The man paused for a moment before shaking his head. “I cannot tell you yet. You and I are here. We are the only ones living in the moment,” he claimed before looking up and seemingly looking into Iris’ eyes with his own beautiful grey-ish pair. “You will understand in due time. But trust me, when I say there is a purpose behind all of this,” he added before turning back towards the open door of the warehouse. “The last digit to this suitcase is fifty meters away. Would you care to come with me?”
“But what about the body?” She asked, turning to look at Connor’s corpse with sad eyes. “Shouldn’t we call for a mortician or something?”
The man turned to the corpse for a moment before turning back to Iris. “Don’t worry about him. Someone will come get him soon,” he said as he started to walk out of the warehouse. The place Aki had led Iris to was by the edge of the water where the winds were blowing past them. “Such a beautiful scenery, don’t you think?” He asked, the two coming close to what could only be assumed to be a sunset. However, reality shouldn’t have ran that quickly.
Iris glanced behind her in the direction of the warehouse, her eyes softening before she closed them for a brief moment while sighing. When she opened them again and turned to look at the scenery, a pained noise left her lips. “Why is the sun setting? Surely it’s only just passed noon.” There was no way she had been searching for Connor the entire day, unless time really did fly when she wasn’t noticing. “Why have you brought me here, Aki?”
The man turned to her, only his eyes were visible. “You agreeing to this Project is a sacrifice in itself. Here, where we are now, is not the place you are in. I’m sure you don’t understand yet but you will…” he turned back to the sunset before he continued speaking. “Have you ever thought about tragedies and how… cryptically beautiful they are? Sometimes they’re done by the smartest of people and when you start to look at the bigger picture, the crimes were really an art. It’s an art that not a lot of people can understand or like… I do though. As well as this case…” he gestured for her to come to the edge where we was.
Her eyes darted around for a moment, trying to comprehend what Aki was saying as she moved closer to the edge. I don’t understand what he’s saying, the place I am in is also not the place I am in? Why did I agree to this Project… My life was a lot simpler and a lot quieter without all this hassle.
At the edge, where the two were, Aki can be seen looking down. By the messy rocky structures was what appeared to be a bag, large enough to hold something about five to six feet in height and two to three feet in girth. The man then turned to Iris. “Have an idea as to what that might be?”
Iris looked down, quickly grabbing Aki’s wrist and digging her nails in. Her brain started making up scenarios of her falling from the edge and dying, not the most pleasant of experiences. She looked around and eventually found what Aki was talking about, before immediately covering her mouth. “Is that a… Is that a body bag?”
The man nodded before noticing her fear. He pulled her close, as if in a hug, and started patting her back in a comforting way. “You cannot fall off, trust me…” he spoke calmly before he led her away from the edge. There, on the side, was a staircase leading down to the rocky structures and to a flat path they could take to reach the bag. Although… Aki realized that Iris seemed a bit too scared to go down.
“Would you… would you rather return home?”
“I’ve already come this far, just tell me how long the body has been there and then I’ll decide if I want to return home or not.” Iris spoke firmly, taking deep breaths to calm herself. It wouldn’t do to show Aki that she was even the slightest bit terrified.
The man nodded, still holding her close to him. “In that bag, is the corpse of the thirteen year old Connor had killed,” he claimed, gesturing at the bag. “He’s been chopped and stuffed in the bag,”
“I asked how long it had been there, not who was in there.” The woman looked up at Aki and a black ink seemed to be spreading into her white scleras. “Give me a straightforward answer for once.”
The man looked at her eyes before sighing and nodding. “Approximately six days,” the man spoke with a gentle sigh. He hadn’t expect her to take that tone with him but he supposed it was well-deserved he supposed. “His body should be bloating by now,”
“Well if it’s six days then it’s actually coming to the end of the bloating stage and will be moving on to the active decay stage of decomposition— either way I have no intention of even looking at a body if they are not in either the fresh stage or the dry remains stage because that’s just gross.” Iris pulled away with a look of pure disgust on her face, clenching the handle of the suitcase tightly as she started to walk away. The scleras of her eyes turned completely black, and a tick caused her to suddenly move her head, but she had no idea that these changes were occurring to her. “I’m going home, Aki.”
