard. The girls can see the consequences of the hurricane that became absolutely unexpected to them, and are horrified by the fact that some wooden pieces and uprooted trees are lying around, as well as broken street lamps that shake for a long time and then fall, since they cannot handle this pressure.       “Quiet, quiet, my boy, don’t be afraid…” Helene calms down softly and caresses Sammy’s head when he barks loudly and presses himself to his owner after another flash of lightning. “I’m here, it’s okay…”       “This hurricane has struck many trees around,” Raquelle horrifies, being at some distance from the window she looks through with widely open eyes. “Not just them…”       “My God, Daniel and I are gonna have a lot of strength and time to restore everything,” Anna grabs her head. “If only the house wasn’t destroyed by this wind…”       “Hopefully, my parents will come back home in time,” Natalia expresses hope with anxiety. “And Grandma didn’t go anywhere.”       “And I’m worried about my grandma,” Helene confesses. “She wanted to go to the cemetery to check on Grandpa Roger’s grave. Really hoping she’s come back home in time.”       “I hope all our friends and relatives are safe now,” Raquelle embraces herself with both arms.       “Oh, gosh, Sammy is shaking from fear so hard,” Anna horrifies, comes to Sammy, and caresses his head. “Sammy, our little baby…”       “He is afraid of thunder,” Helene replies. “Since his early age. Sammy always whines and hides under the bed or presses himself to my grandma or me.”       “Oh, I’ve always been afraid of thunder, too,” Natalia sighs heavily. “When I was a baby, my parents and I were outside when a tornado was seen several meters from us. I was scared to death, crying bitterly and hugging Dad tightly, who was carrying me in his arms. I thought we’d end up in it and die… And I couldn’t calm down for a long time, even when we came back home.”       “And I almost got gray hairs and became bald when Grandpa Frederic wasn’t at home during one of those hurricanes,” Raquelle says hesitantly. “We didn’t have phones back then, and I couldn’t call him. And it was getting closer to the evening. I was terribly afraid to be alone. The glass of the window was broken, and the strong wind started to get into the apartment and turned everything upside down. I had to lock myself in the bathroom and hide there until Grandpa’s return. He looked madly scared, too. He was horrified by what happened at home. And he swore at me ‘cause I didn’t think of going to our neighbors and asking for help.”       “But I wasn’t afraid of thunder when I lived with my parents,” Anna confesses. “I began to be afraid after I moved in here. Like, one and a half or two years ago, a strong hurricane was in the city. I remember it destroyed the roof of the garage and seriously damaged the house itself. And the back of the house was completely destroyed.”       “I sense that Daniel is gonna spend a lot of money to get rid of the consequences,” Raquelle assumes. “Not just him, I guess…”       “Pray that the house of Terrence and you is safe!” Helene exclaims. “And Edward’s one. And the house of Mr. and Mrs. MacClife.”       “If the hurricane doesn’t end, you all will have to stay here at least until tomorrow,” Anna says thoughtfully, coming to one of the windows and looking carefully at what’s happening outside. “Nobody must get out of here in this weather. Or we can’t avoid something bad.”       “The question is whether there’s enough space for us,” Raquelle embraces herself with both arms.       “Don’t worry, girls, there’s enough space for all of you!” Anna assures with a slight smile. “I’ll give you my clothes to spend a night, and Daniel will share his clothes with the men.”       “I hope he won't mind it,” Helene expresses hope.       “I think Perkins is not an idiot and completely understands that getting outside in this hurricane and going somewhere is a crime,” Natalia expresses hope.       Sammy barks loudly two times as if he agrees, sitting quietly on the floor next to Helene sitting on the sofa.       “Don’t worry, Sammy, don’t worry,” Helene says softly, scratching Sammy’s hair. “We’ll stay here. I won’t make you get outside in this hurricane.”       “I don’t even know what to do for him not to be so scared,” Anna says thoughtfully.       “Let’s just be next to him all the time and calm him down. He feels quiet when there are many people around.”       “Oh, someone must calm us down…” Natalia replies thoughtfully. “I’m really scared, huh…”       “Don’t worry, girls, it’s gonna be okay,” Raquelle encourages with a slight smile. “We’re not alone, the men are with us. And you know well that they’re our fine fellows.”       “Okay! Let’s try to find something positive about it. We can spend a lot of time with our best friends and embrace our beloved men as you sleep.”       “I think this is the first case when we come together at someone’s home and stay for a night,” Helene says thoughtfully.       “Our poor Anna,” Raquelle pronounces. “How much time she’s gonna have to spend cooking something.”       “Uh-huh!  She usually needs to feed one glutton, but then she has to put something in the mouths of four birds. I mean, eight. Counting all of us. Not just men.”       “I see no problem,” Anna smiles shyly. “I love cooking so much. I’m happy to feed someone with something tasty.”       “It’s okay, cuties, we can do this!” Natalia pronounces cheerfully. “We’ll now cook such an amazing dinner that our boys are gonna swallow their tongues from happiness.”       Sammy barks loudly again.       “And Sammy’s gonna help us!”       “Uh-huh, eat everything we cook!” Raquelle laughs. “With the thought that our boys must start a diet.”       “It’s their time to start it,” Anna notices. “The wedding is coming soon. The boys must be in good shape to fit into their suits.”       “Oh, that’s good you reminded!” Natalia exclaims. “I need to call the atelier and find out why they’ve been working on our dresses for so long.”       “Oh, yeah!” Raquelle agrees. “I clearly remember that I didn’t receive any calls.”       “Since things started to get better, it’s time to get ready for the bachelorette!” Helene notices funnily.       “Yeah, yeah, we must have a good rest after all the terrible things we’ve gotten through,” Anna agrees. “My head goes around now, to be honest.”       “I hope Helene and you will find something to surprise us with,” Natalia smiles mysteriously.       “Can’t wait to know what you prepared for us,” Raquelle adds.       “You’re gonna love it, cuties, don’t worry,” Anna assures. “We all are gonna have fun to the fullest.”       “Your send-off to married life is gonna be luxury,” Helene laughs and glances at the barking Sammy. “My doggy won’t let us lie.”       Sammy barks two more times, making the girls laugh shyly and come to him to caress his head or scratch his back. While Helene keeps sitting on the sofa and calming down the dog that whines with pity after another clap of thunder outside, Raquelle, Natalia, and Anna go to different sides of the living room. While the first two girls walk from side to side for nothing and shake two times due to the bright flash of lightning, the latter one comes to the window, from which there is a good view of the back of the house, a little hesitantly, and is horrified by what it has turned to after several minutes.       “My God, the chaos is happening on the back of the house!” Anna notices with horror in her eyes. “The table is turned upside down, the chairs are lying on the side, as well as the lounges… Trees are about to break and fall too…”       “Yeah, as they say, we need more misfortunes…” Raquelle says thoughtfully when she goes by the same window. “We’re gonna have to spend time restoring it all…”       “If only the glass didn’t break at the house!” Natalia begs with anxiety. “If something gets into it or the wind gets much stronger, it’s gonna be bad!”       “I wonder how long it's all gonna last?” Helene wonders.       “Who knows…” Raquelle shrugs. “But it seems that it’s gonna take a lot of time. The sky is black, and there is no hint of a change in the situation.”       “Something tells me we won’t fall asleep along with this hell,” Anna assumes. “We’re gonna be afraid that something may happen. Afraid that we may wake up somewhere under a blockage if the house crashes.”       “Let’s believe everything’s gonna be okay…” Helene sighs heavily. “At least because we have the men next to us. We can count on them.”       Silence settles in the air for two seconds, during which Sammy whines quietly again and presses himself tightly to the legs of Helene when the lightning flashes in the sky, and then the loud thunder is heard. The girl herself does her best to calm the dog down, caressing his face that she puts on her laps, playing with the retriever’s ears a little, and slapping him once on the nose with her finger.       “Hey, about the men!” Anna breaks the silence, frowning slightly and looking at what’s happening on the back of the house much better. “Where’s Peter?”       “Peter?” Helene, Raquelle, and Natalia wake up.       “He said he wanted to sit on the back of the house, but I can’t personally see him anywhere.”       “Oh, God…” Raquelle closes her mouth with a hand and rushes to the window Anna looks through. “Are you sure?”       “I am sure! He’s not anywhere!”       “What do you mean, anywhere?” Helene horrifies with a stopped heart, jumps from the sofa sharply, and runs to her friends as well as Natalia.       “He couldn’t leave secretly,” Natalia notices. “He would’ve had to come back to the living room and used the hall door.”       “I don’t like all of this, girls…” Helene grabs her throat with a hand, with a heavy breath. “I’ve got a really bad presentiment…”       “We need to go there and find out everything,” Anna says determinedly.       “In this hurricane?” Natalia opens her eyes widely. “We’re gonna be struck down and taken away shortly!”       “Yeah, but agree that it’s all too weird!” Raquelle exclaims excitedly. “Peter couldn’t disappear for nothing. Something’s wrong…”       “Maybe we should call the guys and ask them to check that place out?” Anna asks.       “Nope, let’s go there by ourselves,” Helene suggests. “Not sure if it’s a good idea, but we have to do this.”       Sammy just comes to the girls, barks several times excitedly, and whines with pity. At some moment, he runs to the door that leads to the back of the door and starts touching it with his paw as if he asks someone to open it and let him out.       “Sammy’s nervous, too…” Natalia notices. “Something is really wrong…”       “C’mon, girls, let’s check it out!” Anna exclaims. “What if Pete needs our help, but we don’t know!”       Overcoming their fear of the hurricane silently and exhaling sharply, Anna tries to open the door that leads to the back of the house, but it turns out to be hard enough because the wind blows toward it. Natalia, Raquelle, and Anna rush to help her and manage to open it all together. That’s why the powerful cold gusts of the wind get into the living room, letting little things that do not lie well fall on the floor. However, the girls do not pay attention to this and, holding onto the walls, each other, and something else, barely go to the back of the house and close the door. The wind furiously tries to push them in as if it says they must come back to the safe place, but the friends do not give up and move forward determinedly, making a lot of effort to overcome the invisible resistance.       “My God, almost everything is destroyed!” Anna notices loudly.       “Hold on, girls!” Raquelle exclaims. “We’ve gotta find Peter!”       “I can’t see him!” Natalia says as she looks around. “And you?”       “Me too!” Helene reacts, not paying attention to the hair that gets into her mouth and eyes due to the strong wind. “No tracks!”       Sammy barks two times, barely holding on to his paws but fighting the disaster every determinedly and fearlessly, and looking around.       “Look, the canopy broke!” Raquelle notices loudly, pointing her finger at the pieces of the canopy lying near the pool after the crush. “The one there was near the pool!”       “Maybe Peter is there?” Natalia assumes with horror in her eyes. “What if he’s stuck?”       “We’ve gotta check it!” Anna exclaims determinedly. “And get him out if he’s there!”       “It’s gonna be hard in this hurricane!” Helene notices. “If only we weren’t carried away and stuck!”       “C’mon, girls, we can do this!” Raquelle encourages, moving to the broken canopy along with her friends.       Despite the strong gusts of wind that get into their faces, Raquelle, Helene, Anna, and Natalia literally bite the bullet to cling to any chance to stand on their feet and continue to move on, repeating to themselves again and again that they are strong, they can do this, and their friend needs help. Just like Sammy, for whom it’s much harder to overcome the disaster, but who moves forward determinedly. Yes, the friends are all madly scared. Yes, they shake and shout after flashes of lightning and claps of thunder. But every one of them faces the danger bravely, wishing to prove that they can do this without the help of their men, who are sitting somewhere at the house as quietly as mice and do not even think about getting out, as if they do not care about what’s happening on the bottom.       “How are you?” Helene asks loudly.       “Holding on!” Raquelle reacts.       “It’s okay, girls, we can do anything all together!” Natalia encourages. “It’s gonna be okay!”       “Don’t waste time!” Anna says. “Look for Peter! He can be anywhere!”       Sammy barks several times, trying so hard to stand on four paws and move on, even if the cold gusts of the wind may throw him back. Helene, Natalia, Anna, and Raquelle look around again and again, keeping their legs wide apart with the hope that it can help them hold on. Making much effort, the friends come to the pieces of the broken canopy and move them slightly all together, even if it turns out to be worthless.       “He’s not here!” Helene announces with a heavy breath. “Peter is not under these pieces!”       “And where could he be?” Anna wonders. “Where could he disappear?”       The girls move their eyes sharply to Sammy barking loudly or whining with pity as he looks somewhere underwater in the pool as if he can already see something. Natalia decides to come to the dog first and find out what made him so interested. And when she barely does this, she shouts in horror and closes her mouth with both hands.       “Girls, over here!” Natalia jabs excitedly. “Here, faster! Now! Everyone!”       When Anna and Raquelle come to the edge of the pool first and look down, they also shout with widely open eyes when they see the body of the unconscious Peter, which is pressed to the bottom of the pool with pieces of concrete.       “No, Peter!” Anna horrifies.       “My God, Peter!” Raquelle grabs her head.       And when Helene comes to her friends, she makes probably the loudest and most heartbreaking scream when she sees her boyfriend caught in the trap.       “NO-O-O-O-O!” Helene strains her vocal cords, grabbing her hair with both hands. “PETER!”       Sammy starts barking very loudly and whining with pity, while the strong wind is still trying to strike him down.       “He was likely standing under the canopy, which later fell over his head, and then Peter fell into the pool unconscious,” Anna assumes.       “And he’s pressed to the bottom with a blockage!” Helene horrifies. “But he couldn’t get out and…”       “What do we do now?” Natalia wonders in a high, loud voice.       “No time to find the men and explain the situation,” Raquelle says confidently, looking around quickly and looking at the bottom of the pool a little tensely. “We’ve gotta get him out on our own. Clean up the blockage and lift him up to the surface.”       “And how long has he been there?” Helene wonders with a heavy breath. “How much time do we have? What if he’s dead already? What if we’re too late?”       “Who knows!” Anna exclaims and grabs her head. “But Raquelle’s right, we have to take matters into our own hands. Every minute matters now.”       “Someone must stay here and wait, but someone has to jump into the water,” Natalia says.       “Okay, let me jump!” Raquelle says determinedly, takes off her leather jacket, and gives it to Anna. “And someone else must jump with me. I won’t lift him up on my own.”       “I’m with you!” Helene exclaims determinedly. “Even if I can barely swim, I have to do this for Peter.”       “It’s an extreme risk in this weather,” Natalia notices. “You may not handle it.”       “We know, Natalia, but we have no choice!” Raquelle exclaims. “If we don’t do this, Peter will die.”       “Yeah, we have very little time,” Helene adds. “We must not waste time.”       “Please, girls, be very careful,” Anna begs with pity in her eyes.       “Wait here and go nowhere!” Raquelle orders. “We’ll lift him up from the bottom, and you’ll help us pull Peter up on the surface.”       When she relaxes her shoulders sharply and pumps much air into her lungs, Raquelle jumps into the water first. Helene hesitates a little, exhales with a shake, and holds her breath before she puts all the thoughts aside and follows her friend. Together, they get deeper and deeper, barely seeing something in the dark, muddy water, and trying so hard not to forget that they must not release the air out of their lungs. While Raquelle remains quiet and focused enough on her goal. Helene looks a little anxious and swallows water a couple of times, letting it get into her lungs. Nevertheless, her friend’s pretense helps her keep her mind sober and remember that she must save Peter no matter what it takes.       Making much effort to get down to the bottom of the pool, Helene and Raquelle start cleaning the blockage Peter ended up under. While they easily get rid of little pieces of concrete, they cannot move much heavier pieces together. Several attempts to do this lead to the fact that they are literally out of breath. That’s why the friends get up to the surface immediately and spend some time coughing as they lean on the edge of the pool with their elbows.       “He’s under the blockage, it’s gonna be hard to clean it…” Helene says as she chokes.       “Yeah, we weren’t able to move heavy pieces together…” Raquelle confesses.       “Damn!” Anna suggests excitedly.       “It’s okay… We’ll try again now. After we pump much air into the lungs.”       “Maybe I should jump in with you?” Natalia suggests determinedly, taking off her denim jacket and throwing it right on the wet tile. “What if it’s gonna be easier for you?”       “Let’s jump all together!” Anna exclaims, putting aside Raquelle’s leather jacket. “The more of us, the better it is! And we’ll call the men in the worst case.”       “C’mon, c’mon, my sweeties, hurry up!” Helene begs with pity in her eyes. “We have a little time! We’ve gotta get Peter out of the water as soon as possible!”       “Pump much air into your lungs and get down!” Raquelle orders.       While the excited Sammy keeps standing near the edge of the pool and barking loudly, Anna and Natalia pump much air into their lungs, jump into the pool, and get underwater along with Helene and Raquelle. Swimming their hands and feet, the friends get to the bottom, to the blockage Peter is under, and try bravely to clean it and set the man free all together. Not wasting time, they do not forget that any delay pushes the blond closer to the inevitable death. Thanks to the joint effort and hard work, things get much better: the girl do their best to clean Rose’s body from some heavy pieces that pressed on his chest all this time. And when they remove two more pieces, they all have to get up to the surface to pump much air into their lungs and get underwater again.       Despite all the difficulties, Anna, Helene, Raquelle, and Natalia manage to clean the blockage like at 80%. There are only giant pieces that they cannot move, even all together. Luckily, it still lets them get the unconscious Peter out of the trap by pulling him on themselves by the arms. When it’s free, his body wants to get to the bottom, shaking as long as the water moves and trying to slip away, but Raquelle and Helene grab the man and start getting up after a strong push with their feet against the bottom, showing the furious resistance to the waves that want to take them into their strong hugs.       After making sure their friends can do this without him now, Anna and Natalia get up to the surface quickly enough and, coughing and breathing heavily, get out of the pool. They do not pay attention to Sammy walking around with a wild bark and water that gets down their hair and bodies. The girls look into the water excitedly, waiting for the appearance of Cameron and Marshall, who overcome such a hard barrier as the water flows and the deep depth of the pool slowly but confidently, thanks to the strong motivation caused by the mutual help and the wish to save Peter.       When they are on the surface, Helene and Raquelle cough quickly and swallow up the air greedily since they start to lack it to the end of all of this. Peter’s body lifting in their arms wants to get underwater, but the girls grab him much tighter and start to swim to Anna and Natalia encouraging them with heavy breath and making gestures to call them.       “Here, girls, over here!” Anna jabs excitedly.       “C’mon, ladies, you can do this!” Natalia exclaims.       The excited Sammy tries to encourage the girls with a loud and determined bar, stopping to pay attention to the wind as well as the girls and thinking only about how to save Peter. But the mission to get to the surface turns out to be a hard thing for Helene and Raquelle, as well as the mission to get the guy from the bottom of the pool. It’s hard for them to make every move, the muscles cramped from the icy water, the wet, heavy clothes become something like a ballast, and the waves raised by the wind gusts try so hard to change their course, just like during a sea storm. The girls get dragged to the bottom along with the man at times, but they manage to get up, swallowing the air greedily and choking from a sense of tiredness more and more every second.       “Don’t give up!” Anna begs. “Swim!”       “Faster, faster!” Natalia jabs. “Here!”       “Hold on, Peter, hold on, sweetie…” Helene begs with a heavy breath and moves a wet strand of hair off Peter’s forehead, while his head is leaned back powerlessly. “It’s gonna be okay… It’s gonna be okay…”       “Don’t give up!” Raquelle orders and coughs quietly after water gets into her mouth and nose. “We can do this!”       After they press Peter much closer to themselves, Helene and Raquelle make much more effort to wave their hands and legs and keep their head above the water. Every movement is hard for them due to the hurricane wind that literally pushes them off the edge of the pool, and the fact that it’s not so easy for them to pull the guy who weighs twice as much as both of them. They choke on the lack of air and tiredness more and more, and they get dragged down more frequently, along with the desperate shouts of Natalia and Anna, who are starting to doubt that they should have really taken this great responsibility and do what they are not able to do. And Sammy breaks the hearts and souls much more with his heartbreaking bark and whining full of pity, looking desperately at his owner and her unconscious boyfriend and literally begging them to hold and not to leave him alone in this world he would not need without those he loves so much.       

