Case Files 013

The suppressed voice exploded. The cackle appeared hollow in the underground. The killer slowly stood up, but he still faced away from me. His voice was like shredded fabric. "What I want is this body!"

Then he moved his arm to swipe all the bowls off the table. The bowls shattered crisply against the floor, and the shards flew everywhere. I could feel some of the shards cutting me. The killer then stomped madly against the bowls. The white bowls with the 12 painted Zodiac Signs were ground down into small pieces. It was like he hated these bowls with a passion. I believed I understood his intention, but there were still many questions.

He screamed madly until my eardrums shook. He vented everything. He shouted until his face was red, and then he finally stopped. His face bulged with veins, and he didn't look at all like the gentle uncle from earlier. As he caught his breath, he said, "That felt amazing. You definitely haven't experienced this before. The world is now quiet, and I have control over everything."

It was now over 7. Guan Zhenglin was in serious danger. I could imagine the knife cutting into her body and her body drenching the bed. Guan Zhenglin's dead body leaned on the bed. It was a picture of death and helplessness.

I said, "I don't care what you want. Tell me the address."

The uncle shrugged and said, "It was not me who caught your girlfriend. It was Ze. She said guys like us should not see the girl naked. I didn't mind it, and Yama was asleep." A bad feeling rose in my heart. Sometimes being too clever was not a good thing. The uncle wanted the body. After all, a dumb person might live with another persona forever, but a clever person wouldn't allow another persona's existence. I demanded with a shaking voice. "You mean the other personas have disappeared? You're the only one left?"

He nodded and sat at the table. "That's right."

My heart sank. Something precious was lost from my life. My legs wobbled, and I knelt to the ground. My brain was a mess. I tried to tell myself that perhaps Gu Chen had already saved Guan Zhenglin. However, even I couldn't believe myself. I didn't want to say anything or do anything. After all, everything had gone to waste. I knew going into this career death was a constant. We might die at any moment. We could be killed on the job or taken revenge by others. So many people wanted us dead. But when I faced death head-on, I understood death was more than just a simple word. It was a dead person, a wilted soul, and many wounded hearts.

While I was in despair, the killer chuckled happily. "From the moment I was born, I planned how to vanquish the other personas. Therefore, I started to study psychology, to research how to cure dissociative personality disorder."

My brain was too muddled to listen to him.

"I realize that dissociative personality disorder is very hard to cure. Medically, there is no way to make these people disappear. But tell me, when you are not the main persona, does this mean you do not have the right to live? We too have feelings and emotions!" The killer's words fell heavily into my ears.

"Every treatment is to balance out all the personas, to have the personas realize each other's existence. Then the doctors will eliminate the stronger personas, to make them disappear or slumber permanently." After a pause, the killer continued, "For a persona like Yama, it is not immoral for him to disappear. He has killed, and he deserves to be killed. But what about me? If I seek help voluntarily, the result will not be better than me taking matters into my own hands."

My tears hit the ground, but my heart was surprisingly calm. Perhaps it was the overwhelming sadness. I just wanted to sleep.

The killer looked at me and said, "As the first persona to realize we suffer from a dissociative personality disorder, I started to gain contact with the other personas. Do you know? Before my appearance, these people couldn't even live. They didn't realize each other's presence and thought they had a mental illness." After a silence, he added, "But they did suffer from a mental illness. I couldn't stand it when one moment I was reading peacefully and the next moment I woke up at the nightclub; one moment, I was enjoying dinner, and the next I was punching someone I didn't even know." The killer pointed at himself. "I admit that I am afraid of death, but which high intelligent person is not afraid of death. At first, I only wanted to make Yama disappear because as long as he was around, I won't know when my last dinner would be. I don't want to be killed or spend my life in prison. But I realized, if I can make Yama disappear, why not make the other personas disappear too?"

I lifted my head to look at the killer. "So you decided to kill them?"

The killer scoffed. "Kill them? Do you think there is any judge who will agree with you? When you cure yourself of a mental illness, is that murder?"

I said, "But you've killed 8 people. Your other personas have disappeared, and you're the only one left. Do you think you can escape the law's judgement?"

The killer shrugged. "That's why I started to videotape my daily life 5 years ago. You must know that dissociative personality disorder is impossible to fake because everything about you changes when a different persona takes over. Your tone, your mannerism, your habit, they will all change."

I frowned. The uncle had planned everything since 5 years ago.

"So you never wanted to help the main persona to find her missing childhood. You never wanted to help her. From the start, you only wanted to help yourself." I looked at the killer and named my accusation. "This is why you spent so much effort to find the 12 bowls. Nothing is more despairing than watching your hope go up in flame. I believe the main persona will never appear again."

The killer nodded. "Their lives are filled with pain. Instead of living with pain, why not let them die in peace? The main persona has been stuck at the same place for 15 years due to an impossible promise; Yama, the bearer of pain, will eventually walk towards destruction; Even Ze, after 15 years of providing comfort, she was tired already."

I looked at the killer and listened to him. From his words, I heard more and more excuses.

"No matter how painful their lives were, they didn't deserve to be wiped out. It was their decision whether to slumber or not, who gave you the right to kill them?" I demanded, "Yama deserved the punishment. He had no bottomline to get the 12 bowls. But what about Ze, what about the little girl? Don't forget. It was she who created you."

The killer guffawed. "In court, I will claim that it was them who begged me to release them. So what if I did kill them, what can you do? Is there a law in this world that says that a persona within a patient of dissociative personality disorder can't kill his other personas?"

I was silent. Of course, there was no such law.

"Because she has created me, so I had to make her disappear, do you understand? You are not us. Can you imagine her waiting for her mother to appear after she has finished painting all 12 bowls? When that time arrives, she would understand real despair and sadness." The killer looked at me, and his boobs rose and fell. "I couldn't bear to see that so I couldn't let her finish. Having hope is good but having that hope destroyed is more than enough to ruin someone. She is going to die anyway, but I want to spare her the destruction of her mind before she died. You don't understand anything." The killer became more agitated as tears rolled in his eyes. "Like how you called me a hermaphrodite! We are just different from others. Does that mean we do not deserve to live in this world?"