Chapter 55.

There’s no way. No! How?!

Screeeeeeech!

… the image of a blurry car with their brake lights on. I immediately slammed on the brakes which caused the car to skid. There was a car in front of me slowing down to turn off and exit onto the freeway and I’d nearly crashed into them. At some point in time, it started to rain, I didn’t even have my wipers on.

Thankfully, my timely reaction saved me, I’d avoided a collision and the guy exited the freeway safely. When I realized what exit I’d just passed by, my mind turned to utter chaos. It was the exact same exit I’d taken on my way to the mental asylum.

The entire situation left me drowning in cold sweat. If I said my heart was beating madly before, then now, my heart was beating faster than the speed of light. This was surely going to kill me if things continued at this pace.

A multilayered hallucination? Is that even possible? Hallucinations in hallucinations? Then what if even this is a hallucination right now? Actually, did I even wake up today? Am I actually just inside an extremely long nightmare still?

I’m going to have a nervous breakdown if things keep going like this. I was presently hyperventilating, I found it exceedingly difficult to breathe. How do I even know I am who I say I am? What is my name? Diogenes Genovese. What is my profession? A senior electronics repair technician. How old am I? Thirty. Are these things which I treat as facts even true?

Is this what they call an identity crisis?

As usual, I took deep breaths to calm myself down. Panicking and freaking out over everything only made things worse. Don’t lose yourself in the sheer madness of your situation. I need to keep a level head. Stay calm and collected. Somehow, by brainwashing myself like this, I didn’t jump off the deep end and fall into an unending cycle of self doubt and delusions. Those were some pretty dangerous thoughts I had just now. If I continued down that line of thought any further, I would surely have found myself in a negative spiral of self torture and resentment.

Still, everything continually hit me out of the blue time and time again. Who knew when the next occurrence would be. I should just act under the assumption that everything I experience could potentially be a lie in itself.

The car I’m driving may not be a car at all. The rain falling now may just be the tears I’m crying inside my head. The road I’m on may not even be a road, but instead an illusory figment of my imagination. Whether I’m driving forward at high speed or walking backwards right now is questionable in itself. I could very well be out cold on the floor without ever realizing it.

This is just what the reality of the situation is to me right now. Any proof I find to prove or justify anything to myself may just be convenient coincidences, lies or excuses.

I couldn’t tell fiction from reality any longer, but it didn’t change the fact that I wanted to meet Adele. I wanted to know exactly what was happening to me. I didn’t bother to head to the mental asylum again. Instead, I set my sights on Adele’s home where her family was buried.

I spent a full day and night driving before I finally arrived at the woods that completely devastated me five years ago. I parked my car in a ditch at the side of the road, outside the woods, and decided to take a short nap before I made my way towards the mansion hidden in the deep recesses of the woods.

I mentally prepared myself because I was almost certain I’d have another nightmare. Thus, when I went to sleep, I taped my finger to the camera on my phone. I set up a heartbeat monitor app that would set off an alarm that would wake me up if my heartbeat reached a certain threshold. I plugged my phone into a power bank so I’d be able to get a decent amount of sleep. I also set an alarm in the event I slept longer than the battery would last.

With all that in place, I went to sleep slightly hopeful I’d avoid the situation where I woke up excessively scared if things took a strange turn for the worse in my dreams.

Strangely enough though, despite all my preparations, I woke up six hours later without having any sign of a nightmare. The preparations I made were completely pointless. To ensure I wasn’t in a dream still, I took a shot to where no man should ever be hit. Yep, it definitely wasn’t a dream as far as the tears trickling down my cheek could tell. Of course, I wouldn’t be surprised if I was somehow capable of feeling pain in a dream with the way my nightmares have played out recently.

When I got up, everything was surprisingly normal. It was calm, peaceful, perhaps you would even call it tranquil. Any normal person would be at ease in such a situation, but I knew from past experience, it was nothing more than a facade before the impending storm. The moment I stepped out of the car, the world was sure to turn to shit.

It’s all a lie to get me to let my guard down just so I’ll be scared later on. I was certain that it was all some sort of grand conspiracy in the making. God damn it! I’m not falling for this crap again! I’m so on edge you could call me the edgiest of lords right now. I might as well change my name to the edge master. I’m naturally not going to really do something cringy like that though.

I prepared my heart for the Armageddon and chaos that would unfold the moment I stepped out the door. I braced myself for the creepy piano music that would mysteriously play from deep within the forest. I googled all sorts of Buddhist sutras and chanted them in my head on repeat all for the moment of truth where shit hit the fan.

And thus… I opened the door and discovered…

Nothing happened.

“Hahaha.”

Great! My plan to over dramatize things so nothing would happen to me worked out perfectly. It was a bloody heaven sent miracle as far as I cared. I honestly felt strangely satisfied with the results.

Although, nothing happening might actually be worse now that I think about it. If it didn’t happen now, wouldn’t it just happen later? Suddenly, I found my nerves were more on edge than before. In my case, things always took a turn for the worst at the most unexpected times after all.