Be careful and wake up from your slumber, you are not the center of the universe, you are not the sun and everything revolves around you, you are just a human being born to suffer, if you fall, crawl and struggle until you get up, and do not wait for someone's hand to pull you, if you cry, the sky will not rain and the sun will not darken, even the ants will not change their path. So cry as much as you want, but be careful to wipe away your tears so as not to disturb the serenity of the inhabited world. Lean on your arm, pat yourself on the shoulder, carry your happy and sad news and collect them to throw them into the sea, for you are alone.
Do not say: Why, and do not pity yourself; for if you did, they would not move a muscle, but they would call you (pitiful), they would speak with their lips, but they would do nothing to you. And if your back is bent and your bones are dried by the days and decades, then wait for the nearest large crowd and lie down under their moving feet, and be careful that they charm you until nothing is left of you, because you will have no wailing wall, and your name will remain (pitiful) only.
You are alone now, Adam, alone.
Where are you now, Mom? The situation has become unbearable.
I miss you and I miss your warm embrace, the only place on the planet that contains pure safety, that lullaby that used to soothe my soul and restore my peace.
It is said that long ago there was one unique story that mothers of the world would tell their children once and give them peace for life. But one day, the mothers woke up one morning feeling not well.
They forgot the song.
They tried again and again to no avail.
Since that day, every mother tries to tell her child a story before bedtime.
You may remember.
It is strange that our mothers give us all the tenderness at an age when we are not allowed to understand it, while we are deprived of it when we grow up and are in dire need of it.
The ambulance left carrying Shadia in a last attempt to save her after she miraculously survived in a way I could not have imagined.
What now?
No one is with me now, especially not alive. Sama is still in the hands of the scoundrel, he took her and left the place, but I know she is still alive, if I were him I wouldn't give up this last card that can be saved if things go wrong.
And here is Ramez's body lying in the corridor, and inside the torture room is Adel's body.
I searched everywhere, I must find something, what is that glowing in the dark? Is it a phone? Maybe it is Sama's phone, her picture is on the screen, and surely, Adam's number - my look-alike - is written on it, but what after I call him?! Will he just tell me his location?! Or will I have given him a chance to escape and slip out of my grip?
Potato fridge, he said he worked in the potato fridge, but there were hundreds, which one did he mean?
There's no time. I don't know when the dose will run out and I'll be back in my own dimension.
Come on Adam, think, think, you've always been a clever rascal who can get out of any predicament you find yourself in.
Come on use your powers Egyptian magician, isn't that what everyone calls you, the magician?
Come on, come on.
Oh, my God.
I had this devilish idea.
Then I couldn't help but smile.
Terrible things are about to happen, I can swear.
*****
Sama woke up to find herself handcuffed to a chair in a dark room with a ray of light streaming in from one of the tightly closed windows. The room looked like a warehouse for old furniture and smelled of mold and dust. A sharp pain in the back of her head was what remained of an old blow that had knocked her unconscious and was the way to get into this room without any fuss. He had brought her to his residence where he lived. Had he become that desperate?
With her headache, the pain in her heart was still throbbing, the pain of a mother who had passed away, the pain of a lover who had betrayed, and the greatest pain was that this lover was the reason for her mother's death. She cried bitterly, she cried as she had never cried before, rather she cried as if she had never known crying. She spent entire hours crying until her tears dried up.
The sound of approaching footsteps made her senses alert like a cat, then a key was turned in the door to open.
She started screaming when Adam's doppelganger appeared in front of her, silencing her with his fist over her mouth and a cold blade on her neck.
" Don't tempt me to do it. Shut up."
Her eyes bulged in horror, then her limbs went still.
" Do as I tell you, and I promise you will stay alive."
She shouted:
"No, kill me; I don't want to live. Kill me, please."
He looked out the window suspiciously to make sure no one was paying attention, then looked back at her and said:
" I would do it, believe me, but I can't seem to."
He leaned towards her, playing with a lock of her hair, then whispered:
" It seems I still have feelings for you."
The answer surprised her, so she laughed hysterically, tears dripping from her chin, and said:
" What? Feelings?! You sick man, you killed my mother."
