Very Bad.

The first time the scream didn’t make it out of my mouth. It had died in my throat just before I
woke up. The details of the dream were already hazy, all I knew was that it had been bad, very bad. I
got nightmares - everyone got nightmares - but this one had been particularly unsavoury. It wasn’t
until almost a year later that I woke up with the strongest sense of déjà vu; I realized I’d had the same
nightmare before.
Everyone got nightmares, but I had the same nightmare. Longer, each time. Each time with a
new part, a new… chapter. They came sporadically over months, then over weeks. Attempts to
discern some semblance of logic to their timing fell short, they evaded any pattern that could've been
recognized. Each coming of the dream refreshed my memory of the previous one, and I quickly
accepted that there was no doubt: they were a continuation. I grew worried. What did this mean? I
scoured the internet. There was a focus on the interpretation of dreams. My dreams didn’t need
interpreting, I just wanted them to stop.
I read Jung on dreams and Freud on dreams; I read Foulkes and Hall. I read a particularly odd
book about Lucid Dreams. This disturbed me more than I would have admitted at the time as it
implied a fraying of dreams and reality. The contents of my dreams suggested that any fraying of this
kind would prove bad, very bad. There were demons in my dreams and I had to stop them from
coming out.
Perhaps I was a bit daft, to think that my dreams were real. I began to treat them with equal
importance to what was happening to me in my hours of wakefulness. I would fear each new chapter,
I would try and stop myself from sleeping. On one occasion, I forced myself to stay awake for several
days with a self-prescribed, and extensive, caffeine and epinephrine regimen. Naturally, I eventually
slept. And naturally, I dreamt.
It was dreadful. Piles of neatly assorted severed heads. Empty Cyprians with painted eyelids.
Interminable hours attached to a drip bag, or sitting at a desk in an office in a business park. Globular
patches of grey that indicate cause for concern. Or more scans. An intensely handsome man that
continued to speak after I had wretched his spine from position and blown his brains out across my
fridge. A pretty house and garden, with a tidy white picket fence out the front.
Wretched out of the nightmare as if dropped from a great height, drenched in a cold sweat,
erratic and panicking, I knew that the man I had ‘killed’ was not a demon, not just a devil, it was my
demon. I had reason to fear each new chapter, for they were indeed getting ‘worse’. They were bad.
Very bad.

Years had passed. The details of the dream were not clouded in any sense, they were as real as
the bed I slept in and the car I drove to work. This dream adhered to the normal law of physics and
was accurate to the smallest detail. Perspective was normal. Birdsong floated in the trees, plastic
rubbish floated in the breeze. The wood on top of the gate to my flat was slightly worn from human
touch. There were water stains on the table and the tap took a couple of seconds to turn on. The
lifeless art in the oncologist’s waiting room. Dreams were not supposed to contain supermarkets and
schools, certainly not supermarkets with special offers and schools with students quietly working. The
only thing that wasn’t real was that fucking demon.
I was absolutely terrified. Sleeping was completely and utterly out of the question if I were
going to remain normal. The border where waking life met dreaming life was fracturing, and if that
happened there would be no way of knowing what would happen next. Staying awake bought several
detrimental consequences, however. The irony! One of these consequences was that my ability to
determine if I was awake or asleep was most compromised. The exhausted body yearns for sleep, and
regardless of what the mind wishes for, eventually it will come. I constantly felt unattached,
unreachable. My decisions were vague, confused, and forgetful.
When sleep would return to my life it would bring blizzards of nightmares, oftentimes just
tremors or after quakes, but more and more frequently it would be another chapter. There were
warnings of my death everywhere. Not my death in life, mind you, but my death in the dream. Crows
perched in the highest rafters of the city. A man outside the pub in a raincoat smoking a cigarette.
Black ravens with black umbrellas pretending to look at their watches. The demon wanted me to die,
it wanted me to remain trapped with it.

I began to take steps of caution to protect myself, not unlike the way a farmer plants
scarecrows. My flatmate complained that I had sealed up the fireplace, and then she found the
notebooks. I wrote my dreams down, keeping track of the prevailing themes: the evening news,
demons (obviously), hospitals and medical appointments. Gruesome aftermaths of a jihad, cold wives
and Sunday papers, investments and dealers, investments and dealers, guilty strangers spying on me.
Ravens. I wrote in the first person and in the past and present tense.
Copies of these writings were made and sent in the mail to everyone I knew. My mum and my
dad, my ex-girlfriend, my old economics professor, and the sweet barista that works Wednesday to
Friday mornings on the way to my work. I even gave one to the postman. I figured that if enough
people read the dreams, then their power would be dispersed into pieces too small to hurt anyone.
I then had a massive breakthrough: from a museum in Rome there was a manuscript on
apotropaic symbols. They found their way all over my house. There was one mark that was exactly
what I needed; it was a hex that would bring misfortune to demons.
I chalked it into my front door (and obviously, the soot in my fireplace). Angela had unsealed
it, saying that it was better to be scared than cold. She didn’t believe me. I didn't care. I knew chants
and I wore charms. I covered my wall in iron horseshoes. Forget electricity! It would be idiotic to
provide a means for spirits to surpass all my other defences. It was the final straw for Angela
however, she moved out after I extracted all the wires in the house. Probably for the better.

