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    Chapter 23

    tab "Hello? Anyone in there?" A familiar voice rang in my head, like a church bell in an empty cathedral.
    tab I opened my eyes, and saw a man, waving his hands at me like a curious two-year-old would to his father. I looked around. A nice homey room. Two large beds...couple leather couches...warm, cotton carpeting.
    tab I quickly deducted that I was in a hotel, and a rather nice one as well. Five star, would be my guess. But then it musters the question: why the heck am I even in this fancy-smancy hotel?
    tab But the luxurious aura I got from the nice hotel wasn't what bulged my eyes. It was John. Right behind the strange two-year-old acting 30-some-year-old was John.
    tab For that one second, I didn't care about where I was. All I cared about was the fact that I was in the same room as John. My wife's murderer.
    tab "Hey, John..." I grunted, digging my knuckles into the floor and struggling up. "Remember what you did to my wife?" John didn't say anything. He just...stared at the ground, his arms crossed and a blank look on his face.
    tab "Right now, here, I want you to know that I won't forget what you did." With adreneline pumping in my veins, I leaped towards him, wrapping my hands around his neck. Our bodies collapsed onto the floor in a tangle, and with all my heart, I started to strangle him. His warm neck, my tense hands...I won't lie, but at that moment it actually felt good.
    tab "You wanna know what it's like to die? Huh? Do you?!" He moaned, rolled his eyes, and started to gag, but didn't fight back.
    tab "Did you think you could get away with it? Did you?!" His neck got cooler and cooler with every second that passed.
    tab "Today, you're going to die. So, die! Die!" All my anger poured into the next few moments of choking. And then...John gave a small smile...and just whispered with the bit of energy he had,
    tab "Ah...Chad...I'm...sorry..." The small grin remained on his face, as he closed his eyes, and drifted off...
    tab I looked at him. He was dead. I should've felt good. I should've felt relief. But that wasn't how I felt.
    tab I stumbled back. I had just killed someone. That was what happened. I killed a man. I had tried to justify it with the fact that he killed my wife, but in truth, it was murder. The same kind of murder that my wife went through.
    tab "I-I'm a murderer...A monster..." I whispered, digging my face into my knees. Tears streamed down my cheek, leaving a small, wet puddle on the floor.
    tab "Are we done now?" I turned around. The familiar man sat down on a small wooden chair. He had apparantly been watching me kill a man as though it were some show.
    tab "You...you're..." He stood up, and proclaimed with a smile,
    tab "Ah! So you do remember me!" I struggled up, finding it difficult to do so with the bullet wound. I saw it was fully bound with some sort of wash cloth. Why would they bandage me? Wasn't I the enemy?
    tab "Kyle..." I growled. "What's going on?! What happened to my wife?! Who was John?!"
    tab "Slow down there, Chad. Let's start with the last one, shall we?" Yeah, because that was the logical thing to do.
    tab "John was the kind of person that would do anything for a sum of money. An assassin, and pretty good too." So John held no grudge on my wife. That meant someone else did. And I was pretty darn sure I was staring at him.
    tab "So you hired him to kill my wife." He nodded.
    tab "That is correct. Very good, Chad!"
    tab "But why didn't you kill me? If I have the motives straight, you're upset because I threw you in jail." Once again, he nodded, and said,
    tab "Yes, right again. And that's precisely why I had to murder your wife first. Or more specifically, John had to."
    tab "What?" was all I could say, lost as I was.
    tab "What's the fun of killing you off so quickly? Ending it all too fast would make things less...enjoyable."
    tab "You think killing people is enjoyable?! You are mad!" Kyle shook his head, and replied,
    tab "Oh, but I think you'll agree that you had loads of fun killing John over there." He pointed over to the lifeless body of John. I glanced back, then wished I hadn't. He was right, of course. His neck in my hands...it felt so good.
    tab "Don't feel too bad, though," he went on, snapping me back to reality. "I was going to kill him anyway. You just took away the trouble. Thank you, Chad!" He scratched his chin, and said,
    tab "'Chad, the monsterous murderer!' I like the sound of that!"
    tab "Don't even start to compare me with you."
    tab "Then please explain what made your murder so much different than mine."
    tab "The fact..." I started, and then thought for a second. "The fact that I actually feel sorry that I did it."
    tab "That didn't answer my question. The murder itself and the motives were very similar from your wife to John." I hid my head into the palms of my hands, and whispered,
    tab "Stop...I don't want to hear it..."
    tab "Oh, I'm sorry, did I touch a nerve?" I lifted my head up, and said with more confidence,
    tab "I don't need you to insult me. I need answers."
    tab "Of course you do. And that's the point. I want you to know everything. I want you to be so close. And then it's all going to end. There is no better way to finish the job."
    tab I didn't answer. I couldn't. I just continued wait for answers to resonate into my ears. What happened to me later, I didn't care.