"How do you know...my name?"
The panic, concealed in anger. So great, the panic, that made me shiver. Tremble. Shake. Me who was such a master of composure...I had failed. For once, I had failed in my objective, after all of the work and effort I had put into it, all the effort I had put into erasing my true self from the world.
He still knew my name.
The darkness surrounding me was not only the nature of the room, but was also clouding my mind, clouding it with the dark prospect of failure. I had been so confident that no one would know, no one would recognize, that I had hidden myself so well, I was a different person.
I had been too confident.
Once upon a time, solving my problem would only have taken a moment, a second, two at the most. A simple slash, or a deathly hold...I could have erased him from the world, left no evidence to tie his death to me, and my plan would have been complete. Except for the vow that I had made. I had made that vow, to myself. That kind of vow was the strongest, the most condemning, and it pulled at my mind as I stood over this man, leaning the palms of my strong hands on the arms of his chair. My hair lightly touched the top of his head, he could probably feel my breath against his shortly-cut hair. I could feel his trembling through the wood of the chair, to which he was strapped, set in the centre of such a desolate, abandoned room. The carpet beneath my feet was worn, the red colour had faded mostly, as had the pattern. My shining black shoes looked rich in comparison. The wooden floor, visible around the carpet in its dark hue, seemed ready to give way. Old, crumbling, it could fall out beneath one's feet without warning. The four poster bed, with its tattered red hangings, sat against the right wall, old, forlorn, and forgotten. A candle, burning and flickering its light across the room, making suspicious shadows, sat on the small table by the door, the old wooden door with its brass handle.
The shadows that flickered over my face gave me an even darker appearance. The man shaking beneath me, so much so that he could not tell that I myself was trembling, had a look of extreme fear on his young, once confident features. My black hair hung slightly over my face, hiding only my eyes due to its shorter length. My eyes, the ones that could tell this man my fears and pains if he could only see them.
I would not let him see them; my dark, sorrowful eyes.
Sweat beaded on my brow, tricked down to the tip of my pointed nose. My pale skin glowed in the darkness, brightened only by that flickering candle flame in the corner. The shadows on my face and my body, fluttering over my white dress shirt with two buttons undone, over my black pants into which the shirt was tucked, onto my black shoes that still shone with polish. And the man here, under my power, saw me as the last thing he would ever see.
But could I live up to that expectation that he had? Could I kill him, alone in this dark room, while he had no escape, even after I had vowed to myself not to take a human life ever again without good reasoning?
Was there ever a good reason to take a life? Did I have the right to take all this man had, all of it, gone in an instant to send him to death's door? I had the means. That was not the question. I had the abilities. The question was, did I have the right? I could kill him. But would I?
"How...do you know...my name...?" Panting now, I asked him, the same question again. How did he know? When I was sure that I had never met him, and that I had erased all traces of myself, how did this man know who I was? "Where did you hear...that name?"
My knuckles were white, gripping the arms of this wooden chair with such intensity and ferocity that the wood began to splinter and crack. The feel, the sound, like breaking a bone...
"How do you know?!"
I had surely lost all composure now, yelling, as my rage took over and I fell back into the mentality that there was no way I would ever be forgotten. I had done to much. I yelled again, at this man, the question that I so desperately and so desperately did not want the answer to.
"How do you know my name?!"
His muted state was nearly too much for me to handle. If I had not needed information from him, I surely would have killed him in that moment. Perhaps I would have snapped his neck...or stabbed him with my knife repeatedly...or beat him repeatedly before killing him by some other way. It was my need for what he knew that stayed my hand and prevented my from breaking my vow to myself. I needed to know what he would not tell me, and since I could not kill him...I would have to extract the knowledge from him.
Then, I already knew, that I would kill him. After I knew what he knew...before the torture even started, I knew that I would soon kill him. Either after I got what I needed...or after I decided that he wouldn't give it to me.
His fate was sealed. And my determination to break my vow...was certain.
