Chapter 13: My Own Worst Enemy

Chapter 13: My Own Worst Enemy

The weight of the cleaver was absolute. A dense, cold reality in his right hand. His left hand, splayed on the butcher’s block, looked alien, a pale, trembling thing belonging to someone else. He could see the faint blue lines of his own veins, the map of his own lifeblood. The kitchen was silent, save for the frantic drumming of his own heart and the low hum of the refrigerator.

He thought of Sarah’s terrified face. He thought of the gleeful, predatory joy that had surged through him as the bookshelf fell. That was the choice. This horror, or the horror of becoming a monster that would hunt the people he loved.

There was no choice at all.

He tightened his grip on the cleaver’s smooth, worn handle, drew a shuddering breath, and with a guttural cry that was equal parts terror and resolve, he brought the blade down.

Time broke.

The cleaver, a mere inch from his index finger, stopped, hanging in the air as if frozen in a block of ice. The hum of the refrigerator ceased. The dust motes dancing in the afternoon light froze in place. The world outside the window was a silent, unmoving photograph. The only thing that moved was the cold—a living, thinking cold that erupted from within him, seizing control of his nerves, his muscles, his will.

His body was no longer his. He was a prisoner behind his own eyes as his right hand, guided by an unseen force, slowly, deliberately, lowered the cleaver and placed it back on the kitchen counter. His left hand was lifted from the block. The parasite was fighting back.

The kitchen around him dissolved. The warm, yellow walls bled into a sterile, lifeless grey. The familiar scent of home was replaced by an antiseptic chill. He was standing in the dream kitchen from a decade ago, the timeless, twilight world where his bloody ritual had begun.

"Did you really think it would be that easy?"

The voice was not a sound, but a thought, implanted directly into his mind. It was a cold, sibilant whisper that echoed with ancient malice.

He turned. Standing by the spectral refrigerator was the boy-shaped shadow, the Smiler of his childhood. Its hollow eyes were fixed on him, and the thin, carved grin was etched onto its featureless face.

"All that work," the shadow whispered, its form flickering at the edges. "All that feeding. You were such a good boy, Leo. So eager to please. Every finger you cut in your little dream was a feast for me. You carved off pieces of your own soul and served them to me, night after night. You nourished me. You built me. And now you want to throw it all away?"

Rage, pure and hot, surged through Leo. "Get out of my head!" he roared, lunging at the small, dark figure. His hands passed through it as if it were smoke, the contact sending a jolt of freezer burn up his arms.

The shadow laughed, a silent, vibrating tremor in the cold air. "This is my head now, little butcher. We are one. You gave me the keys when you were seven years old. You don't get to evict the tenant just because you finally read the lease."

The dream kitchen melted away, the grey walls dissolving like mist. Suddenly, he was standing in a sun-drenched park. The air was warm and smelled of freshly cut grass. Children were laughing in the distance. It was the park where he and Sarah had first skipped class together, the memory so potent and happy it was a physical ache in his chest.

And there she was, walking toward him, a radiant smile on her face. She looked exactly as she had that day, her eyes bright with life and affection.

"Leo," she said, her voice a balm on his raw nerves. She reached out and took his hands. Her touch was warm, real, grounding. "What are you doing? I was so scared."

He stared at her, his heart tearing in two. "Sarah… you're not real."

"Of course I'm real," she said, her smile wavering with a hint of hurt. "I'm the realest thing you have. Don't you see? You don't have to do this. You don't have to hurt yourself. That thing… it's a part of you now. I can help you control it. We can fight it together. We can still have this." She squeezed his hands, her gaze earnest and pleading. "We can still be happy. Just put the knife down. Let me take care of you. Let me help."

The temptation was an overwhelming wave, a promise of everything he desperately wanted. A life with her. Normalcy. An end to this solitary, terrifying war. He could just give in, let her warmth chase away the cold forever. He looked into her eyes, searching for the girl he loved, the anchor in his storm.

And for a fraction of a second, he saw it. Behind the warmth, behind the love, deep in the pupils of her beautiful, pleading eyes, was the faint, curved ghost of an impossibly wide smile.

The illusion shattered.

This wasn't Sarah. This was his own hope, his own love, twisted into a gilded cage. The Echo was using his happiest memory as its ultimate weapon, offering him the one thing it knew he couldn't resist. It was a poison offered in a golden chalice.

And in that moment, Leo understood. He couldn't fight this with rage; the Echo was born of malice. He couldn't fight it with love; it would corrupt and weaponize every good thing he had. There was only one path left. The one he had learned as a child, sitting alone in the dark.

He had to embrace the cold.

He let go of the phantom Sarah's hands. He let the warmth drain out of him, deliberately shutting down his fear, his hope, his love. He snuffed out the emotions one by one, until all that was left was a core of pure, unfeeling, surgical purpose. He became the butcher of his dreams again, but this time, he was not the deluded victim. He was the executioner.

"You're right," he said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. "We are one. And a body cannot live with two heads."

The park, the sun, the image of Sarah—it all dissolved under the force of his cold will. He stood now in a void of pure blackness, a non-space within his own consciousness. Facing him was not the child-sized Smiler, but a perfect, shadowy duplicate of his seventeen-year-old self. It was attached to him, a parasitic twin fused at the shoulder and hip, its left arm a ragged stump, its face split by that predatory, hateful grin. It was his Echo. His curse. Himself.

He held out his hand, and the dream knife from his childhood—a heavy, sharp butcher’s knife—materialized in his grip. It felt familiar. Right.

The Echo recoiled, its grin faltering for the first time. It felt his shift in purpose, his utter lack of fear or hesitation. It saw not the scared child or the hopeful teenager, but something as cold and as merciless as itself.

"I fed you," Leo said, his voice the sound of grinding ice. "Now I will starve you."

He didn't wait for a response. He raised the dream knife and drove it into the shadowy flesh that connected their shoulders. There was no blood, but a piercing, psychic shriek of agony ripped through the void—a scream he felt in his own mind. He gritted his teeth against the feedback, his focus absolute. He wasn't just cutting the shadow. He was cutting away the part of himself that had become intertwined with it, the part that had been nourished by the dream sacrifices.

He sliced downwards, severing the metaphysical tethers that bound them. The Echo writhed, its silent scream turning to a roar of pure hatred. It clawed at him with its one good hand, but the blows had no purchase on his cold resolve. He was cutting away his fear. He was cutting away his weakness. He was cutting away a decade of lies.

With a final, brutal wrench, he severed the last connection at the hip.

The Echo was thrown back, a free-floating entity in the void, no longer anchored to him. Its form flickered violently, its grin now a rictus of pure agony and shock. It was wounded, severed, cast out.

Leo felt a profound, soul-deep emptiness where it had been, a hollowness that was both terrifying and liberating. He was alone in his own head for the first time in ten years.

The void shattered like black glass.

Reality slammed back into him with the force of a physical blow. The hum of the refrigerator, the scent of the kitchen, the afternoon light—it all returned in a dizzying rush.

Time restarted.

The cleaver in his right hand, its downward momentum unstoppable, completed its arc.

The sound was not a clean chop, but a wet, sickening crunch of metal striking bone. A white-hot, electric agony exploded from his hand, a pain so absolute it eclipsed all thought. He looked down.

The cleaver was embedded in the butcher's block.

And his left index finger was gone.