"I hear voices in my head." Dakota says, almost lost in the silence.

"What voices?" I whisper back, calmly.

"I.." I listen as he draws in a deep, tremulous breath that seems to carry the weight of unspoken fears.

And it startles me to see this man, who is always brewing with confidence and arrogance, now cowering in nervousness.

"What is it?" I ask him. What is it? My anxieties also question anxiously.

If there is something that making him this nervous, then it must be a very serious thing!

"I hear voices.." Dakota mumbles in a daze, "Like someone is inside me. Someone who is watching everything I do and someone who wants me to act as he wishes. And sometimes, that someone takes over me and becomes me."

A chill runs down my spine, as his words slowly settle into the deeper parts of my brain. I always sensed something was wrong with his head. But I never thought it would be this terrible.

"Dakota.." I hold on to my breath as I whisper my worst fear. "Do you-you have Schizophrenia?"

My heart is beating fast, lashing in and out as I wait for him to deny me. Please tell me I am wrong! Tell me I am delulu!

"Not really, just borderline." His words contradict himself, confusing me more.

"In medical terms, it is called Schizoaffective Auditory Hallucination."

Spider crawls down my neck in absolute fright at his revelation. I am so darn afraid to even ask what is it!

"I hear growls, sometimes strange animal noises and then whispers, which at times turn into roars. Fuck! It's so scary to be able to hear these sounds in my head, when no one else can hear it. It still frightens me."

Oh. My. God! My eyes, mouth, ears, all wide in a spine-chilling shock.

"Have you been hearing them since your childhood?" I remain calm, and ask him even calmly, though my insides are thrashing panickingly.

"No! I wasn't always like this. I.. Fuck! Emara!" Dakota growls frustratingly, sounding like he is on the verge of exploding into a million tiny fragments of wrath. But then I hear him take a deep, unsteady breath of calmness, before he reveals..

"I don't remember having sex with you, nor hiding your clothes, or any of the nights with you." His heart pounding fiercely against my back.

"It was.. not me." He whispers, almost defeatedly.

The room seems to constrict around me, swallowing me deeper as I hear his twisted confession. It.. wasn't.. him?

I feel my heart skip a dreadful beat, a trembling rhythm trying to keep up with the cyclone of emotions storming through me.

Not him? Then who? The questions multiply, each one more unsettling than the last.

"Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be strong. Stronger than my classmates who used to bully me for my feminine name, the older boys in orphanage who beat me for money and forced me to do their bidding, even the abusive people at my shift. I wanted to be stronger, powerful, to protect myself from the daily torment."

Suddenly, his voice grows darker, and louder with a raving anger. "I wished I was strong!"

His raw emotions beats through his chest, and I feel their intensity echoing through me in whips.

"I wished I was fucking strong enough to fight back, to beat the fucking shit out of those motherfuckers. I really wanted to go torture them all personally, one by one, like they fucking did to me."

Dakota pauses, his breathing heavy. "But I was just a boy, and fuck I was too weak.. too powerless."

I close my eyes, as I can practically feel the pain he has been harbouring since his childhood.

"And then one day, Max that bastard from my orphanage, demanded my earnings from night shift, and for once, I wanted to fight back. I opposed and he punched me so hard that I blacked out. And when I woke up, I came to know he was admitted in a hospital because I had savagely beaten him."

A silent gasp escapes my lips, as his words stun me down to the bones. How could something like this be even possible?

"I was shocked. I had no memory of it, nor balls to even commit such violence. As I have always been a guy who hides in library, bury his head in books and the thought of doing something so ruthless was alien to me. But when I looked at Max's condition in the hospital, how broken and terrified he was of me.. It ignited something sickeningly satisfying within me."

A chill of horror runs down my spine, as his voice changes from being a gloomy little boy to a man with searing Viking blood. Something I am very familiar with.

"It made me felt so good, and for once, I felt powerful." Dakota whispers darkly.

"More incidents followed with more blackouts and then I came to know it's a personality defect, a character that comes out of me in the form of rage and violence. I call him Beast. Because whenever the shift happens, he left nothing but bloodshed, bruises and a vicious memory in the minds of whoever came across him."

My mind paralyses as visions of his brutal self comes into my mind, the way he had beaten Ryan on the ground, and then to me, in the bedroom.

He was barbaric, almost like an animal to me.

"My psychiatrist says, the Beast is created by my mind as a defence mechanism, and split it into an alternate personality, which comes out when threatened. But honestly, I never had a problem with it." Dakota says in an unsettling calm voice.

"Whenever I needed him, especially in fights, I would just evoke the pain of my past, recalling the faces of those who bullied me, how they tormented me, and just like that, a powerful force would take over me. Like an enraged bull, blinded with fury, who would destroy anything or anyone standing against him."

His words carry a disturbing pride, something that is strange to digest.

"And I loved it, how I felt no pain, guilt, or remorse, nothing. Not even the memory of the violence I caused in the ring. I only felt the aftermath- the aches, cuts, bruises on my knuckles, and the occasional swelling on my body as an evidence of the vicious fights I have been into. But it never bothered me."

He continues with a twisted sense of satisfaction in his tone.

"People would come and tell me how brutal I was in the ring, how mercilessly I pummeled my opponents, and I loved it. I was unstoppable like a machine, untouchable, unbeatable. They started calling me Alpha and it made me feel so fucking good to be on the top of the pyramid, being admired and scared by everyone."

Lying silently beside him, I absorb his frantic heartbeats, his inhuman words, and his brooding satisfaction, while he talks about enjoying beating the shit out of people.

"Although it was an alternate personality, I never saw my Beast as a flaw. In fact, I never cared, or even looked it as a default in my nervous system, but more like a boon. He gave me confidence, a lime light in crowd, it made me feel like a God! I could see fear in the eyes of men as they stood against me, and desire in women as they approach me. I fucking loved it."

And suddenly the wild, animalistic painting in his cabin flashes in my mind, when he mentioned how people turned him into a monster, but now he enjoys it.

"He made me felt powerful and strong, something I always craved." Dakota breathes with an air of arrogance.

"My beast was my shield, my best friend.. until that accident three years ago." Suddenly, his lofty voice lowers down to almost a depressive whisper.

His heart thuds rapidly through me, as if he has been transported back to that horrifying moment.

"What happened then?" I question gently, nudging his attention and providing a silent space for him to open up, just like I did.

Dakota inhales deeply, and I feel his fervent chest pressing on to my back, before he exhales anxiously.

"That accident just fucked me up so badly.. Physically, emotionally, and mentally that I started hearing voices in my head." He says in a low, hesitant tone.

"It's like through the cracks of my fractured brain, my hidden personality found a voice. It started like a soft whisper of motivation, pushing me to be stronger, but slowly the gentle voice gained power and turned into a roar, bullying me, dominating me to do as he say, and if God-forbid I oppose, then there is a vicious war of control inside my head."

His voice grows dreadful, just like his panicking heart beats.

"And the worst part is.." Dakota pauses, his breaths sounds like a haunted echo before he confesses, "I always lose."

( ͡❛ ͜ʖ ͡❛)

Me finally controlling all my personalities and writing down this chapter. We did it🕺🏻🕴🏻🧍🏻‍♂️

Also, if you are loving the book... which you are.. don't forget to show love by likes and comments 🫶

You might get an update pretty soon ;)