The Ruined Ones

Chapter Eight

In his dream, Shaun was wandering along a deserted dirt road. Lewis was to his left, a heavily pregnant Katrina was to his right and although Shaun recognized the road they were walking along, some things were different.

The sky on the day this dream reflected, had been a beautiful azure blanket stretching above them, cloudless for as far as the eye could see, but the sky above them now was red. Scarlet with wavy purple stripes breaking the colour up here and there, like violet snakes slithering through blood.

There was thunder in the distance and lightning flashed occasionally. The lightning was green like poison. The ground they walked on was more like gravel than dirt and there were buildings up ahead in the distance, yet on the day this dream was imitating, there had been nothing but trees and fields for miles.

All at once, there was another man walking with them, his arm draped around Katrina's shoulders as if they were lovers. They were talking to each other. The conversation was distorted, so Shaun only caught snippets of it—none of it making any sense.

"They said it was the best movie they ever saw," the man said. "But once I show you my car, you'll disagree."

"Is it the one Melinda took to my party?" Katrina replied.

Shaun watched them, a hot, writhing feeling knotting up his insides. "Hey, what are you two talking about?" He asked.

They ignored him, as if he wasn't even there. He moved closer to them. "Hello? I asked you a question." Still they kept talking as if he wasn't even there. The writhing, hot feeling inside him flared, scorching his insides. Jealousy.

He pulled the pistol from his belt, even though he had a shot gun in his hand. He pointed it right at the man, directly at his head.

"To hell with you," he said and pulled the trigger.

There was a thunderous boom overhead, masking the explosion of the gunshot. He looked up. When he looked back down again, it was Katrina he had shot in the head; however, her stomach was also bleeding.

"No!" He cried out and threw himself to the ground. "Oh, honey, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to, Kat. Please wake up, honey, please. Wake up!"

He was shaking her, her head lolling about, eyes staring blankly in shock with blood trickling from her skull onto her face and dripping to the ground.

"You dumb, prick," the man said. "Look what you have done?"

Shaun saw red.

He leapt to his feet, suddenly holding an arrow in his hand and he began to stab it repeatedly into the man who was now Bomba. He was stabbing him in the arm, the chest, the face. He stabbed him over and over. Still, Bomba didn't cry out. He only laughed.

"It's not like I raped her, Shaun," he said. "She wanted me. She came on to me. She waggled her tasty little crotch in front of me and she loved every inch of my piece in her and I'd fuck her again. Even now while she lays there bleeding and lifeless."

Shaun leapt at him, taking him to the ground. The arrow was now a knife and he was hacking at the man's throat. Still, Bomba laughed. Shaun hacked and hacked until he cut the laughing head off in a spray of blood.

The head's eyes went wide and rolled back in its skull, becoming silent...Only for a moment.

Seconds later, its tongue lolled out of its mouth and began to flick up and down in a sexually suggestive gesture.

"Oh, come here Katty crotch," the head said, beginning to laugh again.

Shaun screamed at it to shut up. He grabbed it by the hair, blood dripping down his already bloody, knife-wielding arm—the weapon now vanished—and he threw the head into the paddock adjacent to the road.