Chapter: Jake Darwin
Jake Darwin. That's my name.
I'm an author, a web novel author to be precise. However, that only came to be after I had practically consumed a few terabytes worth of movies, animes, books, and novels. I can't place what exactly brought about this desire to write. Perhaps it was out of boredom, or just the novelty of bringing my ideal story into reality.
There were a lot of books I read in my life, 80% of them with endings that left this bitter feeling in my chest. In fact, I came to have a sort of phobia for endings—be it movies or novels. Once I noticed a story was nearing its end, I would drop a review and leave so I wouldn't end up hating it just for that one detail that didn't sit right with me. Perhaps that was the main reason after all, the desire to bring a story to an end which I considered ideal.
So I joined a platform as a writer with the pen name Merciful_Creator.
Yes, I know. Cringe.
But it was the only thing that satisfied me after an initial endless search for a name that wasn't already in use. But that's besides the point.
The novel was titled Records of Atlantis, and the first chapter came with me staring at a blinking cursor on the Notepad app in my phone. The next three chapters were the same story, but with a lot of staring at my ceiling as well. With time, it all started to come together. My creation was taking form, no longer just flitting ideas in my head but an actual story that people came to appreciate. I don't know why, but it made me so happy, and that was literally the first time in my life I felt that way.
From as far back as I remember, I had always had a psychological problem. A disconnection from reality that never felt quite like I was living. A hollow feeling of being a spectator in your own life. The feeling of viewing my life from a third person's perspective. So I HARDLY felt genuine emotions like people around me would. Most of what I portrayed were trained responses I came to perfect.
"Did you hear? That guy's mom just died."
"Oh... that's bad."
There was no empathy, just the pretense of one. I knew I had a problem—I always did. But knowing didn't mean anything would change. It was who I was, what I was. I couldn't alter myself to become NORMAL, not that I even understood what it meant to be normal in the first place. So I lived with it. No one noticed anyway. With how good I was at faking it, with time I became adept at picking up hints and realizing when to react in certain ways depending on the situation, mostly by mimicking the emotions I saw from the people around me.
You could lie to everyone else, but not yourself.
Deep down, I still knew something was wrong with me. However, for once in my life, I had something, something that made me smile, a feeling that came from seeing how much people actually loved my work.
Now, let's take a step back to how it all happened.
One day, a day just like any other, I was invited out on a date by a certain girl known as Emy, a girl I discovered I had feelings for.
Yeah. I was surprised as well.
I? Actually liked someone?
At first, I had thought it was some heart illness or something equally stupid, but who could blame me. I had never felt such intense feelings before. It was so alien to me. The nervousness I always had around her, the rapid beating of my heart whenever our eyes met—it all made me feel like I was developing some deadly heart-related illness. But with time, I came to realize it wasn't that. I was just attracted to her, as a guy would be attracted to a girl. That was just it.
The problem, however, was the fact that she seemed to hate me for some reason.
When our eyes met, she would instantly look away. When I gave a casual greeting, she would just hum in response, and sometimes she wouldn't respond at all. Whenever it was me saying something during a project or practical which we were coincidentally paired up in, she would always find ways to make me look stupid. Sometimes she would just straight up glare at me whenever I tried to initiate a conversation.
With time, I realized she just wasn't into me, so I gave up and decided to forget about her.
However, I think my sudden retaliatory animosity and indifference got on her nerves for some reason. I don't know why though. She was always doing it, so why get mad when I decided to play along?
One day, while playing a truth or dare game with some coursemates, things got out of hand and she literally confronted me. She blew everything out of proportion right there in front of everyone. She said something about my act to get her attention being childish or something along those lines. I didn't really talk much during that confrontation—the talking was done on my behalf by my friends—but all in all, she embarrassed herself that day. It all backfired on her spectacularly.
From that day forward, she suddenly became friendly. I wasn't an idiot though. I knew she was up to something, probably planning some elaborate revenge to get back at me for how things played out. So I did the smartest thing I could do—I ignored her existence completely. In fact, I think I took it too far with the whole thing. Maybe it was the desire to make her have a taste of her own medicine, or just me being careful and cautious. I couldn't really tell.