***

      Some time before the girls decide to take a risk to save their friend, Edward, Terrence, and Daniel spend their time in the room of the latter one, talking about their talk with Peter, whom they feel truly sorry for, but whom they cannot forgive so easily, forgetting everything he has done to them. And when the hurricane suddenly starts outside, they try to keep themselves far from the windows that Perkins closes tightly before it happens.       “Oh, no, the hurricane would be too much…” Daniel moans tiredly, rubbing his forehead. “It’s gonna destroy half of the house, so that I have to restore the fuck everything.”       “You got through it already?” Edward asks, setting himself comfortably on the bed and leaning on his elbows.       “Uh-huh, many times! The roof of the garage broke, I had to restore half of the back of the house literally over again, and more shit…”       “The important thing is that our friends and families are safe,” Terrence notices, walking in circles in the whole room. “I hope they all came back home before the hurricane started.”       “You’d better call your parents. Jeremy and William. Find out how they’re doing.”       “Mom’s supposed to stay home, but Father is working at the company,” Edward says thoughtfully. “And I ain’t sure if he’s come back home before the hurricane.”       “I guess we’re stuck here, too,” Terrence exhales sharply, stops in the middle of the room, and puts his hands on his hips. “Getting outside in this weather would be a crime.”       “If the hurricane doesn’t stop in the near time, you all will stay here for a night,” Daniel says confidently. “Anna and I will accommodate you and provide you with clothes and food.”       “There’s enough space here?”       “Huh, don’t make me laugh! There are four more rooms in this house, not counting this one! Cassidy took one of them, but we can use it while she’s not here.”       “It seems like we have no choice,” Edward sighs tiredly and sits up slowly. “Have to stay. And contact Mom and Dad to calm them down. Warn them that I’m gonna spend a night here.”       “And I need to tell my servants not to get out of the house if they’re still there,” Terrence says thoughtfully. “Though if we’d known about the hurricane before, I would’ve let them go home.”       “It’s okay, guys, we can do this,” Daniel says quietly. “If the hurricane gets stronger and starts to destroy the house, we will hide in the basement.”       “Hey, you did a good thing by deciding to go to a shop and buy a lot of food,” Edward notices. “Though we should’ve guessed some trouble would come when we were talking between the shelves that were half-empty.”       “It seems like we’re the only assholes who didn’t check the weather forecast and didn’t find out that the hurricane was coming.”       “Imagine if we hadn’t gotten outta the woods where we kicked Rose’s ass hard in time,” Terrene chuckles. “We all would’ve been dead, for sure!”       “Yeah, as they say, seconds before disaster!”       “If the hurricane is happening now, it means he’ll have to stay here too,” Edward notices thoughtfully.       “Maybe he’s a pain in the ass, but I won’t dare to kick him out in this hurricane,” Daniel says confidently. “If something happens to Rose, I’m gonna be responsible. But I do have the sense of shame and coincidence. I’m not a monster. Unlike someone.”       “Listen, what if we shouldn't have been so cold and cruel to him?” Terrence asks with anxiety. “Maybe we should’ve given the guy a chance? He’s got nobody but us. Yes, he acted like an asshole, but… I am kinda sorry for him. And he did apologize. Truly, as I think.”       “Agree…” Edward sighs tiredly. “Maybe he isn’t actually so terrible? What if his aggression is really his protection? He doesn’t wanna seem weak and pretends to be who the fuck knows who? I know it well… The balls hurt, but I didn’t wanna show it.”       “Believe me, this situation is unpleasant to me, as well,” Daniel confesses and sits on the office chair placed near the writing table. “I’d die if I said I don’t care about it. This guy was my friend for five years. And you know, this is a long enough term.”       “Besides, we aren’t all holy,” Terrence notices. “I think about my past actions and wanna be swallowed by the ground because of some of them. I acted as if everyone owed me. That’s why I’ve had my ass kicked many times. Because I’ve gone too far with my love for myself.”       “And me!” Edward exclaims. “My love for trouble took me too far. I was pushed into a corner and escaped barely, in a magical way. No matter what, Uncle Michael was right that I acted like a child who must have grown up.”       “As if I am perfect!” Daniel relaxes his shoulders sharply. “I turned out to be a fucking bad friend, I was a bad son, I was a terrible older brother… I was an irresponsible asshole who only wanted to have fun, drink, and fuck girls.”       “Anyway, Peter has always felt much worse than all of us,” Edward notices. “We’ve always had someone, but he’s been alone all his life. Nobody supported him. Everyone turned their backs on him. Even if he did nothing bad.”       “I must confess that I admire him,” Terrence says confidently. “Admire the fact that he didn’t turn evil much earlier. As usual, these people are bullied so much that they grab a gun and go to murder.”       “I guess he held on for rare good moments that happened in his life,” Daniel assumes. “For example, because of Helene. Who didn’t let him choose the dark side.”       “Not just. Many good memories connect him with you, too. I don’t think these five years mean anything to him. No real friendship can last for so long. If it wasn’t alive, you would’ve stopped talking less than one year after meeting.”       “I can’t personally give a fuck about it. I don’t hide that Peter came into my life at a hard moment. He became my first real friend. At least, I considered him the one.”       “You two were lonely and unhappy for one or another reason back then,” Edward notices. “That’s what united you. Yes, you could be silent about it. But… You found the strength in each other. The strength to handle the shit that was happening in your life.”       “I can agree with you on my behalf. He really helped me survive when I stayed without my friends and family.”       “That guy can really give good pieces of advice that may be good for you,” Terrence notices. “At least, I overcame many difficulties thanks to his support and pieces of advice. I wouldn’t dare to call Peter stupid. He’s really a smart man and completely understands it.”       “Right…” Edward adds. “And I personally always laugh over his jokes and some tricks. When we walk together somewhere, it’s always a time of fun. The time when you can relax and forget all the bad things. When you ain’t care that you may act like an idiot, who people may look at.”       “Even real friends can’t always be perfect,” Daniel notices. “It’s not just laughing, joking, and playing the fool. It’s a never-ending fight. The fight when everyone tries to prove that they are right. The fight that does not distance us from each other. Vice versa, it helps us get much closer.”       “We do need conflicts,” Terrence says. “We need arguments. It’s a part of our life. The necessary element that helps us build our relationship with people. If you confront someone, you do care about them. You fight them because they are important to you to some extent. But if you don’t have reasons to do it, you need to think about whether you need to keep talking to that person.”       “We can play hard to reach for some time and then let him know that we’re ready to give Rose another chance,” Edward suggests. “So to say, to give him a lesson. And see if his brain really came back to its place and works like magic.”       “And let’s do it without extreme cruelty. Today, we definitely crossed the line and made the guy hysterical.”       “Yeah, but agree, it gave us some good effect, huh,” Edward notices.       “I don’t think he’s gonna thank us for these cruel methods.”       “Or something’s gonna click in his mind again so that he forgets everything,” Daniel adds. “I mean, he’s already done. Since he had such a surprised face when we talked about his hysteria caused by the words of rape.”       “Are you sure he didn’t pretend?” Terrence asks.       “Nope, I don’t think so. He doesn’t obviously remember that. How much do you remember from what you did in a hysterical condition? Yes, you know some details. But you hardly know the full picture.”       “Okay, good argument!”       “Anyway, Edward’s right, we must not break it all. Rose must learn the lesson once and forever and think about his actions. Think about his mental issues that he must solve somehow.”       “What if it happens that he’s gonna go crazy again if something happens between him and Helene?” Terrence expresses suspicion. “She keeps the order in his brain somehow. But without her, it’s gonna be harder to orient there than in the thickest woods.”       “Don’t exclude.”       “Oh, I dunno, guys…” Edward sighs tiredly, gets up from the bed, and comes to one of the windows in the room, seeing that the hurricane is getting wilder outside. “This thing is ambiguous. The case is about our close friend, not a random dude.”       “And the question about how to perform with him on stage if we stop being friends,” Terrence notices. “People would feel the tension between him and us. And then talk about some theories. They wouldn’t believe it if we said the media came up with all these things.”       “I dunno, I don’t personally mind if he continues to work with us,” Daniel shrugs. “And the blond himself wants it. So, why would we refuse?”       “Uh-huh, wouldn’t it happen that he lets us down at the last moment?” Edward expresses anxiety. “He wouldn’t come, he wouldn’t go on stage, he wouldn’t play well…”       “Then we’d bite the bullet and say to him all together, ‘Get out, dude!’”       “Anyway, I don’t mind letting him play in the band, either,” Terrence raises his hands. “Until he's responsible for his work, it’s okay.”       “And I ain’t gonna protest,” Edward replies thoughtfully and steps away from one window and comes to another. “If he wants, he can play. And then we will see it.”       “I hope we’ll have the strength to get through this shit.”       “If we’re together, we can get through anything,” Daniel encourages with a slight smile.       Terrence says nothing and flashes a slight smile, while Edward comes to the window, from which there is a good view of what’s happening on the back of the house. At first, he pays attention to the fact that the bigger part of it is destroyed by the hurricane. But then he stops his eyes on Natalia and Anna, who get out of the pool, sit on the edge of it, and look at what’s happening underwater, while the cold gusts of the wind still want to strike them down.       “Hey, guys, come here now!” Edward makes a gesture to call the men.       “Yo, kid, did ya like watching the disaster?” Daniel asks funnily, but decides to come to Edward as well as Terrence.       “Why am I not surprised at all?” Terrence wonders.       “Shut up, idiots!” Edward shushes. “You'd better tell me what the girls are doing outside in this weather?”       Terrence and Daniel look at what’s happening outside better and open their eyes widely when they see Anna and Natalia talking to each other, seeing that the girls look really anxious even at a distance.       “I saw Rochester and Seymour getting outta the water,” Edward says. “Who the fuck knows what they were doing there, but you see how wet they are.”       “Are they crazy there?” Daniel resents. “They’re gonna be taken away by the wind!”       “Yeah, we just left these cuties without our attention…” Terrence exhales sharply.       “We need to tell them to come back to the house now,” Edward says determinedly.       “First, it would be great to open the window. Knowing that we three barely closed it.”       When Daniel opens the window slightly, it hits against the wall immediately due to the cold wind that gets into the room and blows the hair of him, Edward's, and Terrence's.       “Girls!” Daniel shouts loudly, getting out of the window. “Girls, what are you doing there?”       “Get in the house now!” Terrence orders. “Are you fucking crazy? Girls!”       “Fuck, they can’t hear us…” Edward swears. “The wind is too strong…”       “Anna, can you hear me?!” Daniel tries again. “Get in the house now! Are you crazy? In the house! Now! Why did you the fuck get into the water?”       “Natalia! Natalia, get in the house now! What did you forget there? What were you told? Why did ya get into the water?”       “Hey, where are Raquelle and Helene?” Terrence gets suspicious, frowning slightly. “Are they in the house?”       “At least they got the brains to stay in,” Daniel throws gloomily and growls irritably. “But what do these cuties need there? What did Seymour breathe in while cooking?”       “Oh, Rochester…” Edward shakes his head. “I will kick her hard if she doesn’t move her precious ass to this fucking house now…”       “And Sammy’s with them!” Terrence exclaims. “Where did that idiot go?”       And right at this moment, Helene and Raquelle show up out of the water in the pool and start coughing loudly.       “Pardon, I shouldn't have rushed,” Daniel bites his lip.       “Yeah…” Terrence growls irritably. “Of course, I knew Cameron was crazy, but I didn’t think she was so crazy…”       “And what’s Marshall doing there?” Edward wonders. “She said she could barely swim!”       “You'd better ask what the fuck they all are doing there?” Daniel throws gloomily. “Did the girls decide to ask for fucking trouble by swimming in the pool in this weather?”       Raquelle and Helene lift the unconscious Peter to the surface together and start swimming with one hand and both feet to the edge of the pool, while Natalia and Anna encourage them somehow. And Edward, Terrence, and Daniel get sharply pale, open their eyes widely, and ooh quietly, not hiding at least from themselves that they do not want what they all think about now.       “Holy fuck…” Edward swears.       “Is that Peter?” Terrence cannot believe it.       “What’s he doing there?” Daniel wonders. “Decided to swim in the hurricane, too?”       “Guys, it seems that he swallowed too much water… He’s unconscious. Helene and Raquelle jumped in to get him outta the pool.”       “But how?” Edward opens his eyes widely. “How could it happen? Did he fall there accidentally? Or… Did he do it by himself?”       “I shall kill this motherfucker if he decides to die at my house…” Daniel threatens in a low, little shaking voice. “I shall go and kill him with my own hands!”       “Now it’s clear why the girls went there. They saw Peter was drowning and went to rescue him.”       “But why didn’t they the fuck call us? Why did these crazy ladies get into it by themselves?”       “They’re really crazy…” Terrence shakes his head with horror in his eyes. “They think they can get outta the water with this wind and move the heavy body of the blond on the surface.”       After resisting desperately, Helene and Raquelle, both tired, are thrown back by the powerful wave, and the water drags them and Peter underwater. Nevertheless, they get up quickly and try to reach the surface with a cough and groans, while Anna and Natalia call them with gestures and shout desperately when their friends get underwater.       “Fuck, they’re stupid…” Terrence grabs his hair. “Fucking crazy…”       “It’s gonna be 'fun' if they swallow a lot of fucking water, too,” Daniel says excitedly, breathing a little heavily. “Three victims! Cool! These two cuties going after them would be too much!”       “Raquelle, you, brainless idiot!” Terrence breaks into a hysterical cry when he gets out of the window. “Why did you the fuck get into that? Are you fucking crazy? YOU DECIDED TO PLAY ON MY NERVES AGAIN?”       “Hey, hey, calm down, they can’t hear you now,” Edward calms down, pulling Terrence by the arm and taking him away from the window. “Even if you lose your voice!”       “I shall kill this bitch if she dies there because of her stupidity.” Terrence sets his arm free from Edward’s grip sharply. “KILL! SHE WILL ASK FOR TROUBLE!”       “Calm down, MacClife, calm down,” Daniel pronounces quietly and barely closes the window. “Don’t freak out, please.”       “WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR, FOOLS?” Terrence roars, waving his hands sharply. “WE NEED TO GO AND SOLVE THE PROBLEM!”       “Yeah, why did we the fuck leave all of them alone?” Daniel puts his hand on his forehead.       “Stop talking! GET OUT NOW! Before they come up with ANOTHER PIECE OF SHIT!”       Terrence runs out of the room first and rushes to go to the first floor, ignoring the glances of Daniel and Edward – kind of judging, but kind of understanding.       “Take several towels with you,” Edward says quietly. “Big ones!”       “When we take them in the house, we’ll give them something hot,” Daniel says confidently.       Edward runs out of the room as well and goes after Terrence. Daniel rushes to the laundry room and takes several big towels before he goes after his friends to the first floor to help the girls not to let anything bad happen, even if it’s about to come true, if nobody and nothing helps them.       

