Beware

It was a frightfully cold and misty, rainy night when I was murdered. No one saw it coming, not even me, the victim.
I was coming home on my usual route. The only thing unusual back then was the weather-almost as if predicting something bad - 2 degrees Celsius in June.
Ever since I died, I have been keeping my eyes open for clues as to who had killed me. Detective instincts, I thought… But wouldn’t you want to know who killed you?
Yes, I am a detective…and I had recently been given a case of a serial killer. However, I wasn’t scared; I didn’t think he would hunt me down too. I didn’t think he had a reason to, I thought it was unfair.
What I didn’t know back then, was that he didn’t need a reason to do what he did. Before becoming a detective, I could say I hadn’t been the best person in the world. I have done some bad things- horrific in fact- in my life, but that didn’t give him permission to just take my life away.

Let me tell you about my murderer. His name is Tidus Zwei. His way of thinking, and looking at things was different-as if colour blind- he saw life in a different light. Maybe he didn’t see life at all, all he saw was death. That rush of blood to the head, that adrenaline pumping through his body when he saw someone suffering, that feeling of achievement, accomplishment was all he saw and understood. In other words, a sick man, a psycho, you get what I mean.
In total Tidus has killed 20 people, 21 if I include myself. All the victims were born on the 22nd, all of them killed on their birthdays. He made sure the bodies were found at exactly 22:22.pm. And yet, he was never found, never a trace, never a clue, all the police knew was that it was him ,the same one, whoever he was. Putting 2 and 2 together, anyone can see that I would not be his last sufferer- there was one more.

On the same date, last year, I promised myself and my loved ones that I would do anything in my power to not let them get hurt. The one I was most worried about was my twin brother, Aryan. His birthday is on the 22nd of June -in a week. I’ll come straight to the point here: I was suspecting him to be the next-and last- victim. It broke my heart to know that I was the reason why he was in danger. I admit to some uncontrollable haunting towards Zwei, numerous white nights, visits, countless nightmares, endless loathing…. What can I say? I am not exactly a peaceful soul, he made me this way, this restless, this malevolent. In a way, it all adds up, he made me suffer, so I made him suffer. But people like him just don’t get it. He didn’t understand that I had to even things out, I had to make him feel at least a third of the pain I felt, I had to…

He took away my life. I was swimming in an ocean full of lost souls -literally!- and I couldn’t find my way up, or down, I was standing in motion… while my mind raced through thoughts, plans, hopes and dreams, and my body stood still. He had full control over me, he was going to take the last good thing away from me, my other half, my brother.
As I think most of you would have done, dead or alive, I tried to stop it, I tried to save him, to save myself…from sinking.

Here’s what happened:
My predictions were correct. On Aryan’s birthday, Tidus was ready for him, ready for action. Because Aryan was really just a small revenge against me, Zwei was keeping it simple: a shot between the eyes. He waited for my brother to get home, where he waited patiently, hidden in the dark.
Come to think of it now, being a ghost wasn’t all that bad, I wasn’t just a ghost, I was a poltergeist. I could make myself noticed, I could hang on to real life objects. Pretty nifty, don't you agree?
So when he pointed the gun towards Aryan, I grabbed hold of it, struggling for power, struggling for life , even if just for a few moments. I managed to get hold of it partly, but I didn’t have time to point it away, before I knew it, a bullet shot through the air, towards my dear brother’s heart… Then, all I could hear were his heartbeats, in distress-as if out of rhythm- heartbeats that stopped when the clock turned 22:22, innocent heartbeats that were searching for survival in desperation, never finding it. In that split second, I thought the whole pulse of the world had stopped, in time with his. I killed him.

As the police sirens could be heard across the street, Tidus Zwei hung himself, realizing that he would be caught, blamed for the murder of Aryan, and the 21 other murders. Of course I was long gone and anyway, they wouldn’t suspect that a vicious ghost in fact had done it.
All that's left now are souls, lost, innocent souls and souls full of guilt. Here I am again, drowning in my own sorrow, stuck in that same ocean with no exits.