He replied, saying:
" And your father too! I killed them both. As for you, every time I want to, I find myself unable to do it. So, as I said before, don't give me a good reason to do it."
Then Adam started noticing strange behavior from the passersby below his house. Everyone was looking at their cell phones, then looking directly at him.
What is happening?
There was also this old man who was in one of the booths facing the house, watching something on a customer's phone, then he left the booth to be in the middle of the street, then his eyes were fixed on the top, examining the floor where Adam lives .
Something is wrong ! What is this thing that everyone is looking at on their phones that makes their eyes fixate on his place like this?!
He rushed to grab his phone, searching with it until his eyes settled on a video clip that had set social media on fire. He turned it to see Adam, his lookalike, sitting in front of the camera, with the corpses of two police officers in the background, saying:
" My name is Adam Wagih, and for those who may be concerned: I have killed two officers, and these are their bodies. So please arrest me, because now I intend to kill more and more police officers." He ended the clip with a wide smile that settled like a bullet in the head of the butcher.
He stammered and could not find the words. He looked back out the window to find the old man standing among a group of policemen, pointing upwards, specifically to the spot from which he was looking out.
They caught sight of him and ran into the building.
Then Adam knew it was time to escape.
***
I sat in Baher's jeep, the engine running ready to take off, feverishly following the news about the butcher that the entire police was now searching for. The news was scattered here and there until my eyes fell on what I had been waiting for.
Breaking news just came in saying:
"Police in hot pursuit of serial killer."
I drove off, greedily roaming the streets, one hand on the steering wheel and the other feeling the cold gun under my clothes for the procession.
I have to get my hands on this bastard before the police do, I have to kill him myself.
And so I wandered the streets until the noise attracted me.
The scene from above was majestic. From the top of the bridge, you see Adam's motorbike, followed by police cars like a gazelle pursued by a herd of angry lions to devour it. They did not care about passersby, so they began to destroy and trample everyone who got in their way in anger. It was revenge, and what kind of revenge? This person had mocked them in public and killed two of them, mutilating their bodies. If they did not catch him, put him in a meat grinder, and eat him, they would never regain their prestige again. So, the chase was desperate and bullets were fired, penetrating every car that came their way. Because the lookalike knew what was coming, he too tried desperately to escape their clutches.
I also did not care about what came my way, it was war, and casualties were inevitable in order to end this dark chapter of my life. I broke through the lines of police cars that looked like a raging herd until I was next to one of them , whose motorcycle tire was hit by a bullet, and he almost fell had he not clung to one of the cars loaded with butane gas cylinders, leaving his bike to flip over and then spin in the air, barely passing over my car in a tumultuous manner to hit one of the police cars that came after him, which in turn flipped over and spun more than once until it fell from the top of the bridge amidst the screams of the civilian passengers in the cars. The butcher's hand clung to the tail of the car loaded with butane gas cylinders to watch what happened to the police cars with satisfaction, thinking that he had finally escaped their grip. He did not know that there was still another lion following him.
I sped up the car until I was next to him, he was now in my sight.
I picked up the gun, pointed the barrel directly at him, no room for error now.
Then our eyes met, he looked at me and the gun in my hand.
Come on, this is the moment.
I gripped the gun tight, it was heavy and the trigger too, I thought it easier . It hadn't looked like that in any of the movies I'd ever seen. So I squeezed the trigger as hard as I could, until the shot went off.
He suddenly threw himself behind the cylinders in a panic, of course the bullet missed him, I'm not that good at aiming. He sat up straight again in relief before he was taken by the sight of the bullet piercing one of the cylinders from which a long line of blue flames spewed out . He didn't have time to think before the explosion went off, a horrific, deafening explosion. Tongues of flame rose to the sky.
As a result of the explosion, my car flew like a burning shell in the air, then fell back to the ground. The flames that raced to consume my body were no match for the fading that overcame me as I melted away and left the scene.
With a terrible groan, the bridge slowly collapsed like a wounded beast, dragging all the cars it carried with it down, and eventually all of them, with their passengers, lay in the depths of the Nile.
****