***

      However, Helene and Raquelle are doing pretty well, even if they start to get more tired after their furious attempts to fight the waves caused by the hurricane wind. Nevertheless, the girls do not give up for a second and swim determinedly to the edge of the pool, remembering that they must save Peter, no matter what it takes, holding him tightly and pressing him to themselves while he is unconscious.       “C’mon, girls, c’mon!” Anna begs desperately. “Don’t give, please!”       “Hold on, girls, you’re doing well!” Natalia encourages.       Sammy supports the girls with a loud, confident bark mixed with a heartbreaking whining. Natalia and Anna shout with wet eyes when Helene and Raquelle get underwater again, but get up quickly enough and cough quietly. It happens several times before the friends start to get closer to the edge of the pool, slowly but confidently, no matter how hard they shake on the waves.       “C’mon, sweeties, you’re getting closer!” Natalia exclaims. “Don’t stop!”       “Grab the hands!” Anna jabs, reaching out her hand to Raquelle and Helene with the hope that someone can take it. “Come on!”       Making some impossible effort and choking from the tiredness, Helene and Raquelle manage to reach the edge of the pool some time later. Leaning on the wall with their feet, the girls try to lift Peter up, but it turns out to be much harder due to the wet, slipping clothes and the waves that shake them like a ship.       “C’mon, c’mon, again, again!” Natalia jabs. “Again!”       “Grab him under his arms!” Raquelle exclaims and coughs quietly with a heavy breath. “Take him to the surface!”       “Don’t think about it, we’ll handle it!” Helene pronounces excitedly.       After they tense all their muscles to the pain, Raquelle and Helene lift Peter up with an external groan and lay him on the surface in the end. Natalia and Anna come to help shortly, taking the unconscious guy under his arms together and pulling him to himself after their friends push him out of the water again. While Seymour drags Rose a little aside all alone, Rochester helps Cameron and Marshall get out of the water, while the girls grab the edge of the pool tightly. The waves still try to take them away, and the water tries to swallow them furiously, but the girls do fight until the very end, holding each other not to get lost.       Since it’s hard for her to pull out both of them, Natalia helps Helene first and then Raquelle, holding them tightly under an arm and not letting the water take her friends into its strong hug. Feeling the ground under their feet, Marshall and Cameron lean on it with their knees and hands and start breathing heavily and coughing, while all their muscles hurt and shake from strong tension. Not coming to herself fully yet, Helene creeps to Peter lying unconscious on her shaking knees and grabs his wet, pale face with tears in her eyes.       “Peter… Peter!” Helene pronounces in a shaking, hoarse voice, caresses Peter’s cheeks, and claps on them slightly. “Peter, please, open your eyes! Please, sweetie, say something, please! Peter!”       Now Sammy runs to Peter and starts snuggling his nose in the man’s face with a much more heartbreaking bark, licking it shyly with the hope that it can help him bring him to life.       “He’s not breathing!” Anna announces excitedly in a shaking voice after she bends to Peter, leans his head back, and tries to feel any signs of breath on her skin.       “What?” Helene opens her eyes widely, feeling that her heart misses a beat.       “Damn…” Anna puts two fingers on the curve of Peter’s neck in the hope of feeling the pulse and checking it on his wrist. “No pulse, too…”       “Oh, my God!” Natalia closes her mouth tightly with her hand with widely open eyes. “Not this…”       “NO-O-O-O-O-O-O!” Helene breaks into a desperate cry. “We couldn’t be late! We could not!”       “Cardiac massage!” Raquelle exclaims and swallows loudly as she creeps closely to Peter. “Artificial respiration! Now!”       “I’ve never done this! And I don’t know how!”       “Me too…” Anna pronounces in a shaking voice. “But I’ll try… Try to do what I remember…”       While Sammy keeps running around Peter and trying to reach out to him with a loud bark, Anna starts doing a heart massage, recalling her school lessons when they were taught and shown how to do this. The first push. The second. The third. No result.”       “Please, Peter, please!” Helene shouts loudly. “Please, don’t leave me!”       The powerful gusts of wind blowing in her face do not let Anna focus. As well as the lightnings flashing in the sky and clouds of dust and trash whirling in the air. But the girl tries so hard to ignore it all, counting all the pressures closely to give Peter artificial respiration.       “Sammy, get out of the way!” Natalia demands in a high, loud voice, pressing Sammy softly to herself and caressing his head with a shaking hand, while he thrills with a bark.       “C’mon, Peter, c’mon!” Raquelle pronounces determinedly, moving aside Anna’s hair that gets into the girl’s face. “Don’t dare to die! Don’t dare!”       “Hold on, Pete, hold on, we’re here…” Anna begs with a heavy breath. “It’s gonna be okay…”       While the girls try so hard to bring Peter back to life and do not stop looking at his deathly pale face with a great pity, Terrence runs on the back of the house as fast as the wind, while Daniel and Edward follow him after they barely open the door and get a victory over the hurricane wind that tried so hard to push them back in the house.       “Hey, hello, are you crazy?” Terrence resents loudly and falls to his knees beside Raquelle. “Why did you the fuck get outside in this weather?”       “Girls, what are you doing?” Edward wonders, sitting on his knees next to Natalia. “Did you all go crazy?”       “Such hell is happening outside, but you left the house!” Daniel jabs excitedly, sitting next to Helene, takes Anna by the forearms, and shakes her sharply. “What were the fuck thinking of? WHAT THE FUCK?”       “Do you think we’d get out without a reason?” Natalia surprises.       “Yeah!” Raquelle exclaims. “The man is dying here! Should we have left him here and done nothing?”       “You must’ve called us!” Edward replies. “Why did you the fuck get into all of this?”       “Idiot, what were you thinking of?” Terrence breaks into a cry, taking Raquelle by the shoulders and shaking her strongly. “Are you fucking insane? WHY DID YOU THE FUCK JUMP IN THE WATER WHEN THE HURRICANE WAS HAPPENING?”       “Calm down, MacClife, it’s not time for your hysterics,” Raquelle cuts off sharply, pushing Terrence off herself a little rudely.       “You decided to play on my nerves again? YOU FUCK MY BRAIN AGAIN? YOU’RE SICK OF LIVING QUIETLY?”       “Stop screaming, idiot! It’s not the time to be a drama queen!”       “I have not started to yet! I HAVE NOT THE FUCK STARTED TO YET!”       “And what were you thinking of, stupid girl?” Edward wonders, taking Natalia by the shoulders. “Why didn’t you stay in the house? You did see what was happening! But you jumped in the fucking water, too!”       “Don’t you, guys, really see what’s happening right before your eyes?” Natalia asks loudly. “Don’t you see the man is dying?”       “More than one man would die in this hurricane, that’s for sure! Because of your stupidity, there could be many more victims!”       “Hey, don’t take an example from your brother and start a hysteria here, okay?”       “I will not. I am calm. I am VERY calm. So calm that I WANT TO KICK YOUR ASS! FOR MAKING ME THE FUCK NERVOUS!”       “Enough, MacClife! I am not going to tolerate your hysterics now!”       “You know you’d better not make me mad. BUT I AM ANGRY NOW AS FUCK! BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS DID!”       “I said, ENOUGH”!       “SHUT UP, EVERYONE!” Helene breaks into a cry with tears in her eyes.       “Exactly, shut up!” Anna agrees as she keeps giving Peter a heart massage. “Don’t prevent us from saving our friend! But if someone doesn’t care about what’s happening here, they can get out of here.”       Sammy barks loudly and confidently several times as if he agrees.       “And what happened to him?” Daniel asks gloomily. “Did this bastard decide to kill himself at my own house by drowning in the pool?”       “No, idiot!” Helene exclaims. “The canopy fell over him. He was standing under the one and didn’t leave in time when it broke. He fell into the water, and then a blockage of concrete pressed him. It seems like he couldn’t get out and swallowed water.”       “Did he come here earlier than you?” Edward opens his eyes widely.       “He wanted to sit here while we were talking about the dinner ideas,” Raquelle confesses. “And while we were in the living room and talking, the hurricane started.”       “And when we thought about him, we didn’t find Peter on the back of the house,” Natalia adds. “So, we decided to check. We thought he was under the fallen canopy. But as it turned out, he fell in the water and drowned.”       “Fuck, it was really important to you to die right here, at my house!” Daniel throws loudly and irritably, moving his eyes to Peter. “Couldn’t you find another place for this?”       “Uh-huh, you ruined our whole evening, asshole!” Terrence throws gloomily. “And we have the fuck to deal with you now!”       “Why did you the fuck come here?” Edward resents. “We felt so good without you! No, you, bastard, ruined everything!”       “Are you fucking crazy?” Helene horrifies and knocks her index finger against her temple. “Think about what you say, idiots!”       “Uh-huh, I’d bet who’s crazy here…” Raquelle agrees with recentness.       “Even if you’re mad at him, it doesn’t give you any right to wish him to die!” Anna states.       “But you don’t care about what’s gonna happen to him, get out of here,” Natalia throws coldly. “We’ll do this on our own!”       Again, Sammy barks excitedly, runs to Peter, and, whining with pity, snuggles his nose into the man’s cheek.       “Don’t stop, Anna, I’m begging you!” Helene begs desperately. “Please, do just something! Don’t let Peter die! Don’t let!”       “I’m trying!” Anna pronounces excitedly, while Daniel wipes her hair and skin with a towel so that they get dry. “But it doesn’t work so far!”       “You can do this, don’t give up!” Raquelle encourages. “You’re a fine fellow!”       “Let’s do it together!” Natalia suggests and creeps closer to Peter. “Keep doing the heart massage, but I’ll be doing artificial respiration.”       “Please, girls, please, save him!” Helene begs with tears in her eyes and sniffs quietly. “Please, don’t wanna lose him…”       “Quiet, quiet, friend, it’s gonna be okay,” Daniel calms down and hugs Helene around the shoulder after he puts a big bath towel on her shoulders. “It’s gonna be okay…”       “Just keep doing the same,” Edward insists, wiping Natalia’s hair and removing water from her skin with a dry towel. “Don’t give up.”       “If you reacted quickly, you still have to save him,” Terrence says much quieter, putting a towel on Raquelle’s shoulder after he takes it from Daniel and presses her closely to himself.       “And we will save him!” Natalia states determinedly, throws Peter’s head back, squeezes his nose, and breathes the air into his lungs through his mouth. “Surely…”       “Hold on, Pete, hold on…” Anna begs in a shaking from excitement voice with a heavy breath, still working on the cardiac massage. “Hold on… You can’t die… We can’t lose you…”       Since her friends’ efforts do not lead to any good results, Helene starts crying bitterly, closing her mouth tightly with her hand and not being able to hold down her emotional scream at times. And Sammy cannot stop barking loudly and whining, watching his owner suffer, while Daniel presses her to himself and caresses her head, or moving his begging glance to the deathly pale Peter giving no signs of life and lying motionless on the wet tiles.       Edward, Daniel, and Terrence keep staying with the girls and watching Natalia and Anna doing their best to bring Peter back to life with a little frightening indifference. They are not going to participate in this process at all, as if they do not care if Rose will die or not, and look at each other with the same dead eyes. But actually, everything is not what it seems. They do care. The guys are just torn between their offence, anger, and the realization that something irreparable is about to happen. It’s even possible to say that they are confused and in a stupor. They did not expect anything like this. Meanwhile, they are really grateful to the girls for not being confused for a second and showing amazing cool at such a tense moment. They were not afraid to challenge the disaster itself to save their friend.       Nevertheless, they cannot remain absolutely indifferent because of anxiety and fear that can be seen on the faces of the excited Anna, Raquelle, and Natalia, and the horror in the eyes of Helene racking her vocal cords and not holding down her bitter tears. The hearts of Edward, Daniel, and Terrence squeeze painfully at these moments. It causes a wish to rush to Peter, hit him strongly in the face, and make him breathe, and open his eyes. Sammy’s heartbreaking bark is like a blade that wounds the soul. The men hold their breath every time the girls scream out the name of their friend desperately. Indifference gives in to the fear. The fear of having one of their worst nightmares come true. The understanding that they will not forgive themselves if this man does not survive. Because they are too late. Because they did not come to help him when he needed it so badly.       

***

      It seems that Peter has been going straight into the desert field literally forever, as if he gets further and further from the path that would bring him back to the world of the living and gets closer to the world of the dead. The world where he feels so good and so calm. His teenage twin wearing a white shirt and white oversized pants walks next to him and tells him something at times. But the man himself does not pay attention to this. He thinks about whether someone wants to save him in case they see him drowning in the pool. Would his friends overcome their offences and do their best to get him out of this world? Does it make sense to wait? What if Helene does nothing to save him? These things and many others rack his brain so hard, while time goes by, but nobody rushes to take any measures.       “Hm, it’s been five minutes already…” Peter’s twin notices thoughtfully, looking at the watch on his hand. “Ten minutes to go…”       “Ten…” Peter pronounces with sadness in his eyes. “Ten minutes before my life ends in that world. When my body is gonna be buried in the ground.”       “But we ain’t losing hope! Keep walking and hoping you’ll be found and rescued.”       “C’mon, it doesn’t make sense… My luck can’t be endless. I was supposed to die early or late. They couldn’t save me again and again. Everything has its limit.”       “If you’re destined to live in that world for some time, you can even dance on your head, but you’ll live as long as you should.”       “You said I wouldn’t get outta here without someone’s help. But nobody rushes to help me, huh. Nobody will help. Because everyone turned their backs on me. Because I am an asshole.”       “Are ya expecting help from the men only? Don’t ya have any hope on the girls?”       “What can they do?” Peter shrugs. “They wouldn’t get outside in the hurricane and jump in the water to get me from the bottom.”       “Sometimes girls can really surprise. They don’t always shout and cry in critical situations. They don’t always count on men. Especially, in the century of prosperous feminism, when the image of the heroine is so trending nowadays. The one who can’t just spend hours cooking, fixing dishes for a big home army, cleaning the dirty apartment, feeding her child, changing diapers, washing his ass, playing for at least two hours, and putting them to sleep at the same time.”       “Even if it’s so, I’m not sure they can do this.”       “Well, we will know everything in ten minutes.”       “I envy your optimism!”       “You lack it so badly.”       “I just think soberly. I don’t believe in any tales and miracles, thanks to which everyone would forget their offences and rush to save me.”       “Yeah, but I don't think all these dudes wish you death. They are mad, but none of them think of dancing on your grave, no matter what motherfucker you are.”       “Oh, you don’t understand…” Peter sighs tiredly.       “Oh, c’mon, buddy, let’s not think about it!” Peter’s twin suggests cheerfully. “Don't poison your pastime in this wonderful place with your pessimistic comments.”       “Hey, how long do we have to go? It’s been who the fuck knows how long, but we’re walking, walking…”       “Oh, this path is endless! You’re gonna walk on it for the entire eternality!”       “What? Eternality?”       “It’s like a circle that never ends.”       “Do I have to walk here forever if nobody saves me?”       “Nope, of course! If you die, you’ll be in another place. But now you’re in the middle. You’re walking in circles, walking… Waiting for someone to save you.”       “Will we keep walking in circles like this until time is up?”       “Yup,” Peter’s twin smiles innocently. “But we can do something else.”       Peter’s twin stops sharply and turns on Peter himself, while the blond slows down too.       “I did promise to show you something interesting. So, you and I will do this while we have time.”       “No, thanks, let’s better talk,” Peter shakes his head. “I wanna look at nothing.”       “I’m sorry, but you can’t escape this.”       “Please, don’t insist!”       “Did you think you’d hide from your past ‘til the day of your death? From what you forgot, but what impacts your whole life? What your body remembers, but what your brain doesn’t.”       At this moment, Peter puts his hand on his stomach, which starts hurting a little.       “I can’t…” Peter pronounces in a little shaking voice. “No… I’m not ready… No…”       “You have no choice anymore, buddy. You have no place to run. Wherever you go, I will catch you. And I will show you what you must see.”       “I won’t handle it…”       “Stop ignoring your voice inside, Peter. Stop running from what your subconscious screams about. Don’t you understand you’re ruining your life yourself? Don’t you understand it all happens for a reason?”       “Please, stop…”       “No, I will not stop,” Peter’s twin says determinedly. “You’ve been running from the truth for too long. And your behavior toward other people has a very tight connection with your past. Don’t you wanna understand what everything started with?”       “I don’t!”       “Your hysterics won’t stop if you don’t know the truth. You’ll keep pushing people off yourself if they wanna help you again and again. You’ll keep finding an enemy in all of them. You’re gonna attack them with a gun and try to kill them with the thought that they allegedly try to harm you.”       “I will not! I have Helene! Thanks to her, I will not…”       “Helene doesn’t have to do with it, buddy. I mean, she obviously impacts you kinda positively. But actually, everything depends on you only. Your crazy head where you should’ve cleaned a mess a long time ago.”       “Listen, I…”       “I wanna hear nothing more!” Peter’s twin raises his hand with his palm turned toward Peter. “You’re coming with me, I said everything!”       “No, please, don’t!”       “Let’s start it all in ascending order. From the newest to the oldest. Because the deeper you go into the woods, the more horrible it gets.”       Peter barely opens his mouth and tries to protest when his twin takes him under an arm and turns sharply from the path, somewhere aside. When the blond’s copy clicks the fingers, they get through the door that suddenly shows up and end up in the basement, where the fight with Marcus and his accomplices took place some time ago. To be clear, they see the moment when Peter turned evil after Helene’s alleged death, lost control of his emotions, and started to destroy everything in his way, attacking anyone who stood in his way with fists and a cold gun. Not just his father and those who helped him, but also Daniel, Edward, and Terrence, whom he did not specially pity and listen to.       “Yeah, I understand you were devastated at the thought that your girlfriend was dead,” Peter’s twin says. “And grieving is absolutely fine. But you had this kind of inhuman reaction because you thought this world hurt you again. You didn’t understand why it happened to you. Why you were suffering. What you did.”       Peter says nothing and swallows nervously as he watches himself shamelessly when he lost his mind and attacked everyone before Daniel knocked him out with an electric gun.       “Okay…” Peter’s twin pronounces thoughtfully. “I’ll show you a couple of more moments… When you took it out on these guys. Who wanted to make everything better but who tolerated all your tricks bravely.”       Walking from side to side in circles, getting through one or another door, and barely being able to follow his twin, Peter sees several scenes in which he takes it out on his friends and makes them feel offended and disappointed. Maybe a part of his memories got out of his head, he still has another part, and it does not give the guy any kind of happiness. It gives him just one thing – a sense of shame and hate for himself. The hate caused by the fact that he sometimes treated those who wished him the best so unfairly.       “Here are more moments…”       Peter sees the memories of his breakdowns and hysterics becoming the reason why those he barely knew did not suffer less than his close people. For example, the girls he always rejected when they tried to hint at their sympathy. The men, whom he literally shook from and who made him want to try so hard to keep themselves far from them.       “Yeah…” Peter’s twin clicks his tongue in disapproval. “You’ve hurt so many people… How much pain you’ve given them… How many people have tried to get close to you. And how many people have been rejected cruelly.”       “I’m really sorry about what happened,” Peter replies with sadness in his eyes. “I’ve never been happy with harming someone.”       “But you did it! All your life, you’ve lived like a certain sociopath. You’ve been hiding from people like fire. You’ve feared them. Been afraid to be betrayed by the. Showed aggression. Attacked people for nothing. Thinking it would be much better. Thinking you’d seem sassy. But in the end, it happened that you were pronounced an egoistic and nasty bastard, who nobody wanted to have a business with.”       “Do you think I liked it all? Liked acting like that? Pushing off everyone who wanted to look into my soul.”       “But you did let Daniel get close to you one day! What kind of miracle did he do to assure you to talk to him? Let him be your friend?”       “He just did care about me. He didn’t try to use me for his goals. At least, I wanna believe his intentions were true.”       “Other people had the same goals. Men wanted to befriend, girls wanted to love. If you hadn’t been an asshole, you’d had many friends.”       “It was hard! Hard to trust people. To believe that they didn’t wanna hurt me. I stopped trusting someone. Stopped waiting for someone to talk to me for a wish to befriend, not for some benefit. Even when I decided to trust Daniel, I wasn’t sure if I did the right thing. And I wanted to do something for him to fuck me off himself.”       “You didn’t really wanna hurt anyone deep inside. But sadly, it happened differently. At least, in the case of girls. They could barely accept the fact that they were rejected. Because they really liked you. And men… Men didn’t spend much time worrying. Like, if you don’t want, it’s okay, nobody makes you! Men don’t care about it for too long.”       “You’re right, yeah…”       “It’s the voice of your offence. The offence against everyone who’s ever hurt you. Starting with your father, who sold you to some bastards. Cornelia, who preferred vodka over you. People of your age who never missed a chance to mock you. And adult people didn’t like you a lot. You were a pain in the ass for them. You didn’t understand the reason for that and tried so hard to be nice. But people didn’t appreciate it. And in the end, you got the offence. A strong offence. The offence that is still alive in your heart.”       “I know it’s been many years since all of that happened.” Peter swallows nervously and sighs heavily. “But I’ve really forgotten nothing. I remember everything. And I can’t forgive.”       “Here’s the explanation for your mistrust of people. The problem is not you. The problem is your offence. It’s destroying you.”       “You tell me what I already know.”       “Yeah, but these people hardly forgave you, too,” Peter’s twin replies, looking at what’s happening in front of him. “They hardly forgave you for taking it out on them.”       “I know…” Peter crosses his arms over his chest. “And my behavior toward the men is partly connected with it. Helene’s alleged death broke me down at all. I could no longer handle it all. I wanted revenge. I wanted bloodshed. I wanted to burn that fucking world of the living to the ground!”       “Didn’t you understand the guys were guilty of nothing deep inside? They wanted to make it better!”       “I did. But anger closed my eyes and ears. I… I couldn’t control myself. It was beyond my strength.”       “That’s good you understand it. But that’s bad you wanna do nothing to fix it. To find the strength to stop pushing people off. Yes, shit never dies. But if you learn to get rid of it, it’s gonna be okay.”       “I can fix nothing anymore…” Peter shrugs. “I’m dying… I have a little time… And the guys hate me. And they ain’t trying to save me…”       “But…” Peter’s twin raises his index finger. “It’s not the important thing… Not the most important reason for your problems. Adult people’s indifference and your peers’ mockeries just made what you ran into much worse.”       “Please, don’t make me get through that again,” Peter begs desperately. “Don’t make me remember what I’m trying to forget so hard.”       “Here’s your greatest mistake. You wanna forget everything. Without learning a lesson. Not understanding that all these horror things have a much deeper meaning.”       “I do wanna separate myself from the one I was back then. I wanna accept a new personality. I wanna forget everything and start my life over again!”       “A new name wouldn’t make you a different man, Peter. You were a little boy left by everyone on your own, and you will always remain the one. Your traumas wouldn’t be healed. You’re broken, and no new personality can fix it.”       “If not for the events that have lately happened, I would forget everything. Everything was alright! But Marcus came and messed up everything!”       “He likely revealed all the problems you’re trying to deny. The ones you must solve somehow if you wanna live a normal life.”       “I almost did it! I needed just a little!”       “Make yourself think so as much as you want. Though you were expecting something bad, even when you thought everything was alright. Yes, you were nice and good to the guys. You supported them. You gave them wise pieces of advice. You accepted the role of a certain specialist in psychology. But you just made yourself think like this. You played the role of a happy and positive guy when you befriended Daniel. You kept doing this when you met Terrence and Edward. And nothing changed even after you started a relationship with Helene. You’ve always been a fake. You’ve always lied. To yourself. And everyone – when you said everything was alright. People don’t know the real you.”       “I’ve never denied that I haven’t recovered fully.”       “You didn’t wanna tell the truth. You didn’t wanna say the effort of your friends and girlfriend didn’t make sense.”       “Not truth! They’ve done a lot for me! And thanks to them, I felt a little happier. I discovered what it was like. What being loved by someone means.”       “You’re hurt, I know. But to solve your problem, you need to face it and admit it. You can decide nothing if you keep running. It won’t lead to the closure of Gestalt.”       Peter says nothing and just sighs tiredly as he glances aside.       “It’s okay, you and I have a lot of time to fix it,” Peter’s twin smiles slyly. “So, where did we stop? Oh, I think I remember now!”       Taking Peter under his arm, his twin passes some distance straightly, while Rose himself barely follows him and looks around with a tense glance, noticing that the longer their way lasts, the darker, the colder, and more anxious the place gets. At some moment, they turn aside, come to the half-ruined house, and enter it after the blond’s twin opens the door. The guy recognizes his own house immediately, where he spent his childhood and teenage years, and lived with Cornelia. He notices that everything is put in the same places as it was back then. Everything is in a half-ruined condition and covered with a thick layer of dirt and dust.       At first, Peter holding his breath looks at every single corner with widely open eyes, but then moves his eyes sharply aside after hearing a loud, high-pitched squeaky female voice. He sees a short, slim woman with shrunk cheeks, tons of rashes on the pale skin, big circles under his eyes, wearing a dirty, ripped, old long dress that she supposedly found in the trash. She walks nervously from side to side with a half-empty bottle in her hands and glances many times at the scared, shaking teenager at the age of fifteen or sixteen, who presses himself into the corner and presses his knees tightly to his chest as he is sitting on the floor and watching that woman with wet eyes.       Peter getting sharply pale and oohing quietly starts breathing very heavily, recognizing himself as a teenager and being the woman is Cornelia Rose, the one who raised him. Every single muscle squeezes in pain when memories get into his mind three times harder. He shakes as he recalls another day when he stood in the way of his adopted mother, drunk as hell, who was taking it out on him every time she could, beating him cruelly and even breaking his limbs.       “Ah, you, little parasite…” Cornelia hisses through his teeth in a slurred voice. “You dare to be bold to me? YOU DARE TO BE BOLD TO ME, YOU, FUCKING, LITTLE KID!”       “Mother, no! Mother, don’t do this!” Baby Peter screams hysterically, covering his face with his hands when Cornelia starts hitting him strongly with a belt. “Please, don’t beat me! Don’t do this! I’m begging you! Don’t beat me! MOTHER, PLEASE!”       “ASSHOLE! It’s all because of you! Because of you, my life was ruined! Because of you, my husband left me! Jeffrey left me! HE LEFT ME! BECAUSE OF YOU! BECAUSE I BROUGHT YOU HOME!”       “What?” Peter frowns strongly. “Did she say it?”       “She did,” Peter’s twin nods. “But you didn’t take her words seriously and thought she said it when she was drunk. And you never thought about it after Cornelia said it several more times.”       “Damn…” Peter swallows nervously, clenching his fingers into his fists. “It happens… She told me the truth when… When I was a child?”       “Sort of.”       “Yes, milksop, you are adopted!” Cornelia states and bends to Peter, who presses his back much tighter to the wall and looks into his mother’s eyes scarily. “You are adopted! You are nobody to me! Not a son… YOU HAVE NEVER BEEN THE ONE!”       “You’re lying!” Peter cries. “You’re lying! You’re saying this bullshit because you are drunk!”       “Oh, no, I’m not drunk yet… I drank just one bottle so far…” Cornelia shaking slightly hiccups loudly. “Just one… It’s a warmup… But tonight, I’m gonna relax to the fullest…”       “If you didn’t need me, you should’ve left me in an orphan house! Why have you been suffering for so long? You shouldn't have given birth to me! Shouldn’t have educated me! THIS WHOLE WORLD HATES ME ANYWAY!”       “The world hates you because you are a freak. A worthless, talentless freak that will achieve nothing in his life.” Cornelia takes a big sip from her bottle. “Your destiny is to be lonely, cold, and hungry! Or it would be much better if you die at all! Nobody is going to regret!”       “I WISH YOU HAD DIED, BITCH!” Peter breaks into a cry. “I WOULD FEEL MUCH BETTER IN THE AFTERLIFE THAN HERE!”       “What did you say?” Cornelia roars and slaps Peter strongly in the face. “WHAT DID YOU SAY? HOW DO YOU, BASTARD, DARE TO TALK TO AN ADULT PERSON LIKE THIS?”       “I HATE EVERYONE! I HATE EVERYONE!” Peter starts crying bitterly. “I DON’T DESERVE ALL OF THIS! I DO NOT! MAY EVERYONE IN THIS WORLD DIE! I HATE IT! I HATE! MAY EVERYONE BURN IN FUCKING HELL! MAY THEY DIE! DIE! AND YOU DIE WITH THEM! I HATE YOU! HATE! YOU’RE A BAD MOTHER! BAD!”       “Come here, bastard! COME HERE, I SAID!”       After drinking everything from the bottle, Cornelia breaks it against the floor as strongly as possible, runs to Peter, and starts beating him with a belt, holding him tightly by the collar of the t-shirt.       “Mother, no, MOTHER DON’T DO THIS!” Peter screams heartbreakingly. “MOTHER, PLEASE! STOP! PITY ME! STOP!”       “I will show you…” Cornelia hisses and slaps Peter in the face several times. “I will show you where you belong… You will pay me for everyone, bastard… FOR EVERYTHING!”       “A-A-A-A! FORGIVE ME! I WON’T DO THIS ANYMORE!”       “I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU! I CURSE THE DAY I CAME BACK HOME WITH YOU! WHEN JEFFREY LOOKED AT YOU AND TOLD ME TO CARRY YOU AWAY IMMEDIATELY! WHEN MY HUSBAND LEFT ME ALL THE FUCK ALONE! FUCKING A SLUT SECRETLY! YOU KNOW, SHE CAN GIVE BIRTH! BUT I AM NOT!”       “MOTHER, PLEASE, PITY ME! I’M SORRY! I WON’T DO THIS ANYMORE! DON’T BEAT ME! PLEASE! MOTHE-E-E-E-E-E-E-ER!”       But no matter how desperately Peter screams, Cornelia keeps beating him cruelly with the belt and attacks him with fists when he decides to run somewhere.       “FUCKING BASTARD!” Cornelia roars. “I WILL SHOW YOU! I WILL SHOW YOU WHERE YOU BELONG! SO THAT YOU LEARN TO RESPECT OLDER PEOPLE!”       “MOTHER, STOP!” Peter keeps screaming emotionally with tears in his eyes. “PLEASE, STOP! DON’T BEAT ME! DON’T DO THIS!”       The memories get into Peter’s mind so hard as he sees this scene. One of hundreds of episodes when Cornelia could attack him like this and start to beat him cruelly, swearing at him in all possible ways, cursing him, and saying he ruined her whole life. At some moment, he even turns his head aside and winces strongly when his younger version screams that he feels hurt and his pees have already given him many bruises today and twisted his wrist painfully so that it aches now. His heart squeezes painfully, and his body shakes after every clap that it remembers as if it happened some time ago.       “You see, you started to hate the whole world already,” Peter’s twin notices. “You started to wish everyone to die and burn in hell. Besides, you were a teenager. When everyone goes crazy and says no one understands them. While someone is always next to other teenagers, nobody was next to you.”       “After all these hits, I had tons of bruises on my whole body,” Peter confesses in a low, little shaking voice and embraces himself tightly with both arms. “And I can’t remember how many fractures and sprains I’ve had! She once hit my head against the wall so strongly that I suffered a concussion of moderate severity. And she once hit me so that I had two or three broken ribs. Thankfully, I got help from Brittany Lyons, who worked on my traumas and took me to the hospital on her own account. If not for her, I would’ve died or become disabled a long time ago.”       “I am sorry for you…”       “For example, on this day, she attacked me for the second time when I managed to escape home.” Peter moves his sad eyes to Cornelia beating his teenage version cruelly. “When I came back, she’d already drunk another bottle. She saw me, grabbed a knife from the kitchen, and ran after me through the whole house. I had no place to hide ‘cause we didn’t have doors at home. I had to go outside again and spend time there until the morning. And nobody cared about me all that time. I mean, some drug addicts caught me, but I barely ran away from them. And I was almost bitten by the dog of one of them. A very evil one. I thought I’d die, but I fought off and got out.”       “I’m really very sorry, buddy,” Peter’s twin expresses his true sympathy, stroking the guy’s shoulder.       “Let’s get out of here. I don’t wanna look at this anymore.”       “The further, the worse. Until we come to the most important thing – the one that can solve 99% of your problems.”       “Don’t do this, please…” Peter begs with pity in his eyes. “I don’t wanna remember this… I don’t…”       “Sorry, man, but you have to get through this.”       Peter’s twin takes Peter under his arm again, turns back, and gets through the same door they entered here through. Then they spend a lot of time going down the wide path that seems kind of endless, falling into the darkness more and more, so that it tenses Rose himself more and more and makes him look around scarily. He goes by open doors where he can see various episodes of his life: Cornelia’s hysterics, the indifference of adult people to his problems, which he complained about, and the frightening cruelty of his peers not pitying him at all. All the forgotten and buried memories are coming back and opening the wounds of the guy, making his eyes water with tears of despair and powerlessness.       “Oh, I think that’s what we need!” Peter’s twin exclaims. “Over here!”       Dragging Peter after himself, his twin comes to the closed door, opens it, and gets through it along with the guy, ending up in the thick woods. Rose guesses immediately what he is going to see, tries to get his arm out of the grip of his twin, who leads him determinedly to the right place, ignoring the tears and the heavy breath of the excited blond.       “No, please, don’t…” Peter whispers in a shaking voice. “Please, don’t… Don’t make me remember! Don’t do this! NO! DO NOT DO THIS!”       “You have to, buddy,” Peter’s twin replies with a scaring calm. “You have to.”       Peter barely opens his mouth and protests when his twin drags the guy after himself much more determinedly and much faster. After passing some distance, they come to the big group of teenagers at the age of fourteen or fifteen thrilling with a loud, mocking laugh as they all surround the boy with wheat blond hair and amber eyes, and wearing ripped old clothes at the same age as theirs, who is sitting on the ground. He looks excitedly at all the guys one by one, while his nose is bleeding, and his hands are tied tightly to the trunk of the tree. He tries furiously to set himself free, but he can do nothing, crying and shouting from the hellish pain in his whole body after all the hits he has gotten from the guys, whose cruelty has him scared.       “Let me go, guys, I’m begging you!” Peter begs desperately. “Don’t beat me… I promise I’ll say nothing to anyone. Just leave me alone…”       “Aw, aw, look, folks, our girl is crying…” one of the teenagers sneers evilly. “Crying so bitterly…”       “Right!” another teenager exclaims and squeezes Peter’s jaw tightly. “The face is so wet, and the eyes are full of tears…”       “Why are you doing this to me?” Peter wonders. “What did I do to you? Why does everyone treat me like shit? WHY? WHAT’S MY FAULT?”       “Because you’re a freak,” a girl with a bitchy face states coldly. “Because you are a reject. The shit that will never achieve anything in his life.”       “And suffering torment is your destiny,” another girl adds, putting her finger painfully in Peter’s cheek. “Trust me, we can smell losers from afar. And your face says you will never be successful.”       “I’ve done nothing bad to you!” Peter exclaims.       “Oh, no, you’ve done!” another boy protests. “You came to this world. You made everyone’s lives worse with your birth.”       “Uh-huh, a worthless bag of bones,” another boy adds. “A slim six-foot-tall column that takes pathetic attempts to show off and show his brains. He is playing the role of someone not to be like him.”       “PLEASE, STOP!” Peter screams with tears. “LEAVE ME ALONE!”       “Hey, close your fucking mouth, freak!” one of the boys roars and smashes his fist against Peter’s face. “OR YOU ARE DEAD!”       “HELP! SOMEONE! HELP ME!”       “Scream as much as you want – nobody will come. Because everyone gives a fuck about you. Neither your mother, who is drunk all the time, nor adult people who don’t the fuck need a pathetic, worthless motherfucker.”       “I DON’T DESERVE IT! I DO NOT!”       “Hey, boys, shut this undeveloped one’s mouth up!” one of the girls demands rudely with a cigarette in her hands. “Beat him fucking hard again, huh.”       “Uh-huh, it seems that he understood nothing,” another girl laughs evilly.       “I have a better idea,” one of the boys smiles mysteriously. “He’s gonna remember this all his life.”       After getting up on his feet, the guy opens his zipper quickly and determinedly, making Teenage Peter open his eyes widely and shake his head, and making Adult Peter make a quiet ooh and freeze sharply.       “No…” Adult Peter pronounces with a heavy breath in a shaking voice. “No, please…”       “Ern, what’s wrong?” Teenage Peter asks hesitantly. “What do you wanna do? Hey? What do you wanna do?”       “Don’t worry, Rose, I just wanna show you something,” the boy smiles sinisterly. “Show my pride. Something all girls around me dream about!”       “Are you crazy? Are you drunk? Why the fuck did you take your pants down?”       “Hey, Rose, look at this! Don’t turn your head back! Look! Look, I said!”       “What are you doing? Hey! Stop! Enough!”       “Hey, blond-haired freak, shut the fuck up! Do what you are told!”       “What do you wanna do?”       “You will know it now, bastard!”       Guessing what’s going to happen next, the adult Peter closes his eyes tightly and barely holds down his tears when he hears himself screaming hysterically and trying to get out of the trap.       “Come here, bastard! COME HERE, I SAID!”       “Yes, yes, yes!” the female voice pronounces. “Good idea! Let’s teach Rose!”       “We’ve never done this before,” another girl notices. “Why didn’t we think about it before?”       “Oh, what if the boys and I take off the pants too!” another boy pronounces confidently. “So that our girl works with her mouth a little. Use it correctly.”       “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Teenage Peter screams desperately. “ARE YOU CRAZY? NO, DON’T DO THIS! GET IT OFF ME! DON’T DO THIS! STOP! ENOUGH!”       “Come on, Rose, don’t feel shy! Look at how big it is! How thick it is… The gals are already wet at these sizes!”       “NO-O-O-O-O-O-O! STOP! STOP IT!”       “Come on, boys, let’s go!” the girl encourages. “Do this! Shut this milksop’s mouth!”       “NO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O! NO-O-O-O-O-O! DON’T DO THIS! DON’T DO THIS! STOP! ENOUGH! GET OFF ME! NO-O-M-M-M-M!”       At first, Peter vaguely remembered what happened next. But at this moment, the memories come back to him and break his wounded soul even more. He continues to keep his eyes closed and turns his face aside while tears roll down his cheeks slowly, and he feels such a familiar sense of nausea in his mouth and a wish to clean his stomach due to the gag reflex caused by what’s happening.       “You look cool!” one of the boys laughs evilly. “It does really fit you!”       “Yeah, princess, you’re now gonna be our personal whore,” another boy agrees. “The entire school will know you work your tongue fucking well. Well… THE ENTIRE CITY! UH-HUH-HA-HA-HA-HAH!””       “M-M-M-M-M-M!” Peter shakes as if in seizures. “M-M-M-M-M!”       “Look, guys, he loves it!” the girl notices happily. “Our milksop loves sucking…”       “Girls, bring your asses to him now!” one of the boys suggests cheerfully. “Let’s take his pants off and fuck him in all holes. He will suck on us and get deeply into you!”       “Why not?” another girl agrees cheerfully. “I’ve got cottons with me just in case. I always have them with me.”       “And I took my camera,” the second girl confesses. “We can take a lot of photos, print them, and spread them in the whole school, in the entire city.”       “Uh-huh, and write his home number,” one of the boys sneers evilly. “So that the whore earns some money. I think that alcoholic woman wouldn't mind if her son was fucked by everyone who wanted before her eyes.”       “C’mon, boys, rock on!” one of the boys exclaims happily. “Take off the pants! Put the dick in all holes!”       “Girls, take off your knickers!” another boy encourages. “Let’s have a lot of fun!”       “Fuck him in the mouth while I take that freak’s pants off,” one of the boys says.       “M-M-M!” Peter moans hysterically and starts shaking in uncontrolled seizures. “M-M-M-M-M-M!”       Even if Peter shakes his hand and tries to press them to his chest, one of the boys manages to do what they want. The unhappy teenager keeps racking his vocal cords and tries to run away from this nightmare to any place, but he is powerless in front of the fact that he is surrounded by a crowd of boys and girls, who are determined to do something irreparable.       