The man had noticed the effects that were happening to her and he was not sure how to react. He gently reached forward and looked at her eyes, looking into them with much interest. “Iris… are you alright?”
“Don’t touch me!” Iris swatted his hand away and moved around him, sighing heavily as she continued making her way back down the street towards her house. “I don’t want to do this anymore. I want out.” Another tick caused her head to move, and the fingers of her free hand spasmed before she clenched it into a fist.
When Iris had done that, the man’s eyes widened slightly. He looked down at his hand before sighing and nodding. “Should’ve known that that wasn’t a good idea…” he spoke softly to himself as he started making his way down the road, hesitantly to turn back to where Iris was. He knew that he was in the wrong this time. He wasn’t going to deny it.
Hundreds of thoughts seemed to be swimming around in Iris’ mind as she walked, hundreds more than usual anyway, and they only seemed to be increasing her paranoia. Every person she came across, in her mind, was staring at her and their faces were starting to become distorted. The voices were louder than they had ever been, and it wasn’t until Iris noticed that there were more than just her own voice that she realised something was wrong. “Stop it…”
She paused for a moment and leaned against a street lamp, leaning her forehead against the cold steel while closing her eyes. “Stop it.” Iris repeatedly whispered to herself, gently hitting her forehead against the metal as if that would stop her mind from going against what she wanted— all of this seemed to be in vain when the lightbulb of the lamp blew up and glass came raining down.
When he heard the glass shatter, Aki’s eyes widened and turned around where he remembered Iris going. He immediately started running as quickly as he could to where Iris was, using the navigation on his phone. When he found her, he made no waste of time and went to her side, being aware not to touch her. “What’s the matter…?”
“Tell it to stop… Everything was fine until you showed up— Help me Aki…” Iris stared up at him, now with only one black sclera, before her eyes closed and she collapsed against his chest. Everything fell silent in her mind, though through the darkness it appeared that she could see a ceiling; a ceiling that she had never seen before, but it faded to blackness as quickly as it had appeared.
The scientist looked at her before holding her gently in his arms. His eyes sparked softly before he helped her to a nearby park where they could rest for the time moment. He sat down on a bench and laid her down gently on it, her head on his lap as he ran his fingers through her hair. He looked down for a moment before he pulled his mask down and let his hood down so he could breathe properly. It wasn’t long before he reached his hand up to her cheek, gently caressing it despite her telling him not to touch her. “I’m sorry…” he let out softly, a single tear falling as he stayed there, hoping she would wake up soon.
It wasn’t long before Iris opened her eyes. Upon feeling what she assumed to be knees underneath her, she slowly looked up over her shoulder before turning completely so her back was on the bench. “Who are you? You look familiar somehow, though it feels more like a dream.”
The man looked at her for a moment before smiling softly. “I’m me, Iris,” he spoke, making sure that she would recognize his voice. He looked a bit distressed for some reason, like he had felt guilty of something. “I’m… I’m so sorry for earlier. I’ve already told the others waiting for your completion that you won’t be continuing the Project,” he stopped there before turning away for a moment. “Shall I… escort you home tonight? Since the Project has technically ended, we won’t see each other again, after all…”
Iris sat up immediately with a frown. “But I’m only on day two! How long was I out for?” She took out her phone to check the time and date, only to realise the device was dead. Her breathing quickened as the adrenaline kicked in, and she looked back up at Aki with a terrified expression. “It’s over already?!”
The man shook his head. “You told me just earlier how you wanted the pain to stop, how you’re hurting from seeing the many things I gave you. I’m sorry, but for your own good, perhaps it was better had we not met at all…” the man took the suitcase from Iris before standing up, holding his hand out to her as if he wanted her to take it. “After tonight, forget me. Forget I ever existed, forget this Project and everything about it… force yourself to believe that it was all a dream. In the end, that was all it was… please believe that,” despite saying that, the scientist’s eyes were tearing up slightly and his voice was cracking, somewhat.
