Cross and Conflicts

CHAPTER XXV: Demons Within

There exist in the human heart the demons that wait to be awakened. If ever the time comes that something prods them so, they’ll immediately proceed to cloud your mind. They distort you. They make you think that you’re like a cornered snake that your only choice is to strike. 

 She flinched. Her eyelids shot open. Random but careful, she scanned the details around her. She obviously wasn’t inside her quarters at their monastery. Unlike her room that is small and with colorless walls, this has a really high ceiling adorned with the supremacy of powder blue paint. The room’s owner must favor the hue very much since all of the embellishments uniform with it—from the pinned portraits, the furniture, to the stuffed toys occupying the sofa to her left.

 Noumenon considered her guess that a girl owns this room confirmed when she saw the picture of someone atop the small desk next to the bed she was lying in. It’s that of an adolescent with coffee brown hair and with a pretty pair of hazel orbs. In the picture, she was wearing a blue dress, and she was holding a bouquet of irises. But what’s much noticeable is the smile on her face; it appeared very warm contrary to the coldness of her room delivered by the air conditioner which the novice isn’t used to.

 She gingerly sat upright. As soon as she did, she registered what she’s actually going through. Her lips are chapped. Her throat is dry. Her body feels really heavy. And there’s that stinging in her left calf.

 “Please, I need your help. I want to kill my father.” 

 She remembered how she implored prostrated towards the master murderer—towards the person who tried to strangle her to death before.

 His eyes— the only ones he exposed about himself—were not anymore red and were jaded. It was apparent that he couldn’t give a damn about whatever words came out of her mouth or how many tears she would shed. However, at the back of his mind, he couldn’t deny that he was a little intrigued. 

 It was gravely ironic, for he had never—not even once in his murderous years of existence—thought that someone would be brave enough to ask him for help to commit murder. Getting the chance to even propose this to him was already a privilege, and there was this young woman who grabbed it.

 She looked pitiful. She was battered, and she was a crying mess. Her mother was just killed, and for that, she seeks vengeance.

 “Tell me,” he spoke, “Why should I help you?”

 She did her best not to fall down but stand still before him. “I beg you, Cross. I want to avenge my mothers. I want to—no! I need to kill the person who killed them!”

 The resolve in her gaze couldn’t be extinguished to the point that it could have convinced him. Yet, he concluded that there’s no way someone like her would ever see something as grave as murder through the end.  

 First and foremost, she is supposedly a bride of God and here she was planning to violate one of the Ten Commandments.

 “Have you ever killed someone before?” he asked. He already anticipated what kind of answer she’ll reply; well, someone as weak as her could never do that.

 “I haven’t,” she softly uttered. There was something in that tone of hers—something in the words that were missing. She sounded regretful.

 Either it was because she hadn’t been culpable of robbing a life or because of something else, Cross didn’t want to know, so he turned his back on her and started to trudge. 

 Noumenon, nonetheless, didn’t want to be left with a rejection. She was determined, not only because she was mad but because she felt that if the vigilante left her now, there would be no one else who could possibly aid her. She paid no heed if he was no one else but the master murderer; he is, to her, her best chance to carry out her vengeance.

 Whatever remaining strength she had was diminishing, and she used this to go after him. She ignored reason and ignored the pain she physically endured. 

 “Please! Help me! I beg of you.” She stumbled on a piece of cement and fell on the wreckage. It was at this point when she realized that she couldn’t walk any further. Her legs had numbed. Exhaustion had consumed her. More than that, on the other hand, she looked ahead of her, and the one she was chasing after was already gone. With this, she was utterly horrified because she was alone—alone in despair and unable to do anything. She gritted her teeth, and she clenched her fists.

 “Aaaaaaaah!” She bawled. She had no one but herself now. “Aaaaaaaah!” She let herself drown in lament and in the woe she felt she will never be redeemed from. In her last ounce of energy while she lost a lot of blood, she muttered something over and over again. “I should’ve killed you. I will kill you. I will find a way to kill you.”

 Then, her mind severed from consciousness.

  There was a huge doubt in her mind. She thought that there was no way Cross went back to save her from losing a lot of blood, and from what she was seeing in the room where she woke up, so far, it didn’t appear to be a murderer’s den.

 She noticed the renewed bandages on her body as she peeled the blanket from herself. Significantly, the bullet wound in her calf was dressed, and she was wearing a piece of clothing that wasn’t hers. The hospital gown she was previously clad in was replaced with a cotton dress that covered up to her knees. She didn’t allow herself to be flustered by the idea of being changed by another person; what mattered was the humanity of whomever it was that was showed.

 There was a door to her northeast, so slowly and carefully, she made her way to it. She twisted the knob and was glad that she wasn’t locked inside. She opened the door and later found herself inside a colossal living room. There was no one there but only expensive-looking pieces of furniture and a quietude invaded by the golden sunshine through the large arching windows. And under her feet is a beautiful conquest of white marble.

 She wanted to call out whoever was here, but her voice betrayed her. Yet again, she decided to look further inside the house. Shortly after, she lost to the pain still lingering in her bullet wound; wherefore, she chose to sit on a couch plated in silver and gold fabric. It’s certainly an unfamiliar place; nonetheless, it was strange that she didn’t feel threatened to be here.

 “Ah, you’re finally awake,” out of nowhere, someone said.

 She could have jumped out from the couch from being startled. She looked behind her and tried to stand.

 “Please.” The person walked towards her. “Don’t strain yourself. You’re barely alright.”

 The man is in his fifties with graying straight hair loosed to his shoulders. He has the same eyes as the girl Noumenon saw in the picture earlier, and there are freckles across his cheeks.

 “H-hello,” she managed to state. “I’m sorry for being here.”

 Her sentence made him frown and he lightly laughed when he was already parallel to her. “Don’t be. I consider you a guest at my house.”

 She didn’t know if she should be also apologetic while she was grateful. It was, she realized, somehow rude of her to have assumed that her being here was an inconvenience to the owner of the house.

 “Oh! Where are my manners?” The aged man then said, “My name is Imago Dunong. I’m not exactly a physician, but I’m a physicist and an inventor. How about you?”

 Noumenon gulped. Her throat was still very dry. “I’m Noumenon Rosaryo.” She chose to introduce herself using her adoptive mother’s family name; her original felt like a curse to her identity. The vice mayor, dreadfully her father, she thought, may have translated it to another language but it will never hide the criminal that he is.

 She continued, “I was a novice.”

 “Was?”

 She nodded. She had already stripped off her connection to her vocation when she took off the ring that symbolized her vows to God, and she isn’t going back. She will pursue vengeance however it will be possible, and even if it’s the last thing she’ll do.

 “Thank you for saving me, sir.”

 “Call me ‘Doctor’, Noumenon.” He smiled. “I wouldn’t say that I single-handedly saved you though. You were brought here by my friend after all.”

 Her brow was raised. It couldn’t be. She thought.

 “Friend?”

 “Oh, of course, you’re not aware. I’ll let you meet him soon, but first: let’s have breakfast.”

 If trusting a stranger’s words wasn’t exactly her cup of tea, this time, she didn’t think she should be suspicious, especially that she was, again, pulled away from death by the doctor along with his friend whom she’ll be meeting shortly.