Eight-O-Eight (8:08)

Chapter Eight

 My vision is a blur and all I hear is ringing in my head. I cover my ears with my palms, hoping that the ringing would stop, and blink back my vision to see where I am. My senses finally come back and I could finally see and hear. I hear screaming and yelling around me. The place looks familiar, but I'm not home or at school. I'm at Travis's bar back in Laughlin. My legs shake as I keep myself up on my feet. What am I doing here?

Few feet ahead from me, I see Angus facing his back at me. In front of him, there is his father; then I see Grace, his Aunt Chris, and both my parents, all standing in front of him shaking and scared. 

Why are they all here? I ask myself, why are my parents here?

Both Angus’s fists are tight around his fingers; white and tensed up as I feel his hot anger flow around the room. I hear him inhaling and exhaling faster and faster. In a blink of an eye, he hits his father first straight in the face. Travis grunts in pain and hits a wall behind him. He slouches as he tries to keep himself up.

Grace steps in front of him to stop her little brother, but before she even says a word, Angus hits her sister and she falls to the floor crying. It’s like he doesn’t know these people. He doesn’t realize that he is hitting her sister, who is probably the only family that he fully accepts.

"Angus! Stop this, son!" Chris scowls at him, who I now see as a beast. He turns angrily at his aunt and yells, "I am not your son!" and then he hits and kicks her once she is on the floor. I scream, but he can't hear me. No one can hear me.

Three down, two more to go. I see my parents shaking and holding each other in their arms. Angus walks towards them slowly, then smiles grimly. "Ah, the Olsens. The perfect family." His bruised up fist gets hard again. He's going to beat them.

"Angus!" I cry out as loud as I can. He finally hears me and turns around from his place. We meet eyes, but he still looks angry. "Angus, hey it's me. Please stop this right now."

"Don't tell me what to do." He mumbles at first, looking down at the floor. I see his jaw tense up as he grits his teeth. 

"Angus, please." I beg, calmly as possible.

He now takes couple of strides towards me like I'm the next target he's going to hit. "Don't tell me what to do! You're nothing! You're nothing to me!" He pulls his arm up behind his ears with his fist hard and ready to hit me.

I jerk awake with tears and sweat covering my face. My hands are drenched with sweat, shaking while my brain is still traumatized by the dream. I can't figure out where I am at the moment. My vision is blurry again, not quite sure if it's the tears or just my eyes that keeps it blurry. Gladly, soon my vision clears up and in front of me, I see the road as I move forward on a moving vehicle.

"Wow, wow! What was that?!" Maya says surprisingly when I awaken. My brain finally snaps back to reality. I'm in Maya's car, and she's driving.

Few hours after school into the weekend, Maya and I decide to go watch a movie with Max. I must have fallen asleep during the ride. My head pounds, a sign that I am calming down. I slow down my breathing by taking in deep slow breaths. I wipe off the mixture of tears and sweat off of my face with my shaking hands. Beside me, Maya stares at me with her wide eyes.

"Shay, are you okay? Did you have a bad dream?" She asks alertly.

I push myself up with my hands to sit straight on my seat. I swallow. "A nightmare." I force my mind to think back into my dream to remember what exactly happened. "Angus" came out as a breath.

"What about Angus?" She asks.

I hold my hands together to stop them from shaking, but it doesn’t help. Instead, they shake together. "He was angry at everyone and was beating up his father, Grace, and Chris. I was yelling for him to stop, we he couldn't hear me." I swallow again thinking about how my parents were also there. "And he was about to hit my parents, but I stopped him before he did. Then he turned to me angrily, and I woke up before his fist hit my face."