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My dearest Nikolai,

Although I have always been an eloquent man, as I try to write this letter my words fail me. It appears they’ve hidden somewhere deep inside my soul, in places I, myself, hesitate to search.

And to think I call myself a genius.

Perhaps I should start there. Because that’s the thing that’ll never change. It won’t change after I’m done writing this letter, and it won’t change after you’ve read it to the end. After these words have disappeared, I’ll still be a genius. I’ll still be Demon Dostoyevsky, and I’ll be on my mission. This time, without any distractions.

What about you? Where does that leave you?

You see, Nikolai, that’s precisely where the problem lies. And perhaps I’m making it worse by writing this letter: perhaps this is just the latest cruel trick I’m playing on you. The cruelty of putting your fate, my fate, into words. Perhaps you’ll burn this letter.

After all, it would be silly of me to expect you to stain this paper with your tears, to clutch the letter to your chest like a heartbroken maiden in some old-fashioned romance.

I digress. That’s all I seem capable of doing, when it comes to you.

Where is this letter going to leave you? I have no clue. For the first time in a long, long time, I have no idea what’s going to happen, I am making a move in the darkness, throwing pieces from the chessboard. I don’t expect you to be thankful for that. I don’t need it. I would simply like you to understand. The point is, you can burn this letter for all I care: you can laugh it off like the jester you are. I won’t even know.

But deep down, I know that you feel it.

It’s no use denying it.

You are an enigma, Nikolai Vasil’evich, but I know. I know that all of this meant something to you. I know I meant something to you.

Or maybe it was the image you had built of me, the icon, the saint that you longed to destroy, that meant something. What difference does that make?

Through all your delusions, you still saw something in me that no one else ever could.

That something drove you mad.

It became your obsession – I became your obsession.

You sought to destroy me, what you saw in me – to capture it, choke it, kill it. Kill heaven’s light, so you wouldn’t be able to see yourself anymore.

And there, amidst all of that, that’s when I made my mistake.

I thought that was all there was to you.

Fool that I was!

I might be God’s hand, Nikolai, but not to you. Never to you.

I started believing that was what you were trying to hide, the secret at your core, what moved you to act every second of your life: me. How wrong was I.

Now I understand that I was merely a symbol, a symbol standing for something else, something I’ll never know. I thought you simple, my friend, I thought you easy to see through. Instead, you were dancing to some secret music I couldn’t hear, writing your dreams in an alphabet I can never decipher.

What is it about you, Nikolai?

What moves you?

Who’s the man behind the mask?

I still don’t know.

And thus, I became the one trying to trap you. I chased after you, I pulled you into my bed, I watched you sleep in my arms, and still I never found out. (I always blamed it all on you, the way we fell into lust, always claimed that I was only following your lead, lowering myself to your desires. I was lying.)

And that was how you captured me.

I had been building a prison for you. You and I had both been building that prison. Yet, you ended up holding the key.

Should I call it for what it is, my friend? Should I write that terrible word? (Should a word alone hold that much power?)

You captured me, body and soul. You ruined me.

And if it was ever a choice, I allowed it, but either way, I admitted it to myself.

You never did admit that I had ruined you too. Ruined you without understanding your secret – ruined you because I didn’t understand you.

We ruined each other, and we shouldn’t even be capable of love.

I cannot say I’m sorry. After all, I’m a demon.

(You’ve always loved that about me.)

Just know, Mykolo, that you’ll never be free.

Just know that, for a moment, I joined you in your cage.

That time is over now. It will never come back.

May it never come back.

I have come to the conclusion that I cannot say the words that are burning in my chest. The sickness that is devouring my heart. You never did reveal your secret: why should I reveal mine? Why should I spit my heart out in front of you, for you to see it and hold it, covered in blood? No. All I’m going to say is, remember me. You would remember me either way, but I’ll still say this. Remember me, Kolya, and never know peace.

I will never forget you.

Yours,

Fyodor