The more heartbreakingly Teenage Peter screams and the more emotionally he cries, the harder it is for Adult Peter to hold himself down. He does not even have to watch what’s happening to feel everything he felt on the day the worst things happened after all, and a group of teenagers and pictured some moments on the camera. Besides, there is a boy who has a video camera that is by far from small and uses to record short videos along with one of his friends. Nobody gets emotional over the heartbreaking scream of the teenager crying bitterly from despair, weakness, and pain he starts to feel in his jaw and the bottom of his body. The pain the adult man feels, grabbing the bottom of his stomach sharply, with a quiet shout.       “Stop it, please…” Peter begs with tears in his eyes. “Please, take me away from here…”       “Oh, no, I will not…” Peter’s twin shakes his head with a sly smile.       “Please, don’t force me to watch all of this!” Peter grabs his twin by the shoulders and shakes him. “I DON’T WANT! I DON’T WANT! I AM SCARED! I FEEL HURT!”       “Remember, Peter. Remember everything you’ve been running from all your life. Everything your friends reminded you of by deciding to fuck you as well as these bastards did.”       “NO, STOP!” Peter closes his ears as he screams hysterically. “STOP! DO NOT DO THIS! STOP IT!”       “These teenagers got what they wanted. They did it. You were humiliated. In all senses. The girls fucked, the men used you dirtily. At the end of this shit, you were lying there all tied. Naked, all in blood, with pain… Broken… Much more disappointed in this world. And they… They finished. All of them. They were very happy and assured you that nothing terrible happened. And following the tradition, these assholes terrified you again, threatening to kill you if you dared to tell someone about it. And you shitted your pants.  You told nobody about that case. Though it didn’t save you. Knowing that the photos of you revealing all of you were spread throughout the whole school. And everyone started to pronounce you a slut. The whore who was wanted by everyone. You became a disgrace to the entire school.”       “SHUT UP!” Peter grabs his head. “SHUT UP!”       “From then on, they often drove you to secret places in the city against your will to get rid of pressure. You screamed and begged to let you go, but it only happened when they finished. When they dressed up and left as if nothing happened. While you were lying on the ground, no one needed you. Still naked, bleeding, with pain in your whole body. Yes, some adult people were aware of it, but they took no measures. They were all too busy. And they didn’t have a desire to meddle in the teenagers’ games. But it’s not surprising, knowing you lived in the neighborhood where only alcoholics, drug addicts, criminals, and other shit lived. Those who gave birth to the same motherfuckers. Well, there were a couple of healthy people, but they acted like assholes, too. Brittany knew about their mockeries over you, but that old woman could do nothing because she was all sick. Or maybe she didn’t wanna deal with you ‘cause she had too much to do.”       “STO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-OP IT!” Peter screams hysterically, pulling his hair painfully with both hands. “PLEA-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-ASE!”       “So what, buddy, did ya warm up a little?”       Peter’s twin comes closer to the blond breathing heavily and puts his hand on his shoulder.       “And now it's time to dive into the deepest depths of your subconscious. It’s time to recall your childhood, the memories of which your memories decided to block to take care of the child’s psyche.”       “No, please...” Peter begs in a whisper, putting his shaking hands together and bringing them to his mouth. “Please, please, don't do this... I can't... I don't want... No... I... I'm not ready...”       “You are ready,” Peter’s twin pronounces confidently. “You're not a child anymore. You’ve kept that little boy locked for many years, even though he tried so hard to break free. And now it’s time to do this. It's time to learn all the truth.”       “Please...”       Along with the heartbreaking shout of Teenage Peter, who feels an incredibly severe pain because of everything that’s happening to him, Adult Peter gets dragged away by his twin, who comes back to the familiar path that kind of symbolizes his life. A lot of doors on both sides show everything that has happened to him. Rose sees everything he has been through as he squeezes from the bitter cold and cries quietly, while it gets darker and darker as long as he takes a step. So dark that he stops seeing everything and does not know where to go, just following his twin obediently. The twin that kind of plays the role of the guide to the depths of his subconsciousness, which they reach in a fast step.       Peter recalls more and more cases of his life against his will when he had to fight the injustice of this world and the frightening cruelty of people, who left him on his own like something unnecessary. More and more cases became the reason why he started to withdraw into himself more and more. To lock his heart away from people. To start to think that he would better count on himself only and keep all his thoughts inside.       “I give a fuck about your problems, I have too much to do!” Cornelia’s words come to mind after Peter’s plea to protect him from the cruelty of his schoolmates. “You’re not a child, you will solve it! Don’t the fuck hide behind my skirt!”       “Please, Mother, help me!” Peter, at the age of thirteen, begs desperately. “They bully me every day. You’re the only one to help me. Please, Mommy, please…”       “Hey, milksop, get off me!” Cornelia pushes Peter off rudely when he wants to hug her tightly, squeezing a glass with a transparent drink in one hand. “Don’t hurt my eyes! Let me have a rest!”       “Please, Mother!”       “STOP CRYING!” Cornelia roars. “STOP CRYING LIKE A GIRL! ARE YOU A MAN OR WHAT?”       “Why are you doing this to me?” Peter cries as he chokes. “What did I do? Why do you hate me?”       “Because you are a PAIN IN THE ASS! THORN IN THE SIDE! If not for you, my life would be much better! My husband wouldn’t leave me and meet another woman! But Jeffrey left me! He preferred a slut over me! Because of you!”       “Please, Mommy, don’t leave me alone!”       Peter falls to his knees in front of Cornelia sitting on the sofa, and tries to press himself to her knees, while she empties her full glass.       “I have nobody else to count on! You’re the only one I have in this world! I won’t survive in it without you! Please, Mommy, please!”       “Are you stupid and deaf, I don’t understand?” Cornelia resents. “You were told to GET OFF!”       “MOTHER, PLEASE!”       “I SAID, FUCK OFF!”       With these words, Cornelia pushes Peter rudely off her. That’s why he gets thrown two meters away and starts crying bitterly, rolling on the floor, holding his stomach that hurts from pain, and still asking himself why his own mother is doing this to him. Adult Peter also feels that tears roll down his cheeks slowly, and his heart squeezes from the unbearable pain. The pain caused by the fact that nobody heard his scream for help. Nobody noticed how much he suffered.       “Why are you doing this to me?” Peter looks at his twin with tears. “Why do you keep torturing me?”       “Don’t worry, we still have time,” Peter’s twin assures and glances at his watch as he keeps taking Peter somewhere after himself. “You have seven minutes in your world. And no signs that someone wanna save you. Well… Or the signal has not reached us yet, even if the guys are trying hard.”       “Please, stop before it’s too late.”       “Let’s go, man, braver! Toward to your past!”       At some moment, Peter manages to get his arm out of the grip of his twin and, choking, rushes to the opposite side. But after running a short distance, the invisible wave throws him back. He falls to the ground cruelly, and his twin grabs Rose by the collar without emotions and starts dragging him after himself, ignoring all the hysterical shouts and pleas to bring him back to the place where he felt good.        “Until someone tries to save you, there is no way back for you,” Peter’s twin says coldly.       “I don’t want!” Peter screams heartbreakingly. “I don’t! I don’t want! Don’t do this!”       “I’m sorry, but you have no choice.”       “NO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O!”       Peter’s twin comes to the door in front of him, opens it, and gets through it. Peter himself closes his eyes tightly due to the bright light that kind of tries to blind him. And when he opens them slowly, he finds himself in a small wooden room where all the surfaces are covered with a thick layer of dust, and spiders made tons of webs in the corners. It’s dark outside, it’s raining a lot, bright lightning flashes in the sky, and the icy hurricane wind gets in all the holes so that Peter feels the bitter cold that makes him embrace himself tightly with both arms and rub his biceps.       “What’s this place?” Peter wonders. “Why is it so cold? Why is it so anxious?”       “Can’t you remember?” Peter’s twin surprises. “Isn’t it familiar to you at all?”       “I dunno… But I don’t feel good… It’s… Too… Uncomfortable…”       “No wonder. Knowing about what’s gonna happen here now…”       Peter exhales with a shake and starts walking in the place slowly and hesitantly, finding it kind of familiar but kind of not. Speaking the truth, he does not understand why it makes him feel such a strong sense of anxiety. Why he can feel the coldness. Why he feels the familiar smell that reminds him of rotten eggs mixed with the smell of the cheapest tobacco. Why his heart starts beating much faster, everything goes blurry before his eyes at some moment, his hands get sweaty suddenly, and his throat is kind of squeezed by someone’s invisible hands.       “I don’t feel good…” Peter swallows loudly, grabbing his throat. “I feel dizzy… And nausea…”       When Peter’s twin wants to say something, the door of the room opens, and the little skinny child enters. At the age of six or seven, with blond, literally white hair, and amber eyes. He looks around himself hesitantly but with interest and does not find the courage to go further at first, shaking from coldness and rubbing his forearms with his small hands.       “It’s… Peter pronounces hesitantly. “Is that me? I… I was here?”       “Oh, shit, the bruises under your eyes…” Peter’s twin horrifies. “Is that Cornelia’s work? Or were the children so cruel that they dared to attack the child?”       “I don’t know…” Peter touches the area hesitantly under his eyes with his shaking fingertips. “I can’t remember…”       “Okay, we’ll know it now. Watch and enjoy, as they say.”       “Don’t be shy, Peter, come into the room,” the low, squeaky male voice that can be heard somewhere from afar. “Feel like home…”       At this moment, Peter shakes sharply with the feeling that his heart stops for a moment.       “This voice…” Peter opens his eyes widely. “It’s familiar to me… I know it…”       “Are ya wondering who he is and what you’re doing here, huh?” Peter’s twin crosses his arms over his chest.       While Baby Peter keeps standing in the same place like a column, the well-fed, as big as a closet, man, at the age of forty or forty-five, with dark hair in old, shabby home clothes, enters the room. With pale skin covered with blisters in some areas, big bruises under his protruding eyes, and a smile that causes a wish to twirl into a skein. Or better get out of here as fast as possible…       “What’s wrong, boy?” the man wonders, hugging Baby Peter around the shoulders, making Adult Peter shake slightly due to the goosebumps on his skin. “Any problems? You don’t like it?”       “No, sir…” Peter pronounces in a tiny baby voice. “It’s alright… It’s just… C-cold here…”       “Don’t worry, baby, you’ll love this place. I’ve told you that I love children so much. And I’d be happy to watch you since you stood in my way.”       “My mother went to drink with other men again. She drinks with them every day. She takes a bottle and leaves home.”       “Come on!”       “Yes! She says drinking helps her relax and have a rest. But there are cases when my mother drinks at home. And at these moments, she starts to scream at the top of her lungs and beat me strongly. I’m afraid of her at these moments so badly. Just like now. I barely escaped when she decided to punish me for nothing again.”       “Ah, your mother is so bad!”       The man brings Baby Peter softly to the bed and sits on it with him, while Adult Peter tenses strongly enough and swallows nervously because of the way the stranger caresses the child’s back and fixes his ruffled hair. And he is much more suspicious because of his glance, which is still of something… Kind of terrible?!       “How does she dare to mock such a good baby?” the man pinches Peter’s cheek softly. “So good, so sweet…”       “I have nobody to protect me,” Baby Peter confesses and sniffs. “Mother doesn’t want to, my neighbors don’t care. And the guys around me are cruel. I went to school some time ago, but they disliked me from the first day.”       “Why?”       “I don’t know, sir. I do nothing bad! But nobody loves me. Nobody wants to love and protect me.”       “And your dad? Don’t you have a dad?”       “Mother hates Father. When I try to ask her about it, she says that the man left her and preferred a young woman.”       “She really said it?” the man opens his eyes widely.       “Yeah… And she calls his new woman a whore who sleeps with other men and ruins everyone’s happy families.”       “My gosh! She said it to the little baby?”       “I have nobody, sir. No Dad, no brothers, no sisters… Nobody! And I think my mommy doesn’t need me. She doesn’t love me.”       “Oh, come on, my sweetheart…”       The man presses Peter to himself and caresses his head tenderly, wiping tears carefully under the baby’s eyes.       “Your mother loves you so much. Don’t say such bad things about her.”       “No, sir. She doesn’t. She doesn’t need me. Drinks and other men are more important to her.”       “If you want, I’d be happy to be your father, your mother, and your brother.” The man caresses Peter’s cheek softly. “Anyone you want, my sweetie…”       “Yeah…” Peter pronounces hesitantly, feeling something strange and squeezing while the unfamiliar man caresses him like this. “It… Would be great…”       “What’s your age?”       “Seven!”       “Oh, excellent age!”       “Would you really be my dad if I asked you about it?”       “Of course, sweetheart! You’re such a good and kind boy! I am so sorry for you. Sadly, I don’t have my own children, but I’d be happy to give you the love I didn’t give my son or daughter.”       “But why don’t you have children?”       “It happened so, baby,” the man shrugs. “It’s a long story, but it’s too early for you to know it.”       “But don’t you know how I could get a mother if she said she couldn’t give birth to children?” Peter asks. “She got me somehow!”       “Well… I don’t even know… Why are you asking?”       “Mother often says these things when she drinks. She says I’m nobody to her. Like, someone gave her to me. And she regrets agreeing to take me with her. She says I’m the reason Dad left her.”       “No, Peter, don’t listen to her. At these moments, your mother doesn’t understand what she says. You know how much you can do and say when you’re in this condition!”       “And when I ask her about it when she’s sober, Mother tells me to get off and kicks me out.”       “Sadly, I don’t know your mother, honey. I don’t know her story. And I can only advise you just one thing: don’t pay attention.”       “But I can’t! I wanna understand why my mother doesn’t love me? Maybe I should actually leave home? Go live with another woman? Maybe I would feel better with her?”       “No, baby, don’t even think about it. Your mother is gonna be worried if you disappear. She will be looking for you everywhere with the police.”       “She will not!” Peter sniffs loudly and wipes it with his hand, inclining his head. “She doesn’t care about me! Though I have nobody to count on.”       “You love her?”       “I do! Very much! She’s my mother! How could I not love her? Even if she’s bad sometimes, I consider her the best one.”       “That’s right, my sweetie,” the man smiles widely and caresses Peter’s cheek again. “No matter who she is, she is your mother. But we should love our moms and dads.”       “I’m trying to, sir.”       “You can call me Garret. Uncle Garret. Garret Vernon.”       “Alright, Uncle Garret, as you wish.”       “Aw, what a good boy!” Garret smiles smugly and takes Peter in his strong hug, caressing his back. “So obedient, so nice…”       “I don’t like this man…” Adult Peter jabs excitedly, grabbing his throat with the thought that he lacks air. “I don’t like him at all… He… He’s so weird… And… I don’t know…”       “You don’t like the way he caresses you?” Peter’s twin specifies. “Your head, your cheek… Fixing your hair… Now he actually put his hand on your knee…”       Something invisible starts squeezing Peter’s chest, not letting him breathe heavily, while his heart beats like crazy, and his weak legs can barely hold him.       “Excuse me, sir, you said you wanted to show me kittens and puppies to comfort,” Peter recalls.       “Yeah, I did,” Garret confirms with a sly smile. “I can also give you some candies.”       “Candies? What’s that?”       “What? You’ve never eaten them before?”       “Nope… They’re tasty?’       “Oh, they are delicious! With different tastes! With chocolate! With nuts! With raisin! Milk chocolate or bitter chocolate! Many various tastes! There are even non-typical ones!”       “Sounds yummy…”       “I’d be happy to let you taste something I have. I’m sure you’re gonna love it.”       “I agree, Uncle Garret. I agree!”       “Yeah, but I will give you a candy on just one condition,” Garret raises his index finger, with which he slaps Peter on his nose. “You just have to do one little favor for me.”       “W-which f-favor?”       “Don’t worry, my sweetie, you will have to do nothing special.”       Garret gets up from the bed, comes to the door, and locks it, making Baby Peter look at the man surprisingly and making Adult Peter get suspicious and feel nausea in his throat.       “No…” Adult Peter whispers. “Run… Escape this place… Now…”       “Just be a good boy and listen to the man,” Garret says in a much lower and deeper voice. “And everything is going to be alright.”       “Erm, Uncle Garret…” Baby Peter opens his eyes widely. “Why did you lock the door? What are you going to do?”       “Quiet, my sweetheart, quiet… It’s okay…”       With these words, Garret comes to the bed slowly and sits next to Baby Peter, who presses his legs to his chest and starts to creep away from the one who looks at him very, very strangely.       “Un-n-ncle G-g-garret…” Baby Peter pronounces in a shaking voice. “Uncle Garret… You…”       “Quiet, quiet, Peter, it’s okay…” Garret caresses Peter’s cheek softly and fixes his hair. “Don’t be nervous. I don’t want to hurt you at all…”       “You… You look at me so strangely… I’m… Scared…”       “Don’t be afraid of me, boy. I don’t wish you anything bad. I do not. I want to help you.”       “Erm, no, sir…” Peter jabs excitedly, pressing himself to the corner and pressing his knees to his chest. “Don’t beat me… Please, don’t do this… Don’t be like my mom…”       “Oh, no, come on, sweetie! I don’t want to beat you. Come on! I don’t beat children! I’m different!”       “Please, Uncle Garret…”       “Do you want to get your first candy ever? If you do, just listen to the older man and do what he tells you.”       “Sir… Sir, no! Don’t do this! Uncle! UNCLE! DON’T DO THIS! NO! UNCLE! UNCLE! DON’T BEAT ME! NO!”       Baby Peter starts crying bitterly when Garret starts to get close to him with an unnatural, evil smile. While Adult Peter feels like he is struck by the powerful electric wave that makes him fall into his memories and recall something that makes him feel that his panic attack grows stronger.       “No…” Peter pronounces in a shaking whisper, shaking his head sharply. “No, please, no…”       “So what, my boy, you know what to do…” Garret says confidently. “I will not let you go until I get what I want.”       “NO, SIR, DON’T DO THIS!” Peter squeaks like a girl. “NO, LET ME GO! I WILL SAY NOTHING TO ANYONE! JUST LET ME GO!”       “Come on, Peter, you were told what to do!” Garret caresses Peter’s cheeks and head. “Be silent and quiet if you don’t want to feel bad. You know that joking with me is bad. You know that I don’t talk to the wind.”       “I DON’T KNOW YOU! I DON’T!”       “But I know you! And I watched you often when you weren’t far from me. Planning to invite you to my home for tea with candies.”       “LET ME GO, PLEASE! I WILL SAY SOMETHING! PLEASE! DON’T BEAT ME! DON’T DO THIS!”       “Quiet, quiet, Peter, quiet…”       “HELP!” Peter begs hysterically. “PLEASE, HELP ME! I AM HERE! SOMEONE! SOMEONE WANTS TO BEAT ME! I DON’T WANT TO!”       “Nobody will hear you, my sweetie, nobody. There are you and me only…”       “NO-O-O-O-O-O-O!”       After beating Garret with his small baby’s hands, Baby Peter jumps from the bed sharply and tries to unlock the door with no success, but he does not have enough strength. The man stands up sharply, runs to him, grabs him by the collar, and pulls him to the bed, despite the hard resistance. Then the boy steps on the man’s foot and rushes to the open window with the hope of escaping through it. But at the last moment, he is grabbed by the foot and gets pulled sharply, while he screams emotionally, cries, and beats his offender as strongly as possible.       “If you behave badly, you will not get candies!” Garret roars and slaps Peter very strongly on his buttocks, making him scream loudly.       “NO, SIR!” Peter begs. “DON’T DO THIS!”       “Don’t better make me enraged, baby. I was educated in Spartan conditions, thanks to which I learned how to be disciplined and obey older people. And it wouldn’t be hard for me to do the same to you. Since your mother can’t do this, I will work on it. With the rights of your so-called father.”       “PLEASE, SIR, DON’T DO THIS! LET ME GO! DON’T BEAT ME! LET ME GO!”       “Stop screaming, kid! STOP SCREAMING!”       “NO!” Peter squeaks when Garret gives him several strong hits on his whole body.       “I will make you obey! MAKE! I SHALL MAKE YOU A REAL MAN! I SHALL DO!”       Garret takes the belt off his pants and starts beating Peter with no shame, not paying attention to all his hysterical screams, tears, and pleas to stop. The boy’s nose can feel the strong smell of the cheap cigarettes mixed with the rot in the mouth caused by the teeth issues. A wave of hellish, burning pain spreads throughout the whole little body, and Adult Peter can feel all the same. The man is no longer able to hold down a flow of bitter tears and breathe well. His whole body becomes numb due to the painful tension in every single muscle, the invisible hands squeeze his throat much stronger, and his chest is kind of squeezed by the hydraulic press.       “I won’t handle this…” Peter shakes his head sharply. “I will not!”       “I know, you tried,” Peter’s twin replies quietly. “You tried to save yourself. But you could not. You didn’t have any adult people who would tell you not to go to the home of strange men and women and take something from them. You’re not guilty of it. Nobody just taught you that.”       “No… No… It cannot be the truth! I don’t believe it… I don’t! It cannot be the truth!”       “It can be. That’s what you didn’t wanna remember so badly. What started your self-destruction. Which is the reason why you doomed yourself to suffering. The suffering that didn’t let you keep living a normal life at an adult age. Yes, you forgot everything. But your body remembers everything.”       Peter’s twin falls into silence because of the heartbreaking scream of the little boy still begging the adult man to let him go home and do nothing bad to him. But Garret ignores this desperate plea and, being determined, keeps beating the child. Doing what is going to leave a print on the future life of the innocent human, who just wanted to be happy and loved. Choking and barely standing, Adult Peter turns aside sharply, closes his eyes tightly, and starts crying bitterly, while he keeps hearing the screams he makes, so that it breaks the soul and heart behind his back, and Garret’s rude order to shut up and do nothing stupid.       Peter does not see what’s happening. But he remembers everything. He starts to remember more and more. He chokes on the lack of air. The panic attack possesses him, and the pain in his abdomen gets so strong that he cannot hold down his inhuman scream and doubles over. Then he screams again as if he tries to push his pain out of himself after it had been eating him inside for twenty years, even if he did not understand what caused it. Rose feels like that seven-year-old boy, who lost hope of reaching out to someone and telling them how much he needs their protection. Like that little, unprotected, and vulnerable boy, who stayed all alone in this world full of devils and evil.       “PLEASE, DON’T DO THIS!” Baby Peter and Adult Peter scream heartbreakingly at the same time. “LEAVE ME ALONE!”       Holding his stomach with both hands, Peter gets down to his knees powerlessly, raises his head up, and screams out again, while tears roll down his cheeks. Then he covers his face with his hands and starts crying much more bitterly, not being able to stop or prevent the beginning of his uncontrolled hysteria. A much stronger hysteria than the one he got because of the tricks of Daniel, Edward, and Terrence.       “DID I DESERVE IT ALL?” Peter wonders. “WHY-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y?”       “Quiet, quiet, my sweetheart, quiet…” Garret pronounces, caressing Peter’s head in his memories. “It’s okay… You seem nothing bad… If you’re a good boy, everything’s gonna be alright.”       “Why are you doing this to me, sir?” Peter cries bitterly, breathing heavily, and embracing himself tightly with both arms after the worst things are over. “Why? Why does everyone treat me so terribly? Why?”       “It’s life, sweetheart. It’s not always fair.”       “I just wanted to be happy and loved,” Adult Peter and Baby Peter say at the same time, “I don’t need anything more…”       “I won’t handle this…” Baby Peter cries.       “If you say nothing to anyone, it’s gonna be alright,” Garret replies. “But if you do this, I will have to do something very bad to you. I will have to punish you much harsher than now.”       “Please, sir…”       “Don’t make the adult man mad if you don’t want him to find you and hurt you. However, even if you open your mouth, nobody will help you anyway. Who would listen to the stupid, seven-year-old child, whom everyone gives a fuck about as hell? Your mother is going to beat you with a belt one hundred percent if you dare to open your mouth. And slander the adult man, who would never do that.”       Baby Peter covers his face with both hands and starts crying bitterly, lying on the bed. He does not know where to run and what to do, whether Garret tells the truth, and what to do after what happened. He and Adult Peter do not hold down their emotions and cry as loudly and bitterly as possible. One cries from despair, a sense of loneliness, and helplessness. And another just cannot stop after trying so hard to subdue any memories of this horrible case for so many years. The case, after which he suddenly realized that people were evil incarnate, and the place where they lived was hell, where fire was everywhere, destroying everything in its way and giving people no chance to survive.       “Nobody really believed you,” Peter’s twin squats down and puts his hand on the shoulder of Peter crying bitterly. “Your mother gave a fuck about it when you came to her to complain. She did more than just fucking you off. She devalued your pain. Devalued the fact that you got through such horrible things. And when you came to several more people, they laughed at you. They shamed you. Someone said you asked for trouble. Like, you shouldn't have gone to a stranger’s home. And someone said men can’t be rapped. It just can’t be true. That all your ‘shit’ about a rape was a lie. A wish to answer the man. Even if he was an alcoholic who smoked grass in his youth, adult people thought he was normal. Like, the man was working, earning money, not having scandals with anyone… That’s why Garret was so quiet. He was sure that nobody would believe the seven-year-old boy. But he looked at you badly when you met somewhere. However, when he found out that you told everyone about it, he caught you one day and did it again. He did it several more times.”       “Why?” Peter wonders, looking at his twin with wet eyes. “Why did you do this? Why did you make me get through all of this?”       “Sorry, but you couldn’t run from this all your life. You would’ve had to remember everything and understand where the roots started early or late.”       “I didn’t want this! I wanted to remember nothing!” Peter sniffs loudly. “I knew it would make me hysterical! I knew I’d wanna strangle myself!”       “Yeah? Were you gonna spend your whole life with your Gestalt open? You thought these horrible things wouldn’t impact your life? You saw everything clearly! You know what happened! What happened because of what you tried to deny so hard.”       “If nothing and nobody had reminded me of all of this, everything would’ve been alright! EVERYTHING WOULD’VE BEEN ALRIGHT!”       “No, Peter, wouldn’t have,” Peter’s twin shakes his head. “You could assure yourself that everything was alright as much as you wanted, but you understood it wasn’t true deep inside.”       “Why did you make me remember that? WHY? I DIDN’T WANNA REMEMBER THAT! I DIDN’T WANNA REMEMBER HOW THAT MAN RAPPED ME!”       “But now you understand what it started with.”       Peter’s twin starts walking around Peter, while the blond keeps sitting on his knees, crying bitterly and looking closely at him with his red eyes.       “That rape put the beginning to all the problems in your life. The end of your naive belief in tales. After people laughed at your trouble and devalued it, you withdrew into yourself. You broke. You felt a moral and physical pain. This world did a very cruel thing to you – you stopped expecting something good from it. You became so weak that you didn’t even have the strength to get enraged. You unconsciously gave pleasure to evil people when crying before their eyes. Your sufferings were like the balm for the soul. That’s how you got such nicknames like a princess, a crybaby, a milksop, a coward…”       Peter says nothing and keeps crying heartbreakingly, screaming hysterically at some moment. Meanwhile, his twin clicks his finger once to bring them back to the place they left some time ago. But now it’s darker, colder, and more evil.       “Why?” Peter wonders and sniffs loudly. “Why? Why was it me? Did I really deserve it all? WHY? WHAT’S MY FAULT?”       “I completely understand you,” Peter’s twin says confidently. “And I was doing all of this for your best. To let you finally figure yourself out and find what you lost. I mean, what you rejected so hard.”       “Yeah?”       Peter gets up sharply on his feet and sets his widely open eyes on his copy.       “Maybe I felt way better before all of this? Maybe I felt much better? I knew the fuck nothing and was very happy!”       “Are you sure about it?” Peter’s twin smiles slyly.       “Everyone wants to hurt me. Even my own subconsciousness! Even in the fucking afterlife!”       “Wrong, buddy. Your subconscious actually protected you. Protected your psyche. Since you were a child, your brain kinda decided to make you forget that. Not to erase it from your memory. Just to block your memories. Expecting that you’d let yourself come back to that event and accept it at an adult age.”       “I’ll never accept it! Hear me, NEVER! I DON’T WANNA LIVE WITH THIS! I DON’T! I DON’T!”       “Screaming would be good for you. Now you can finally release all the pain that was killing you for twenty years. The pain that was layered on another. Another was layered on it. And again and again. The more hits you got from fate, the closer you were to the hysterical condition.”       “SHUT UP! STOP! ENOUGH!”       “Remember how you began to behave after those teenagers rapped you several years later. Several people. Girls and boys… It broke you much more. It made you much angrier at the whole world. Which didn’t give you any hope for the best. And you released your anger on girls whom you started to fuck cruelly.”       Peter’s twin crosses his arms over his chest.       “You fucked any girl standing in your way. You didn’t take care of her, dragged her somewhere far away, and used her there. Yes, you felt ashamed after that. But you could not stop. You know why? Because you loved the power! You loved feeling like a lord. It was how you took it out on those poor girls, whose lives were broken once and forever. You liked torturing them. Torturing them the way everyone tortured you. You strangled them, you tied them… You even drank some of them with drinks you stole from your mother. And you fucked them. You fucked them while they were lying half-unconscious. When they were crying bitterly. You got excited at the fact that all the girls screamed and begged for help. The way you threatened to kill them if one of them dared to open her mouth and tell what happened. And you felt unpunished. Because girls were really scared. They wanted to live. Just to live. And they were happy. But you broke their psyche once for the whole life. Because they broke yours. Many times.”       “I didn’t want it!” Peter screams desperately. “I DID NOT WANT! I COULD NOT CONTROL MYSELF!”       “I know, buddy. I know you’re a victim. I know you didn’t dream of anything but caress and care. And support. Yes, you rapped girls. Yes, you harmed boys. You became a criminal. But then you regretted it all a lot. But as everyone knows, you can’t rewind what’s done. No apologies are worth someone’s ruined life. Nothing’s worth it.”       “I didn’t want…”       “Every criminal and every rapist has their own story. They have a reason why they went down the wrong way. They hurt others because they were once hurt. It's kind of revenge. Revenge for all the sufferings and humiliations that they were made to go through. You could not avoid it. You changed. Your attitude toward the world changed. It was against you, and you snapped back. But you regretted it a lot and didn’t always understand what was happening to you and how you’d live with this burden. Here’s another reason why you have a thing for self-harming and have started to harm yourself. That’s how you punished yourself. You punished yourself after every single act of rapping. After every act of bullying over you.”       “My hallucinations… They’re the reason too… They encouraged me. They made me commit crimes… The crimes I haven’t paid for. The ones I regret so badly.”       “Can you remind me, buddy, when you got hallucinations?”       “I’ve always had them! Because the world was driving me crazy, and people didn’t hear my scream for help. And I could not handle it. I started to go crazy.”       “Well… Actually, everything is not quite true…”       Peter’s twin starts walking in front of Peter and strokes his chin.       “You don’t have any hallucinations!” Peter’s twin announces. “You made yourself think so.”       “What?” Peter frowns strongly. “What do you mean?”       “Yes, yes!”       At this moment, the copy of Adult Peter shows up out of nowhere, wearing a black leather jacket, a black t-shirt, black jeans, and a choker on his neck and looking at Rose silently with his head proudly raised.       “After you were raped by Garret as a child, and nobody believed it, you felt very lonely and devastated. It was an extreme stress for a little child. And to get through this shit somehow, you dreamed up an imaginary friend. A friend named Theo. Theodore. You named him like this because you heard this name from Cornelia when she was drunk. It was the name you didn’t associate with anyone bad, and you decided to name your friend like this. Give him the name you were given at birth. Theodore was your total opposite: sassy, confident, determined… Heartless and ruthless to some extent… But sometimes he could show some tender feelings.”       “Imaginary friend?” Peter wonders.       “You spent whole days talking to him. Telling him what you were worried about and sharing all your biggest secrets. You thought he’d be your total copy, but your opposite, as I’ve already said. At first, it was a one-sided talk, but then Theodore started to answer you in your imagination. He became a certain symbol of your salvation. Your survival. Thanks to him, you were able to hold on somehow. Theo was the keeper of the pain you weren’t ready to accept. He didn’t let it get into your memory. But as long as you grew up, it was less possible. The shield started to break slowly. It was a sign. The sign that it was the moment when you have to run into it. The time when you need to accept the part of you that you’re trying to deny.”       “At the bottom of your heart, you wanted to break this wall,” Theodore says confidently. “It all started when you befriended Daniel. He took care of you truly, and it touched you, even if you didn’t believe that guy didn’t use you. Anyway, you really wanted to open yourself to him. Tell him the truth about you. Ask him to help you overcome those horrible things. But you did not. You doubted. And Perkins wasn’t so innocent. His jokes crossed the line at times. Yes, maybe, he didn’t do it to make you mad. But it was what stopped you. You doubted that he was really so good. After you barely let yourself get close to him, you build the wall between you again. You stopped trusting him. And I understand why.”       “Nevertheless, he’s always meant a lot to me…” Peter says with sadness in his eyes. “Daniel is like a brother to me. I don’t regret meeting and befriending him. And I understand I hurt him a lot.”       “Right, he became your strength. Your shield, your sword. You really wanted to trust him, but sadly, the guy gave you a reason to keep your distance from him. You can’t deny that he got what he deserved.”       “But I shouldn't have gone too far and tried to kill him.”       “He just reminded you of your schoolmates. With his threatening look and evil jokes. Daniel reminded you of your school years, especially a lot. About those who had ever hurt you. You were even afraid he’d love to suck you against your will. Because you feared men and waited for every one of them to wish to use you like a prostitute. And today, this fear almost came true. A little bit before your ass would’ve hurt as much as it did when you were raped by that man.”       “There are only two people whose betrayal you’re afraid of to death,” Peter’s twin notices. “It’s Daniel and Helene. They’re the most important people in your life. You’re afraid to lose them more than anyone. The first one became your first real friend, who took care of you like an older brother. And the second one really had feelings for you and appreciated you for the way you treated her, not your handsome appearance and tons of muscles. For giving her a sense of happiness and safety. Yes, the others are important to you too. But if these two betray you, you’ll go crazy. If something happens to them or they die, you will not handle this.”       “Right…” Peter sighs with sadness in his eyes. “I will not. And I am freaking upset that I made Perkins turn his back on me. He tolerated it, tolerated, but he lost his patience.”       “Nevertheless, you haven’t been alone all this time,” Theodore says confidently. “Yes, you didn’t have people whom you rejected due to mistrust and fear of being betrayed and raped. But you survived. You survived because I was near. I protected your psyche. So to say, helped you divide the present Peter from the past Peter.”       “And you pushed me to do bad things! You wanted me to hurt others!”       “I didn’t push you, your offences did. The offences caused by the cruelty of this world and the unfair attitude toward you. It’s been so many years, but you’ve forgotten nothing. You remember everything. Every case when they laughed at you. When Cornelia kicked you out. Now you remember how you were raped by Garret and by your peers. You were afraid to answer, but it doesn’t mean you swallowed everything silently. You kept the offence inside. You did it for years. Mistrust grew, a wish to hide from everyone got stronger… And it has eventually led to what’s happening to you now.”       “I’m afraid I’ll never forgive anyone. The wound in the heart is too strong. Too painful. It can’t be healed with any cures so easily.”       “You can’t because you don’t want. You don’t want to let it all go and move on. You’re mentally stuck in the past and don’t wanna move forward. Though you have the opportunity to do this now. You just need to come back to the world of the living and do what you should do.”       “NO!” Peter protests in a loud, high voice, jumping back sharply, and clenches his hands into fists with a heavy breath. “No… I will not be back… I will not come back there… No way… I wanna stay here.”       “You must come back.”       “No!” I will be unable to live with it! I will not come to myself after what I found out!”       “You can’t give up!” Theodore says determinedly. “To give up and leave after you’ve taken such a long way! Strong people don’t do that!”       “I’m not strong, I’m weak. No matter how hard I show off. Now I understand… Showing aggression toward people doesn’t mean being strong. It means letting them know you’re a little and weak child deep inside, who cries and shakes in case they run into something horrible.”       “Right. But you have a chance to fix everything. There’s a chance to turn your face on people, not your ass. Open your heart to them and let them help them.”       “No! I can’t…”       “Your friends and girlfriend are your true strength. The strength that can give you incredible abilities. You can’t even imagine how strong you can be if you forget the past and trust the guys completely.”       “Huh, who the fuck needs me there?” Peter explodes and starts walking nervously from side to side. “Look! It’s been nobody the fuck knows how long, but nobody rushes to save me! They are happy I’m dying! Happy I have a little time! They are about to get rid of me!”       “So, do you think Helene wants this too?”       “Helene can’t tolerate my demons forever! She’ll get sick of all of this and leave me early or late!”       “Oh, no, buddy, that girl would run into the fire or do any other crazy thing for you,” Peter’s twin protests. “She’s already proved that you mean the whole world to her.”       “Alright, maybe it’s true…” Peter exhales sharply. “And the others? What are they ready for me? After I screwed it up like this? After I almost killed the men with my own hands? I wanted to put a bullet in the forehead of one, wanted to beat another to death, wanted to throw a third from a high cliff… And I have tried to kill one of them several times. SEVERAL! And I feel fucking guilty now! How do you want me to live with all of this? HOW? TELL ME! How do I look into their eyes after all of that?”       “It’s all in your hands, buddy. If someone really wants something, they can do anything. If you don’t give up and keep doing the same, you can get out of the grip of a bear or even escape the tornado.”       “No… No, I will not be back… I wanna stay here.”       “Think better, Peter!” Theodore insists.       “No, I said! Nobody is waiting for me in that world! I’ve tried to stay here so many times. And this time, I must be lucky.”       “Don’t you wanna come back even for your girlfriend?”       “She doesn’t even try to help me! But the time is going by!”       “Yeah, you have five more minutes in that world…” Peter’s twin says thoughtfully, looking at his watch. “Five minutes before reviving you doesn’t make sense.”       “Five minutes are not the same as twenty years. I can wait.”       And then the deafening, excited female voice is heard somewhere far, far from here, out of the blue:       “PE-E-E-ETE-E-E-E-R!”       Peter turns sharply on this heartbreaking, loud call, easily understanding that it belongs to Helene and feeling that his heart squeezes painfully at this moment.       “Helene…” Peter pronounces in a shaking voice with a heavy breath. “You’re near…”       “Huh, you say nobody needs you there?” Theodore laughs sinisterly and puts his hands on his hips. “Yeah, yeah, I see! Hear how hard the gal is screaming there!”       “Uh-huh, she’s about to lose her voice at all,” Peter’s twin notices. “If you don’t come back to life.”       “I’m sorry, sweetie…” Peter pronounces with wet eyes and a heavy heart. “But I can’t. I will not come back… I will stay here… Forgive me… I will be waiting for us to meet. It doesn’t matter how much time it’s gonna take. I will be waiting. As long as needed.”       No matter how hard Helene strains her vocal cords, begging him to come back and not to die, Peter is determined to stay in the afterlife. He does not want to return to the world where he is going to be doomed to suffer forever and be punished for all his actions. For which he thinks nobody is going to forgive him. Judging by the fact that the man can only hear the voice of his girlfriend. The fact that the others are silent and are hardly making any attempts to bring him back to life.       

