Part 3

Blood. Streams of blood oozing slowly against the blackness of his mind. A stench that exists only in his mind but seems so real, so thick he can almost taste it dancing on his dry taste buds. A scream echo's through his tortured mind as he tosses and turns, trying to wake himself up but unsuccessfully.

The scream increases in volume and becomes so loud that he feels as though his inner ear has burst and expelled an abundance of blood. 'Richard' he calls in his sleep. He begins to shout for help. His cries go unheardï¿½ Un-noticed and he cries openly for his best friend who is being slaughtered in front of his minds eye. 'Richard!' he calls again a little louder and a vision of the dead body laying slumped across the lounge room chair appears and begins to swirl into a plethora of colour. The image stops moving and moves close and closer until all that can be seen is an eye and surrounding skin. An eye that begins to shed tears of blood. The image moves further back and pauses momentarily and suddenly the mouth of the corpse opens and lets out a blood curdling shout in the form of Paul's name and blood begins to flow freely from between his lips.

With jolting force Paul found himself back in the land of the conscious. His hand moved to his forehead and swiped a stream of sweat from his brow. His breathing was heaving and shallow and his heard was pounding so fast and loud that It could have been mistaken for tribal drums conveying a message of danger. His entire body was shaking from the horror that he just witnessed in his mind. With a great lack of co-ordination he arose from his bed and threw on the bloodied clothes that he sprawled across the floor the previous day. He glanced at the clock and realized that he had slept right through the day and into the night as the digits showed that it was 12am.

With more speed than someone in his state should have been able to move, he bolted towards the door, down the steps of his apartment block and burst through the door onto the side walk, landing yet againï¿½ with his head making contact with the cement. He stood, slightly dazed for a second before he began to run once more. Just as he did the previous night.

Blood trickled down his forehead and into his eye causing him to be blinded by a red blotch but he did not stop running. His legs felt like lead but he refused to acknowledge this. His chest hurt from the effort it was taking to keep him breathing and his heart felt as though it wanted to burst right through his chest but he did not stop running. He didn't stop until he reached where he had set to goï¿½

part 4