Aegri somnia vana.*
At last, it comes to an end.

His footsteps and cries echo in the empty corridors. No one answers him, and his bone-thin fingers grasp at empty air, seeking warmth and finding none. The shrieks of the howling winds travel throughout the abandoned halls, making him sway on broken feet. He stumbles on the unevenness of the rocky ground, his hands bruising, his bones shattering.

He’s not quite sure who he is anymore.

But he knows who he’s looking for.

Sungyeol.
letmeoutletmeoutletmegoletmeout

He sees a flash of white in this godforsaken hellhole and scrambles after it.

 ...........

He finds Sungyeol standing in the middle of an empty room. There's a spark of recognition as he passes through the doorway covered with cobwebs, threads so fine that they seem to pass through him.

Sungyeol turns his head as the other enters. The translucent paleness of Sungyeol’s skin contrasts sharply with the gaping hole in the middle of his throat, dripping scarlet onto the floor. plip plop, plip plop.

A lancing pain flashes through his head, sending him staggering in front of Sungyeol. Drops of blood splash his face. Sungyeol merely looks down at him and smiles sweetly, “Hello, Myungsoo.”

A sudden rush of anger takes hold of him, and he launches himself at Sungyeol, screaming.

that’s not my name that’s not my name that’s not my name.

He remembers it, remembers seeing Sungyeol standing over him the first time in a starchy white mask, holding a whirring drill in his hands. He remembers Sungyeol splitting his skull in two before throwing pieces of his brain in the disposal bin, cheerfully whistling as he shrieks through the anesthesia, jerks against the metal restraints of the chair. He remembers Sungyeol’s words as he cleans up after the first surgery, and the person who he once was (he can’t even remember who he was before) is locked up inside the mind of a stranger named Myungsoo.

“Everything will be okay now.”

(lies.)

Now, he stabs at skin with his blood-encrusted fingernails, tears at flesh with his teeth, rips at Sungyeol’s mangled throat. 

give me back my brain my brain my brain give it give it give it.

And Sungyeol just takes it all, standing silently, but none of his crazed attacks appear on Sungyeol, who flickers in his vision (and for a second, he thinks his hands reach through Sungyeol) like a ripple in the water. Trails of dried blood run down Sungyeol’s throat, and he sees the bones encased inside.

He slumps on his knees, gasping for air for his shriveled-up lungs, while his bones seem to fall apart little by little, and his feet can no longer support him. His broken fingers weakly claw at the hem of Sungyeol’s pants, once so pristine white, but now dirtied and fraying.

Sungyeol whispers something to him, a sad smile on his lips.

And then, he’s gone with a gust of wind, vanished into thin air and replaced by empty eye sockets staring back, nothing more than a skull sitting atop a pile of bones.

(Remember, he says.)

The man remaining cries out, clutching his head again, curled up in a position that seems oh-so-familiar to him as he starts to recall everything.

 ...........

He’s a child of ten when he watches his mother dragged out of the tiny shack they live in by officers. Her eyes roll back into her head, and her feet drag limply against the sharp edges of the rocks and broken glass bottles on the ground. Through his tears and shrieks, he hears one of the officers tell him that she’s not “right in the head.” On the way to the asylum, they drop him off at an orphanage.

He’s a boy of eleven when he starts losing control of his hands and his mind. As different men come now to take him away, he hears the voice of the orphanage director floating through the cloudy fog in his head.

“Madness must run in the family. Thank God they’re taking him away to where he belongs.”

He spends his next years locked up and tied to his bed, kept in a dark, dank prison of a room. No one answers his cries, breaks his delusions. He’s too delirious to notice the assistants and caretakers slip in and out of his room, too deranged to realize when their visits cease.

It’s too dark to see, but he thinks something is festering in here.

He’s no more than a walking skeleton when a young man dressed in clean white scrubs introduces himself as the new caretaker with a sunny smile. (It’s the brightest light he’s seen in ages.)

Sungyeol, who, true to his word, comes the next day.

And the day after.

Sungyeol, who, true to his word, unties him from the bed and sets him free (even if it’s just a bit).

But he’s still an insane man stuck on a downward slope of inevitable decay and self-destruction.

And Sungyeol just isn’t strong enough to stop him, no matter how hard he tries.

So he becomes a prisoner of his own mind when Sungyeol injects him with anesthesia and places him on the operating table. There’s the whirring of the drill, and the world goes black.

When he wakes up, he's trapped in a coffin drowning in a sea of black. He pounds on the coffin lid, screaming for help, someone please help.

let me out let me out LET ME OUT

No one hears, no one comes.

He becomes no more than a dull ringing in someone’s ears, and he sees through eyes not quite his own. And through those eyes, he finds Sungyeol standing in front of him again. Betrayal is a bitter taste in his mouth as he recalls how Sungyeol promised to free him. Anger swallows him whole, and red spots his vision. 

monster monster monstermonstermonstermonster

He punches a hole through the lid of the coffin and sticks his hand out, relishing the tiny freedom. Until he sees the needle of a syringe aimed right at him, and everything goes black again.

He can't remember the rest.
 

He’s stuck in a strange in-between. There, but not quite. Nothing substantial of him remains. He remains as a thought in the mind of the one whom Sungyeol now calls “Myungsoo.” So he bides his time patiently, lying in wait, while slowly beginning to whittle away at the edges of the coffin's wood.

He notices how Myungsoo cowers and cries at his screams, so as the black liquid begins to seep in, he shrieks a little louder and smirks.

give it back give it back give me back my brain it's mine it's mine it's mine

And slowly, but surely, the wood begins to crumble against his fingernails, and he rises from the sea of black.
 

The last time he sees Sungyeol, he's in control now, and he greets him with a smile.

“Hello, Sungyeol.”

He loses himself again and, this time, he embraces the incoming tide of blood as he's swept away by it.

(He leaves blood splatters on the floor.)
 

When the ice pick takes apart his brain a second time, everything he has worked so hard to build, his very being, is torn apart and left once again in the dank, dark cell.

Except this time, there's no Sungyeol.

He stays there, tied to the bed, for a very long, long time.

 ...........

Sungyeol’s last two words echo through his head and pierce through his delusions. He slowly begins to disintegrate as the realization eats away at what's left of him.

The smell of decay and rot is overpowering, and he looks down at himself.

Oh.

Oh.

He’s already dead.

And he crumbles into dust.

Nothing remains.

(He's finally free.)

 ...........

Momento mori.

(Remember to die.)

*A sick man's delusive dreams - a quote from Horace
highlight the part above "and he crumbles into dust" and you'll see something.
reading endnotes is highly encouraged.