***

      Meanwhile, the girls do not give up and keep fighting desperately for the life of Peter still lying wet, cold, pale, and unconscious. While Anna continues to make a heart massage, and Natalia performs CPR, Sammy runs excitedly from side to side with a heartbreaking howl and tries to snuggle his nose into the blond’s face and lick his nose or something else. Helene keeps crying bitterly and does not hold down her screams, while Daniel is hugging her tightly and pressing her closely to himself as he watches what’s happening with excitement and anxiety he can barely hide.       “Who knows how much time it has been?” Anna asks.       “No idea!” Raquelle exclaims, while Terrence presses closely to himself and puts the towel on her shoulders every time it falls. “But I think it’s been like five or seven minutes.”       “A little bit before it doesn’t make sense to do something,” Natalia says excitedly after another attempt to do CPR on Peter. “Before we have to call an ambulance so that they can certify the death.”       “No-o-o-o!” Helene shouts desperately. “No, girls, for God’s sake, I’m begging you, don’t give up! Don’t stop! Don’t let Peter die! Don’t let! Please! Don’t let him die!”       Again, Sammy thrills with a heartbreaking bark, looking at everyone with pity in his eyes as if he begs them so hard to save Peter. But since he does not let the girls do what they should do, Edward takes him in his strong hug, presses him to himself, and caresses him to calm him down a little. While the bright lightnings keep flashing in the sky, and the strong gusts of the wind are still destroying everything that can barely hold on.       “Hey, R-rose, it’s not f-funny at all n-now…” Terrence jabs excitedly in a shaking voice. “Did you d-decide to l-leave us, I d-don’t g-get?”       “Hey, hey, hey, blond, don’t dare to d-die,” Edward demands with a heavy breath. “Of course, you’re a p-pain in the ass, but don’t d-dare to die. Hear me?!”       “Okay, okay, man, en-nough, the guys and I j-joked,” Daniel jabs in a high-pitched, excited voice. “Come b-back to us now, but we’ll f-forget everything and forg-give you.”       “C'mon, c’mon, girls, don’t give up!” Terrence demands determinedly. “Don’t let him die!”       “We’re trying!” Natalia exclaims. “But still no pulse, and he isn’t breathing!”       “Please, please, girls, please…” Helene cries bitterly. “Please, my sweeties, don’t give up… You can do this… You can!”       “Don’t dare to die, Peter, hear me, don’t dare!” Daniel demands much louder and more desperately. “We’ll forget and forgive you for everything, but just come back. Hey, come back!”       Sammy barks several times loudly as if he agrees and tries to come to Peter, but Edward does not let him do this, pressing the dog tightly to himself.       “C’mon, buddy, c’mon…” Edward whispers excitedly. “You’re strong… You can… You’ve gotten through so much shit, but now you’re about to give up. It’s not about you!”       “Damn, Rose, don’t dare to give up!” Anna barely holds back her tears. “Don’t dare! We can’t lose you! Don’t leave us! Please, Peter, please…”       “Whatever happens, we’ll always be with you,” Raquelle promises. “We’ll always support. You can always come to us and ask us for help. We won’t refuse, I promise.”       “We’ll handle it, sunshine, we’ll handle anything…” Helene swears in a low voice, choking on the lack of air as she caresses Peter’s head and cheek with a shaking hand. “We’re stronger together… It’s gonna be okay… I’ll always be near… No matter what… I promise… I will not leave you…”       “Oh shit, what if it’s too late?” Terrence puts his hand on his forehead. “What if he’s been underwater for too long? What if we can do nothing anymore?”       “Don’t dare even to think about it! DON’T DARE! He will live! He MUST! I will not let him go! I WILL NOT!”       “Live, asshole, LIVE!” Daniel hisses through his teeth in a low voice, bending to Peter and squeezing his jaw with his fingers. “If you dare the fuck to die, I will kill you! Hear me, I WILL KILL YOU! DON’T DARE TO LEAVE ME, BASTARD! If I have to, I will go after you and bring you back here by the collar. I WILL DO ANYTHING IF YOU DON’T START BREATHING AND GROANING NOW!”       At this moment, bright lightning strikes in the sky and a deafening, long-lasting clap of thunder is heard.       “We all gotta wish for this truly!” Raquelle says confidently. “If Helene is the only one to wish for it, nothing is gonna work.”       “Not just Helene,” Natalia replies. “I want it too. I want my friend to stay alive.”       “And I want this,” Anna adds.       “Me too,” Daniel, Terrence, and Edward pronounce confidently at the same time.       “Damn, maybe I’m doing something wrong? This is the first time I’m trying to revive someone! What if I’m making it much worse for him?”       “No, no, you’re doing this great,” Edward says confidently. “You’re doing a good job, Anna! Keep doing the same!”       “You too, Natalia!” Terrence exclaims. “You’re doing this well! You two are doing everything right! Don’t stop! Until he starts breathing! Until you hear the heartbeat!”       “I’m doing this for the first time too!” Natalia confesses excitedly. “Doing what we were told at school!”       “Come on, girls, keep going!” Daniel begs. “Don’t give up in the middle of the way! Go until the end!”       “Please, girls, please…” Helene breaks into a cry. “PLEASE!”       Sammy manages to get out of Edward’s hug and rush to Peter, in the face of whom he starts snuggling his nose, whining with pity as if he is begging the guy to come back and not to leave him and his owner Helene, who is crying bitterly and screaming emotionally as she bends to the likely breathless body of her boyfriend, while her friends are doing their best to save him.       “Damn, the heartbeat is still zero!” Raquelle swears after she checks the pulse on Peter’s neck and brings her hand to his nose to check his breath. “I can’t feel his breath, either.”       “No, Peter, please, don’t do this…” Helene begs desperately. “Please, don’t leave me… Please…”       “C’mon, Peter, c’mon…” Natalia begs with a shake in her voice. “Come on… Breathe…”       “C’mon, buddy, c’mon, c’mon!” Anna barely holds back her tears. “Please… Please…”       “Damn, what if this is really the end?” Edward gets suspicious, looking at everyone with widely open eyes. “What if he’s one step away from the grave?”       “No…” Daniel pronounces in a shaking voice and shakes his head sharply. “No, no, no, no… It won't happen… It will not! We won’t let it happen!”       “Come on, Peter, come on!” Terrence insists determinedly. You can’t die! You can’t leave us! No matter what, we still need you.”       “Please, God, help us…” Helene whispers under her nose as she closes her eyes. “Please, don’t leave Pete… Help him… Don’t let him die, I’m begging You. Forgive him for all his mistakes. Forgive… Please, God, please…”       The sky is lighted with such bright lightning that it seems that it’s daytime for a moment, and everyone shakes sharply because of another clap of thunder, no longer caring about the wind that can easily strike down.       “C’mon, my sweetheart, c’mon, open your eyes…” Helene cries heartbreakingly, caressing Peter’s head. “Please, sweetie, please… I need you… I can’t do without you… P-p-p-please, Pete, please…”       “Don’t give up, Peter, fight!” Edward insists. “Come on! Come on! Fight! Fight until the very end!”       “We need you!” Raquelle exclaims. “We all need you! We all love you very much, no matter what.”       “Whatever happens, we’re always near!” Natalia assures.       “You’ve done it already once; so, you must do this again now!” Anna demands. “You can! You have to! You must!”       “Don’t stop, girls!” Terrence demands. “Don’t stop! You can do this! Come on! Come on!”       “Please, brother, come back!” Daniel begs excitedly. “Come back! Don’t dare to die! DON’T DARE!”       Daniel puts his hand on Peter’s shoulder and squeezes it tightly.       “I did not allow you to die! I DID NOT THE FUCK LET! I didn’t let you go! Hear me, I DID NOT LET YOU GO! You can do anything you want to me, but I will not the fuck calm down until YOU, FUCKING BASTARD, OPEN YOUR EYES AND BREATHE! HEAR ME, MOTHERFUCKER? DON’T DARE TO LEAVE! DON’T DARE!”       While Anna and Natalia keep doing what they are doing, Daniel screams out Peter’s name as loudly as possible, not caring about his vocal cords at all. Then he, breathing heavily from excitement, looks at Edward and Terrence, who are sitting pale, frozen, and horrified because they are about to lose their friend, whom they cannot treat indifferently, no matter what. At this moment, the gusts of the wind get stronger for the hundredth time and destroy furiously even what was not destroyed during the past waves. However, none of the friends cares about it. They start racking their vocal cords, making much more heartbreaking screams and begging Rose to come back and fight for his life until the very end.       

***

      Daniel’s voice screaming out his name reaches Peter through the thick, deaf wall and makes him turn sharply to the source of the sound, looking into the distance with widely open eyes, into the infinite path in the desert place.       “Daniel?!” Peter pronounces in slow motion, not believing what he hears, and starts breathing heavily due to the lack of oxygen in his lungs.       “Wow, it seems like that tough guy found you, too…” Theodore assumes with a mysterious smile.       “And he’s definitely not worried less than the girl!” Peter’s twin notices.       “It seems that he and Helene have a so-called competition to find out who’d scream louder and lose their voice first.”       “Yeah… But you’re like, ‘nobody needs me, everyone gives a fuck about me’ and other shit.”       At some moment, Peter touches his shoulder with the thought that someone is squeezing it tightly. Then he glances at his hands, feeling they are getting warmed by something nice. As if someone is holding them tightly and caressing them in that world. And the strong wind blows his hair, while the man moves his eyes slowly to the sky covered with gray clouds.       “So what, buddy, do ya still think staying here is a good idea?” Theodore asks surprisingly, crossing his arms over his chest.       “I’m sorry, Daniel…” Peter moves his wet, tear-filled eyes into the distance. “But I will not be back… I’m very sorry… Forgive me if you can. For everything.”       “PLEASE, PETER!” the deafening female voice that belongs to Helene is heard. “DON’T LEAVE ME! PLEASE!”       “If you don’t come back from the world of death, I swear I’ll get your ass out of there BY FORCE!” Daniel’s threatening voice pronounces. “I WILL THE FUCK DO THIS!”       “Whoa, whoa, what Brazilian passions are happening there!” Peter’s twin laughs. “The guys do sense that you only have four minutes. Four minutes before they cry over your corpse.”       “I am ready…” Peter pronounces in a low, little shaking voice. “Ready to stay here. My time has come.”       “Are you fucking crazy?” Theodore resents. “People do rack their cords for you, but you wanna die!”       “It’s all a lie… An illusion! You want to make me believe that all these words are really said in the world of the living. As if someone is really trying to bring me back to life.”       “As you see, they are trying. And if you give up now, they’re gonna be very upset.”       “Yeah, and how do you want me to live?” Peter freaks out, waving his hands. “How? How do I live with this burden? With all these memories I didn’t want to get back? Why did you make me do this? WHY? I DIDN’T WANT IT!”       “If you want to have a good, healthy relationship with people, you must have learned the reason for all your problems.” Theodore states. “I hinted at that many times, but you always gave a categorical refusal. You were happy with everything. You were happy with a perspective to be an egoistic asshole for everyone with tons of different problems.”       “I did not want to remember anything! I WANTED TO FORGET EVERYTHING! BUT YOU MADE ME REMEMBER THAT!”       “Sorry, Peter, but don’t you think you’re acting like an egoist now?” Peter’s twin frowns slightly, crossing his arms over his chest. “You only think about your comfort, about feeling good. You don’t care about the others! You don’t care you’re hurting them. And you’re not doing all of this unconsciously. You do understand everything well. And you don’t try to fix anything. You are considered a bastard, you give a fuck! They call you ill, you give a fuck about it at all!”       “Exactly!” Theodore agrees. “Aren’t you sick of this, huh? Aren’t you sick of pushing people off yourself all the time? Many people get attracted to you, but you turn your ass on them! Yes, you’re afraid, but it doesn’t give you the right to act like this. If you’re afraid, you must fight. Fight your fear. Face it. Change just something in your life if you want people to have a good opinion about you.”       “If you die now, these people will hardly have a good opinion about you after everything you have done. Helene and Daniel do care about you. They are really worried. But these two are now in despair. In the condition when you forget all the bad things. When you only think about not losing your close person. But trust me, when they realize that you are dead, all their offences will be back. They will think about you negatively more than positively.”       “Yeah, but will they forget everything immediately if I come back to life?” Peter surprises loudly.       “No, of course,” Peter’s twin shakes his head. “You can’t just sit down and fold your hands. You have work hard to make them believe in your regret. But if nobody forgives you after your death, your soul will never find peace here. You will feel as bad in the afterlife as you do in the world of the living. The only difference is that you can get out of there, but there’s no way out of here. If you decide to stay.”       “I can’t live with everything I just recalled, get it!”       Peter starts walking nervously in circles in front of his twins, breathing heavily enough.       “How can I expect something good from life when it’s always been total shit? ALWAYS! I HAVE NEVER been happy! Because I’ve always been surrounded by assholes. Even when I was a child, I did nothing bad to anyone, but everyone the fuck HATED me. AND I WAS RAPED! WHO? A MAN! WHO DID NOT PAY FOR THAT! BECAUSE NOBODY THE FUCK BELIEVED IN ME!”       “If you want, you will get through this,” Theodore says confidently. “You’re not unique. You’re not the first child who was raped. Not the first victim of mockeries and the cruelty of this world. Many people get through it. Many people can’t handle it and kill themselves. But many people learn to live with it. Learn to transform their pain into strength. Transform the thought ‘I am weak and humiliated’ to ‘I am strong, I survived’.”       “I AM NOT STRONG! NOT STRONG! I AM WEAK! WEAK! AN INSECURE FREAK!”       “A weak person would hardly cling to his life and survive when other people leave him to die,” Peter’s twin says confidently. “Remember, not only did your peeps raped you. They also tried to kill you. Many times. For example, they threatened you with a cold gun, burned your skin with boiled water, a curling iron, and other things that can burn… And one day, they pushed you off the high cliff. Those bastards thought you died when they didn't find your body. But you survived somehow. You held onto something and started to climb up. Yes, you fell and failed a million times, but you climbed up determinedly. And nobody helped you. You did it by yourself. Though you could’ve given up and let yourself crush against some stones.”       “Because I was ANGRY! I wanted to get a gun, come to those assholes and shoot them down. I wanted to shoot at the boys’ balls they put me into. I even thought of getting rid of that man, who was the reason why my wounded ass burned for one week fucking hard so that I could not sit for ONE WEEK.”       “Since you could not find the courage to commit a crime, you remained unsatisfied. You didn’t live because you wanted, no. Because you hoped you’d take revenge early or late. A wish of revenge kept your fire alive. The fire of revenge that did not come true. Because you were afraid. Not prison. A lack of the strength for a fight with those who were two or three times stronger than you. Physically. There were many of them, but you were alone. You didn’t have any support. That’s why the crowd would’ve crushed you immediately.”       “Your powerlessness made you enraged,” Theodore adds. “And you kind of punished yourself for that by doing self-harming. You cut yourself to punish yourself for your weakness. Because you could not raise your head and hit your offenders fucking hard. You could not kick the ass of your mother. You could not go to the home of that pedophile and castrate him with pruning shears. You could not stand up for yourself and let the world hear your voice. Find out why you lost your patience.”       “I don’t wanna be a criminal!” Peter states with tears in his eyes. “I don’t wanna kill, rob, rape, and everything like this! I AM NOT LIKE THIS! I AM NOT LIKE MY FATHER! I AM DIFFERENT! I WANNA BE DIFFERENT! DIFFERENT!”       “Marcus committed all those crimes for the reason, too,” Peter’s twin notices. “He didn’t hide it by telling you how your grandfather mocked him. And you understand that a lack of love and regular humiliations can’t help a human become good. Yes, it may make them disciplined and responsible. The one someone wants to see him. But at what cost! They’d be destroyed inside. And they would probably never know that everything may be different.”       “I am destroyed inside, too! Too! And I can’t be healed! Though you suggest that I make my suffering longer and come back to the world where nothing good can happen to you!”       “I think your friends and girlfriend are a strong enough motivation to turn around and reach for the light.”       “If they leave me someday, I will be all alone. But I don’t want to! I DON’T WANT! I FEAR LONELINESS!”       “You’re afraid, but you’ve pushed people off yourself and attacked them since you saw enemies in all of them?”       “In short, I’ve made my mind!” Peter states confidently. “I’m not coming back, and I’m staying here! And you will not change my mind!”       “Think better, Peter,” Theodore insists.       “No, I said! There’s nothing and nobody that could make me sure that I am wrong.”       “Maybe we can’t do this.” Theodore moves his eyes to something he sees behind Peter’s back. “But they can.”       Frowning slightly, Peter turns around and rounds his eyes when he sees Helene and Daniel getting closer to him from afar. The girl is wearing a long white dress made of airy fabric with slanting sleeves and a deep décolleté, her slightly wavy hair falls off her naked, fragile shoulders, and the beauty of her face is expressed with light makeup. The man is wearing a loose-fitting white shirt and light blue jeans, and his hair is a little disheveled. Releasing the air out of his lungs unconsciously, Rose steps back and tenses all his muscles slightly as he watches these two get closer to him.       “You must be kidding me…” Peter pronounces in a little shaking voice.       “Here you are, sweetie,” Helene says with a slight smile. “We’ve been looking for you.”       “You gave us a hard enough task, buddy!” Daniel exclaims. “Honestly, we’ve almost lost our feet!”       “Don’t tell me you’re dead too,” Peter says hesitantly, looking at one and another with horror in his eyes. “The hurricane killed you.”       “No, we are alive. But we’ve come here to take you out.”       “There’s no escape from here.”       “There is,” Helene assures. “And we can show you the way out with pleasure. The way home.”       When Helene gives her hands to him, Peter jumps back and shakes his head sharply.       “No…” Peter pronounces excitedly. “No… I can’t… I can’t…”       “Your time hasn’t come, Peter,” Daniel says quietly. “Your mission is not done yet.”       “I wanna stay here. I have nothing to do in that world.”       “We need you,” Helene says. “We all need you. We’re gonna suffer if you leave us.”       “I’m sorry, guys, but I will stay.”       “Don’t worry, Peter, we will lead you to the right place. Just take my hand. And don’t let it go.”       “Now I am ready. Ready to stay where I belong. I’m sure I’m gonna feel much better here.”       “We will not let you go, brother,” Daniel says. “No matter what, you will always mean a lot to us.”       “Sorry, Daniel… Sorry, Helene… I am really very sorry. Sorry about being so weak.”       “You can fight and resist!” Helene exclaims. “I believe in you! Don’t dare to give up! Don’t dare to die out of spite of all your enemies! They can’t win!”       “I’ve been in that world for too long. Even too long. But now it’s time to go where I’d feel much quieter.”       “No, Peter, please…”       “Don’t be sad, guys… And tell the others not to mourn for me. But I will miss you. And watch you. Protect you in case you need it.”       “Come with us, Peter, you have nothing to do here,” Daniel calls, giving his hand to Peter. “We will lead you to the right place so that you come back to us.”       “No…” Peter takes one step back. “Go without me. I will not go with you.”       “I know life is a hard thing. But if you accept our help, everything is gonna get better. You will live a normal life.”       “I can’t… After everything I just found out. I can’t live well with the trauma I got after I was raped in childhood. After they used me several more times like this. I stopped trusting people and don’t expect anything good from them anymore.”       “You’re not alone, my sunshine!” Helene replies with a slight smile. “You have us. You can always count on us.”       “I hurt you all too much.” Peter sniffs with eyes that are wet from tears. “I don’t deserve your kindness. I don’t deserve your love after everything I’ve done.”       “We believe you didn’t do it out of spite and did it out of fear of the whole world,” Daniel assures, putting his hand on Peter’s shoulder. “That can really be very cruel and unfair. I do know it well.”       “I can’t live in that world if you all leave me,” Peter does not hold down his tears and exhales slowly, with a shake. “Anyone can betray me. But not you two. You two mean a lot to me.”       “We will not leave you, Pete, never,” Helene promises, caressing Peter’s cheek and wiping tears under his eyes with her finger. “Whatever people say, we will not turn our backs on you.”       “We could’ve stayed in that house while the hurricane was happening there, outside,” Daniel adds. “But we did not. We went out to save you.”       “I appreciate your effort,” Peter replies quietly. “But I’m asking you to let me go. Let me go and forgive.”       “Never!” Helene and Daniel exclaim determinedly.       “You’ll go with us, that’s all!” Daniel adds harshly.       “Please, guys…” Peter begs with pity in his eyes. “Don’t torture me…”       “It’s not your place yet, Peter,” someone’s female voice pronounces confidently. “Your place is next to us, in another world.”       At this moment, Anna comes to everyone and stands next to Daniel, wearing a long white dress that is similar to Helene’s but differs from it slightly.       “Your time will come, but someday later. Now we need you alive.”       “Sorry, Anna…” Peter shakes his head and steps away from Anna, Daniel, and Helene backward. “I am ready… Ready to stay here forever.”       “Please, brother…”       “Bury me with a smile on your face. Don’t be sad for me. Wish me to find peace in this world. And forgive me for everything. If you can. That’s how I’d feel much better.”       “We will not give up! Hear me, we will not! You will live! You will breathe! You will finally open your eyes!”       “Go, guys… Please… Leave me here.”       Then the deafening voices full of despair start sounding on one or another side:       “Breathe, Peter, breathe! OPEN YOUR EYES! DON’T DARE TO DIE! HEAR ME, DON’T DARE!”       “You can’t leave me, brother, you cannot! IF YOU DIE NOW, I WILL THINK THIS IS A BETRAYAL!”       “You will not die! You will not die out of spite of your enemies! You will not dare to give them this pleasure! You will live! You will breathe! You will finally open your eyes!”       “Don’t dare to give up! FIGHT! FIGHT ‘TIL THE END! STOP RESISTING! COME BACK! COME THE FUCK BACK!”       “Come back to us, Peter! Please, don’t die! We love you so much! Please!”       “We need you, Peter! We need you, no matter what! We’ll forget all your actions, I swear. JUST COME BACK!”       All these heartbreaking screams of the men and the girls break Peter’s heart and make him look around himself with widely open eyes, while the feeling that something presses strongly on his chest again and again gets much clearer, and the cold wind blows his hair and clothes.       “I’m sorry, guys…” Peter pronounces in a shaking voice. “Forgive me… I’m so sorry…”       “C’mon, Peter, come with us,” Anna calls softly, giving her hand to Peter. “We know the way home.”       “No… Leave me… Leave me here!”       “Don’t worry, sunshine,” Helene calms down. “It’s gonna be okay.”       “Come on, brother, you have nothing to do here,” Daniel says confidently. “The guys are waiting for you.”       “No…” Peter shakes his head sharply and starts breaking free when Helene and Daniel take him under his arms and try to take him with them. “No, leave me! Please! Leave me! Please! Don’t do this! No!”       “C’mon, guys!” Anna says determinedly. “We have very little time!”       While Anna turns around and goes straight in a quick step, Peter tries so hard to break his arms free, refusing categorically to follow his friends and girlfriend, who are determined to take him out of here. At some moment, he manages to set free one arm from Helene’s grip, but has to fight with Daniel, who holds him tightly as if he says he will not let the guy go. But later, Rose finds a way to solve this problem, pushing Perkins off himself as strongly as possible. While Daniel falls to the ground, and Helene helps him get up by taking him under his arm, Peter uses the moment and starts running straight as fast as possible. Ignoring his friend and girlfriend screaming out his name and all the voices that keep begging him to breathe and open his eyes. He chokes, does not deviate from the path, and can only hear his own fast heartbeat and the crust of dry grass under his feet. It seems that the dark comes to this place again, the fingertips start getting numb from the coldness, and the pale skin gets covered with goosebumps and takes on a blue shade.       The straight path really seems endless. No matter how long Peter runs, it does not end. After he turns back briefly, he sees nothing behind him. The emptiness. The darkness. Nobody chases him. Nobody runs after him. As if nobody needs him, and he just talked to the illusions of Helene, Daniel, and Anna. As if the further he runs, the higher the chance is of staying in the afterlife forever. At first, the guy could barely hear the voices of his friends and girlfriend, but now they get louder and chase him everywhere, wherever he goes. Even when he turns sharply off the straight path, they do not leave him alone. Vice versa, they get much more determined. And the more desperately and heartbreakingly the men and the girls scream, the more watery Rose’s eyes get. The stronger his heart squeezes. But he does not stop. He is running. Running from himself. Running from pain. From the truth he does not want to accept. From the shame of those he hurt probably much more.       “Stop, stop, STOP!” Peter screams, choking and still running. “LEAVE ME ALONE! LEAVE!”       No pleas make Peter stop. The guys are begging him to live. The guy is running away without thinking about where the path he is moving on is going to lead him. He does not even have to see where to run. He does not care. He literally keeps his eyes and ears closed and runs wild. There is the same thick dark further behind his back. Along with the voices of his friends that sound like one hysterical cry, Peter can also hear a terribly haunting lullaby that stops at times. It seems that he is now in a nightmare again, but nobody would wake him up from it. Well… Or he is in hell, where he thinks he must be after everything he has ever done.       Starting to run inhumanely wild, Peter does not even think of watching his feet, closes his eyes, and does not notice that he stumbles over a random stone at some moment and falls flat to the ground with a deafening shout, feeling that the sharp pain gets into his elbows and knees. But along with it, all the voices and the lullaby stop as if by the click of the fingers. A tense silence settles in the air. It can be broken by his own breath only. But after he barely sits up, making tormenting groans, human figures in total black clothes come around him one by one. The men and the girls. His friends. His girlfriend. All the demons he saw in one of his nightmares. Their eyes are still black and full of hatred and contempt, their skin is deathly pale, and the black clouds around them disappear at some moment.       Maybe Peter would have crept away back then, looking closely at these non-human creatures, which showed up to him as his closest people. Maybe he would have run away from them as fast as possible, with deafening shouts, and begged someone to wake him up and save him from this nightmare. But this time is different. He just looks at them. Quietly, without emotions that have literally been sucked out of him by the invisible strength. It’s now as dark as it is at night, and the icy wind is the reason to start to bash his teeth. But Peter does not notice it all. His focus is all on the demons surrounding him and smiling unnaturally as if they let him know that they do enjoy their victory over this weak, broken, and devastated soul.       “So, we have met, pathetic asshole,” Dark Daniel says in a demonic, icy voice as he looks at Peter with open disappointment.       “So, did you think we wouldn’t come for you?” Dark Helene continues to speak in an inhuman voice, looking at Peter with eyes full of disgust.       “Now nobody will wake you up,” Dark Anna sneers evilly and raises her head proudly. “Including you.”       “It’s your time to pay for all your sins,” Dark Raquelle says confidently. “Which you know about very well.”       “I cannot wait to rip your heart already,” Dark Edward fixes a glove with a scaring smile and clenches his hand into a fist.  “Along with your guts.”       “You’ve been running from your death for too long,” Dark Terrence notices. “But now your time has come. We will erase you from this world. Forever.”       “Do what you want to me,” Peter replies obediently in a quiet, hoarse voice and swallows nervously. “I shall not run now. You have won.”       “It could not be otherwise!” Dark Helene smiles smugly. “Because you are an asshole. The asshole, who must have been impaled a long time ago.”       “Just take me with you…” Peter exhales with a shake, clenching his hands into fists and setting his dead eyes into the distance. “I’m ready…”       Peter barely realizes how Dark Daniel rushes to him and squeezes his fingers on his neck tightly. The body immediately tenses due to the lack of air, but the guy’s eyes remain indifferent, and he does not resist: he does not try to remove the hand, he does not beg for mercy. He is just silent. His eyes are wet. And he looks at the one who slaps him in the face at some moment. Next, Peter gets a slap in the face from Dark Helene. Maybe it’s not so strong, but it’s unbearable morally. Then Dark Anna, Raquelle, Natalia, Terrence, and Edward beat him by one. And he is silent all the time. He does not wince from pain. He shows no emotions. He does not make a squeak when the men give him several hits with their feet. A thin flow gets out of his nose over his pale cheeks, and the first slight bruises show up under his puffy eyes.       “Keep going…” Peter whispers under his nose, while drops of tears roll down his face. “I deserve it… I deserve…”       The more the demonic versions of his friends and girlfriend beat him, the more Peter twirls in a curl in his mind, embracing himself with both arms and putting his head on his shoulder. The voices begging him to come back to life are not deaf but sound kind of through the dead wall, far from here. But the guy stops hearing them. He has already made up his mind that he will stay here and get what he deserves. He will finally pay for all the bad things he did not pay for back then, many years ago, when he just started to project his hatred on innocent people. He admits his fault, regrets everything truly, and thinks it’s time to pay his debts. And he does not just have the strength to fight. He does not have a wish to cling to something when he does not have a reason to. When his close people turned their backs on him. When he barely realized he stayed all alone in this world. Without friends, without his sweetheart, who would leave him early or late, not being able to accept the fact that he was a beast this whole time.       But when Dark Daniel raises his hand for another hit in the groin, and Peter closes his eyes tightly, full of tears, everyone can hear a sound. The clean sound of the singing. They can see a small but bright flame somewhere far from here. It moves forward rapidly, taking everything in its way in its hugs. A blinding flash before the dark fades away instantly. It’s light now, and the shoots of the sun show up at times in the sky covered with clouds. The demons jump back with a scream, closing their eyes tightly, and see their deathly pale skin get covered with strange spots. Everyone screams, “Light, remove the light!” and tries to hide from it with no success.       “Don’t hope, bastard, it will not save you anyway,” Dark Daniel sneers evilly. “WE WILL KILL YOU!”       Dark Daniel raises his hand again for another hit, but shakes sharply with widely open eyes when he feels something sharp get into his back deeply, so that he can feel the paralyzed pain in his whole body. He turns back slowly and sees his light version with a bow, from which he just shot, with a proud look.       “What the…” Dark Daniel resents, while Peter looks surprisingly at Light Daniel standing far from here.       When Dark Helene decides to click her fingers with a wish to do something to Peter, her hand freezes in the air. The demon can do nothing, no matter how hard she tries. When she turns around, she sees her light copy gets closer to her, waving her fingers in the air and squeezing something invisible, while colorful sparkles go around this hand and squeeze the throat of her dark version tightly. She and Dark Daniel, keeping the bow and an arrow ready, get close confidently to the crowd of demons, who set their burning eyes on them and press themselves to each other tightly with a quiet groan and step back slowly.       “Oh, look, pathetic angels have come to save this worthless freak,” Dark Daniel sneers evilly and gets the arrow out of his back with amazing ease, and throws it aside, acting as if nothing happened to him after this. “They think they can get a victory over us.”       “We can,” Light Daniel says determinedly. “We will not give up without a fight. We will not give Peter to you.”       “Ha, what can you do?” Dark Helene surprises, looking at Light Helene contemptuously from head to foot. “There are more of us.”       “Many things,” Light Helene raises her head proudly. “Because we are stronger together.”       “Nothing can help this pathetic piece of shit,” Dark Edward says. “Hatred and a desire for revenge defeated him a long time ago.”       “It’s never too late to turn on the light, even in the darkest soul. It’s never too late to find something light even in the stoned heart.”       “Ha, ha, ha!” Dark Terrence laughs contemptuously. “Don’t try hard, little angels! You cannot heal this rotten soul with any kind of light. This bastard would not get better than in the grave.”       “Even after his death, this asshole will not make amends,” Dark Anna adds. “He will not heal the souls of those whom he has ever hurt. We will make sure it happens.”       “Maybe it’s true,” Light Daniel replies quietly. “But we don’t dare to deny that something light is still alive in Peter.”       “By getting in touch with this reject, you doomed yourself to suffering,” Dark Raquelle states. “You make yourself ashamed by being next to him.”       “Being next to your close person has never been a shame,” Dark Helene protests. “Making them someone to mock at is a shame. Especially when they are alone and too weak against a big crowd.”       “Oh, yeah, a beautiful wrap didn’t help him at all,” Dark Natalia sneers evilly. “Though you’re the only one to talk about his handsomeness.”       “Because she is as pathetic as this freak is!” Dark Helene exclaims. “The beauty thought she’d fix the beast and turn him into a charming prince. But she eventually got nothing. She just wasted her time on him.”       “The only beasts here are just you!” Light Daniel states. “Evil incarnate that must not live in this world!”       “Are you really ready to fight for this bastard?” Dark Daniel sneers evilly, crossing his arms over his chest. “The one who has tried to kill you many times. Are you really protecting the one who doesn’t deserve it?”       “I’m not protecting Peter from the past. But I want to protect Peter from the present and the future. The one who did it for the reasons I could understand.”       “Blah, blah, blah!” Dark Terrence rolls his eyes. “Relax, angels, you have lost in advance. You cannot resist our power. You cannot fight those who can crush you like a pearl. My pack can defeat you for seconds if I just whistle.”       “We are ready to fight!” Light Helene raises her head proudly. “Fight for Peter. For him only. Fight so hard. We will not give him to you all. We will not leave him here. And we will show him where he belongs. Where his home is.”       “Does it make sense, guys?” Dark Edward surprises and moves his contemptuous glance to Peter, still sitting on the ground and having tears in his eyes while watching the battle that symbolizes his dark and light sides. “Look! He doesn’t get up! He refused to fight! He is ready to accept his fate! Your friend has finally stopped running from the real him and has finally accepted it. He has accepted the inevitable.”       “He just needs some help,” Light Daniel states. “And we are here to do this. Share our power with him. Show that Peter is already strong. Much stronger than he thinks. Because he survived. Survived in hell where a weak person would burn to the ground.”       “Ha, you believe in tales naively, buddy,” Dark Anna wonders, looking at her long nails covered with black nail polish. “You believe kindness gets the victory over evil. Not noticing that your fall gets much stronger because of this belief. Disappointment hurts much more than any blade. It doesn’t make you bleed. It burns your soul so that only ashes and emptiness are left.”       “Sometimes a person hurts someone because they are scared. They think attacking is the best protection. But at these moments, a little human hides inside them. The one who was disappointed in people and started to expect the cruelty and injustice from people.”       “That’s how people become criminals,” Dark Raquelle replies. “Criminals, who kill, rob, and rape. Though nobody made your friend do this. He did it at his will. And he became a monster. A monster with a criminal soul.”       “And we are here to save this soul!” Light Helene raises her head proudly. “To become his navigator. His compass, the arrow of which would always show the only right way.”       “So, demons…” Dark Terrence smiles unnaturally. “Since these pathetic creatures are not afraid, let’s kick their asses. Destroy them quickly and take the trapped soul with us.”       “With great pleasure, dark brother,” Dark Edward stands in a fighting position. “Just give me a sign so that I rip the hearts of these fucking little angels.”       “There are only two of you, and it means we will deal with you quickly,” Dark Daniel states. “And I shall deal with you first, pathetic parody of mine.”       “You will not take my friend away,” Light Daniel says confidently and throws the bow aside so that it melts in the air. “No way.”       “Dark ladies, let’s end the one who tried to copy me with no success,” Dark Helene clenches her hands into fists. “Kick the ass of this bitch.”       “I’d be happy to watch this,” Light Helene smiles slightly and waves her hand, creating a cloud of bright sparkles, from which the kind golden retriever Sammy jumps.       “It’s time to end Light Peter Rose once and forever,” Dark Terrence sneers evilly. “So that Dark Theodore Longbottom takes his place. The one, whose place this bastard has been taking for more than twenty years.”       Dark Helene clicks her fingers to create a black cloud in the air, from which the dark copy of Light Sammy jumps. While both of the dogs strike a fighting position and, looking into each other’s eyes, start growling and barking with evil, the angels and the demons move their eyes to Peter at the same time. While he opens his eyes widely, freezes, and literally stops breathing, while the icy gusts of the wind blow his clothes and hair. The eyes of Light Daniel and Light Helene express calm, confidence, and determination, and say something like, “Hold on, we’ll save you!” But the crowd of the demons let him silently, “You will not escape, we will turn you to dust, bastard!” That’s why the tension in the air grows to the maximum, making this final battle very stressful.       The silence in the afterlife is broken by the low groan of Dark Daniel, who clenches his hand into a fist and runs up to his light copy as hard as a tank. Meanwhile, Dark Helene starts creating a black, thick cloud in the air with her unnaturally long fingers and uses the power of her mind to point it at the light version of the girl. Light Helene and Light Daniel both fend off the attack of their opponents. The first creates a magical crystal staff for several seconds and releases a flow of colorful sparkles that cut and melt the black spot in the air. And the second does not even move and turns the top of his body sharply, successfully avoiding the hit of the opponent’s fist that eventually hits the ground and leaves a crack on it. The dark versions try to attack in the same way with a much greater anger again, but the light ones fend off the attack again with the man’s fearlessness and steadfastness, and the girl’s grace and elegance.       Meanwhile, Dark Sammy and Light Sammy start a cruel fight with a bark full of evil and hate. The dark dog attacks sharply, without hesitation and pity, but the light one does not let him hurt him and attacks determinedly too, fighting fearlessly for his territory, for his pack, for those he loves. They press each other to the ground with their powerful paws, sink their teeth deeply into each other, run from side to side, and share growls and a deafening bark. Their eyes are full of wild aggression. Every one of them shows their tough, sharp fangs in the hope of scaring the opponent. But nobody gives up. Nobody gives in. Both of the dogs are determined to get what they want and do not pay attention to the first wounds they get in the fight some time later.       The other demons do not stand aside and join the battle with the angels, too. Light Helene waves her hands and staff to make spells, against which the female demons can do nothing, even if they also use black magic in the hope of crushing the power of the girl, who protects herself and keeps the magical shield, which helps Light Daniel a lot. While he exhausts the male demons every time he makes a hit sharply and quickly, while they use all the possible fighting tricks they know. Even if the angels have to fight several demons at the same time, both of them are doing well, and mutual help gives them a higher chance of getting a victory in the battle between evil and kindness. While Light Daniel breaks the wall with his foot in a jump, which the dark ladies make with magic to become invulnerable, Light Helene uses her magic to create a sword and a shield, which she throws to the man, so that he has more chances in his fight with the Dark men.       “Relax your butts, freak,” Dark Daniel sneers evilly, catching the trident Dark Helene throws to him and starting to shoot with darts. “You will lose anyway. And remember all your sins.”       “We’re not talking about my sins now,” Light Daniel states, protecting himself from the attack of darts with the shield that melts them in the air instantly.       “You’re as sinful as your friend. So, you cannot pretend to be holy.”       “Everyone’s got sins. The difference is that some people regret it and try to fix just something and get better, but others keep drowning in their own shit and thinking they’re guilty of nothing.”       One sharp and brilliant movement helps Light Dark cut Dark Daniel’s trident in parts with his sword, throws his weapons aside, and keeps fighting with his opponent with hands and feet. He uses all the fighting tricks that help him survive this battle with the dark himself, Dark Edward, and Dark Terrence, who also try to crush him with powerful hits and brilliant tornado kicks and hits in a jump. Meanwhile, Light Helene is successful enough in the battle with Dark Helene, Dark Anna, Dark Natalia, and Dark Raquelle, who do not hit her with hands and feet but use their magic skills to the fullest, and are a certain incarnation of the poisonous grace. Every movement is light, elegant, tender, but clear, confident, and determined. But Light Helene holds on very confidently since she knows that every time she uses magic, he opponents get weak. Her light magic kills them. It deprives them of the strength slowly but confidently.       “Aren’t you tired, beauty?” Dark Helene shows her contemptuous grin, drawing the cloud in the air in the form of an arrow and pointing it at Light Helene. “Maybe you give up? And remember you’re far from perfect?”       “I will be fighting for my close people until the last breath,” Light Helene says determinedly, fighting off all the arrows with her staff. “For my beloved man. I will save him. And I will always save him.”       “Ha, is this how you’re trying to make amends for your sins? Trying to be nice after you mocked innocent people and robbed them?”       “I don’t have to be good for those who love me for what I am. Even if someone hates me, it’s okay. The important thing is to be loved by those who mean the whole world to me. Other things don’t matter.”       After she lets her staff melt in the air, Light Helene creates a big, bright ball of light with her hands and points it at Dark Helene, making her scream from pain and step back. In anger, the female demon creates the same black ball and points it at the angel, who cuts it and melts it in the air with just one wave of her hand. And when Dark Anna, Dark Natalia, and Dark Raquelle want to use their magic, Light Helene creates an invisible shield that lets her remain unharmed, without a little scar. While the skin on the arms of the demons starts to be covered with dark spots, touching which makes them feel pain.       While the battle between kindness and evil is at its peak, Peter keeps sitting on the ground. He keeps his wet eyes widely open as he watches Light Daniel brilliantly fend off all the attacks of the male demons, doing everything clearly and determinedly and getting no wounds or bruises by this moment. While Dark Daniel, Dark Edward, and Dark Terrence get weaker every time they meet a failure, even if they keep attacking and fighting. He watches Light Helene kind of protect her boyfriend with her magic shield from the invasion and the female demons’ attempts to poison his wounded soul. He sees the angels help each other often, fighting with the devils side by side and acting confidently, even if there are only two of them. He pays attention to the battle between the two versions of Sammy. The light one strikes his opponent down at some moment, falls over him, and sinks his sharp teeth into the dark one’s neck, making his opponent whine loudly from pain.       But at some moment, Light Dark misses a powerful hit of the tornado kick from Dark Edward that throws him back, and Dark Anna manages to break the shield of Light Helene, who shouts and doubles over after she gets a burn on her forearm after her opponent releases a powerful fireball from her fingers and points it at the angel. Light Sammy starts losing to Dark Sammy that lies over him and gives him no chance to get out of the trap. That’s why Peter feels that both sides are fighting furiously inside him. He feels that one side tries to subdue the other. On the one hand, a shame for all the sins he has committed, and fear of looking into someone’s eyes and fixing just something. On the other hand, a wish to overcome himself, come back to life, and prove that he is not a monster or a criminal. He can be good and nice. He did not do bad things because he was terrible. But since the angels start missing attacks, Rose himself wants to stay in the afterlife again and let the devils eat him fully. Along with this, he feels really cold. So freezing that he twirls into a curl and rubs his forearms energetically with his hands, shaking strongly and bashing his teeth. He is exhausted and broken. He has no strength to say just something. No strength to get up and help the angels in this battle, which they have not lost yet, but in which they are too far from victory.