They barely touched the back of his head when everything suddenly went completely black and silent.
*******
"Who are you?" Liam asked the monster before him. He was standing in the middle of a cave.
"I am you," the monster he asked replied with a smile.
Liam looked at the red eyes of the man-monster before him and she could not help that nauseous feeling.
The man was a foot taller than him with long nails and violet-colored skin. He could not call him a complete monster but he was many levels far from being human.
"You don't seem pleased by such an announcement. You know you are not as human as you think you are so you might as well accept the news, I have brought to you."
"News?" Liam scoffed feeling offended to have been called this man-monster before him.
"Yes, the news that I am you and you are me. I am that inner consciousness that has protected you so far," the man told him seriously as he sat down cross-legged on the ground of the cave.
"I don't care what you think you are but you and I are not going to have such a conversation." Liam looked around for an exit. The strong aura of death that enveloped the man made him feel like he fell into a snake hole.
"I have slowly discovered that you are a very moody person like a woman," the monster laughed heartily.
Liam looked at the man and shook his head. He was strongly unwilling to believe the man before him was what he was with his vision tinted.
He was not a fool to not know what was happening and how this man was very connected to him but he was simply in another level of a denial state. He had experienced such a denial state but seeing the monster he was scared the hell out of him.
"If there a way we can change your appearance a little?" he asked when he could not see an escape route from the cave.
The man looked down at his long black nails and shook his head. "Why do you want to change my appearance?"
"Could we fix lips over those teeth of yours?" he asked thoughtfully. A part of the man's face belonged to a human. A small part, about one-third of his face but the rest looked like a skeleton merged into the face of a rabbit.
After concluding that he was a rabbit man-monster, Liam was forced to rethink such a conclusion as he could not place the face of a rabbit over the man's face and get it matched even to thirty percent.
"You should not try to think of what to call, that is too egotistical," the man-monster told him. "And stop calling me a man-monster. Does that make any sense to you? You need to upgrade your vocabulary to get a better name for me."
Liam narrowed his eyes as he wondered who was being an egotist between the two of them. "You are being rude. If you live in me, that makes you a tenant, right?" Liam asked to put this man-monster where he belonged.
"No, you are the tenant." He laughed excitedly. "I cannot believe we are about to have the battle to determine who this body belongs to." The man shook his head as he stood up from his cross-legged position and flexed the firm muscles of his well-built body.
Liam paused his lips and shook his head again when the man began approaching him. The muscles of his chest moved slightly yet majestically with every move he made as only his lower body was covered in a pair of black long hakama trousers.
Liam swallowed despite how much he was unwilling to accept the fact that he was feeling intimidated by the man whose tall muscular body that made him look like a bodybuilder continued approaching him.
His violet skin seemed to glow like scales but as the man got closer, he discovered it was not scaled and the man was way more than a foot taller than him.
He took an attack stance with his fist clenched one under his chin and the other further ahead. The man smiled and shook his head.
"You look like a scared little mouse. I do not wish to hurt you because I will feel the pain. I have known you to be very egotistical during the past few weeks but I did not expect you to be so bent on creating enmity between us."
Liam frowned and looked away.
"Relax. In an evolved monster, there are three arms of control and existence. One of them is the monster being that human can shift into. We have the human part – stop glaring at me because I called the monster part first.
"The third arm is the soul of that person that either disappears, goes to hell or heaven," the monster explained returning to his former position.
"Who told you all this?" Liam asked as he had a strong feeling the monster was lying. If anything, he should be the soul, right?
"You must think I am not making sense," the monster concluded with a sigh. "I wish I could come up with a better way to make you understand but at the end of the day, I can only explain it to you with all the information I got from your thoughts."
Liam wondered why those words sounded like they all sum up to mean he was not intelligent enough to have better ideas of their situation they were in.
"You look like you are about to explode," the man mocked.
"And you look like you are having a lot of fun."
"No, I don't. I wish we were someone else. You are so boring. I have saved your life more times than you could imagine."
"It does not look like you have an option, you will die if I die."
"Pride and more pride, we will both die if the body gets destroyed and the soul will most likely disappear or face a judgment of some sort for all the people you and I have killed."
Liam sighed and sat down on the dirty ground. He was sure that he looked like a displaced person or a criminal on an African news channel after getting caught with the way he hugged his knee.
"Let me add some sense to all I have said."
Liam was no longer paying any attention to the man. He was thinking of getting out of this cave that felt like a dungeon he might never escape especially with this man getting on his nerve.
"You and I are one." He paused thoughtfully. "Oh, I said that earlier." He laughed happily and shook his head. "I am you when your vision turns red."
He finally said something that pulled Liam out of his calculated thoughts.