With time, the opposite situation began to play out, just this time she seemed to have thrown all her sense of shame out the window. She literally moved from being an unwanted friend to a jealous girlfriend I never asked for.
It started small at first.
She would show up at places I frequented. The library where I studied between classes. The cafeteria where I ate lunch. The convenience store I stopped at on my way home. At first, I thought it was coincidence. The campus wasn't that big after all. But then I started noticing patterns. She was always there, always watching, always finding excuses to be in my vicinity.
Then came the texts.
Good morning.
Did you eat breakfast?
I saw you talking to that girl from Math class. Who is she?
I ignored most of them. The ones I didn't ignore, I kept my responses short and cold. I thought maybe she'd get the hint and back off.
She didn't.
Instead, things escalated. She started sitting closer to me in classes we shared, started asking mutual friends about my schedule, what I liked, what my hobbies were. Started showing up at the gym when I worked out, claiming she'd just started a new fitness routine. The coincidences piled up until they stopped being coincidences at all.
With time, she became a huge problem, so obsessed that I couldn't even deny it anymore.
She literally stalked me.
I started to feel chills whenever I was heading home in the company of someone, especially if that someone was female. I would catch glimpses of her in the distance, watching from behind corners, sitting in her car across the street, always keeping her distance but always THERE.
Even I couldn't believe it. This was the same girl who wouldn't even acknowledge my greetings months ago. The same girl who made me feel like an idiot for even trying to be friendly. Now she was following me around like I was the center of her entire world.
With time, it grew worse. It moved from just stalking to harassing people around me.
My female classmates started avoiding me. Some of them told me directly that she'd approached them, warning them to stay away from me. Others just stopped talking to me altogether without explanation. My study group fell apart. Girls I'd known for years suddenly treated me like I had some kind of contagious disease.
Then I found out why.
She'd been sending them messages. Anonymous at first, then blatantly from her own accounts when anonymity stopped working. Threatening them. Telling them to back off. Calling them all sorts of names. Some of the messages were just warnings. Others were detailed descriptions of what she'd do if they didn't stay away from me.
I confronted her about it once.
She smiled. Actually SMILED. Like she'd done nothing wrong. Like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"They were getting too close," she said simply. "I was just protecting what's mine."
"I'm not YOURS," I told her firmly. "We're not dating. We're not even friends."
Her smile faltered for just a second, then returned even brighter. "Not yet. But you will be. You'll see. Once all these distractions are gone, you'll realize we're meant to be together."
That's when I realized she had gone wack.
I tried everything. I reported her to campus security. They gave her a warning. She stopped for a week, then started again. I blocked her number. She got new numbers. I blocked her on social media. She made new accounts. I avoided places she frequented. She found new places to frequent.
The worst part was watching her decline mentally with each rejection.
She stopped taking care of herself. Her appearance, which had always been neat and put-together, became disheveled. Dark circles appeared under her eyes. She lost weight. In classes, she would just stare at me for the entire duration, not even pretending to pay attention to the lecture. Her grades dropped. Her friends distanced themselves from her.
And through it all, she kept insisting we belonged together.
Eventually, I had to accept her as my girlfriend. I was starting to worry about what she might do—to herself, to others, or to me—if I kept pushing her away.
For some reason, I felt like I was responsible.
And there was the fact that I still felt THAT way towards her, so it wasn't that difficult a thing to do.
So I gave in. I agreed to date her. I told myself it was temporary, that maybe with time she'd get bored or realize this wasn't healthy.
I won't lie. I had dared to think that would be the craziest experience I would ever have in my life.
But it wasn't.
Not even close.
On a certain day, she had invited me on a date. If I remember correctly, on that day I was dead bored and had hit a literal wall of Jericho in my novel, so I thought it was a good idea.
It wasn't.
It was right there and then, while walking towards the entrance of the restaurant, that I heard the loud screeching of tires and screaming. The moment I turned back, all I saw was a tumbling van, and that was all.
I died.
I mean, I must have, to have ended up in this world.
At first, I cried. I don't know why it hurt so much, so damn much it took me a really long time to accept this was reality. However, I just couldn't stop the tears from coming, or the pain in my chest that wouldn't go away.
But as though that wasn't bad enough, things got even worse when I realized where I was, and who I was.