A dog with brown spots ran into my garden earlier today, it thought it could fool me. A
devilish disguise, but I wasn’t letting it inside. I buried it around the back of my house. I see strange
lights in the sky. I quit my job, I was too exposed.
The dreams have reached an unprecedented intensity and frequency. I fear that the demon is
making his way into this world. There is a man outside the pub in a raincoat smoking a cigarette, and
he is looking at me through the rearview mirror. I incessantly have a strange sense of being watched,
even when all of my defences are active. I am not paranoid, mind you; I am very careful.

I have designed a trap. I plan to break the barrier separating my world from that of the
demons. I have felt it, I am the nexus of these worlds. Why? The answer eludes me. Eldritch magicks
will seep from my fingertips and trap that demon inside my body, and then I shall annihilate myself.
Beyond reason. There is no margin for error. This could turn bad. Very bad.

Summative: EXCELLENCE

Formative AS91475
- Enjoyable and engaging to read - as per usual :)
- Have given feedback
- Main content to focus on is the ending
- Word count is sweet
- Some minor sections could be tweaked for greater strength
- Consider a title
- Tag me in when done :)
- Is tracking towards Excellence is well, just needs that final refining
 What Right?

The chill of the night hit me in stark contrast to the warm glow emitting from the door behind
me. I made a great puff with each breath and followed it with a crisp inhale. The streetlights
illuminated the path that led out to the motel reception, casting long shadows onto the row of pine
trees separating the cabins from the neighbouring farm.
The night was far too noisy for a small town such as this. Each movement from nearby
residents, the jests and jeers from the pub down the street. The occasional car speeding through the
main road, most drivers probably not even realizing they were in a village.
Light from the end of my cigarette flared as I took a long drag, and relaxed against the wall
beside my apartment. Stupid bloody business. A cricket chirped, a bird took flight. The lights in a
distant farmhouse clicked off, leaving the fields and trees illuminated by the moon, partly obscured by
clouds. A few nights ago those clouds had given fruition to a few centimetres of snow. Midway
through a long draw on my smoke, a scuffle from a nearby cabin broke the stillness.
A woman in a grey jacket closed her door as quietly as possible, then crept down the wooden
stairs and walked out the back of the motel, towards me. I stayed motionless, my presence unknown to
her. It wasn't until she stepped into the streetlight that I saw her beauty. And she was beautiful. Her
skin was cream-white, tinted with a blooded pink beneath her skin from the cold. Long, sooty
eyelashes. Dark charcoal hair that fell down her back, so dark it seemed to absorb all the light it
touched. Other men might have said that her eyes were too big, or her cheekbones too angled. But to
me she was perfect. Exquisite.
Not a second had passed when the same door she had come out of opened again, this time
much more aggressively. A lean, bald man staggered out, obviously drunk. The girl glanced around
and caught my eye; Pleading.
"So what, you're just gonna take my money and disappear? Didn't your daddy ever teach you
some manners? Bitch!"
The man locked eyes on the girl, unaware of me. As he stepped forward, ho[wever, something
glinted in the light: steel. The man's concealed knife was now being brandished and leaves crunched
as the woman stepped backwards, prompting another desperate glance from her as she realized she
was trapped.

My father said once that when an opportunity passes by, the only thing to do is jump on and
pray for the best. And so, at that moment, I made a decision. As the man advanced past the porch
preceding my apartment, I jumped, swinging as I did so.
I don't know what came over me, if it was some sort of natural sense of protection for the
beautiful girl, or if it was a result of the adrenaline that spiked my bloodstream when I saw the knife. I
can't fight. I'm not a good fighter. But it was too late, my fist was already en route to the drunkards
head. I struck him slightly above his temple, snapping his head backwards.
The rest of my body followed shortly after. He shouted in alarm as we collapsed to the ground
together. The arm with the knife in it was being pinned down by my torso, his head bleeding from the
impact with the concrete. His shock was quickly devoured by fury, but at that moment my mind
became shrouded in a thick cloud of rage.
Who was this man, thinking he could've attacked a defenceless girl all alone at night? What
gives him the right? What gives him the right to mistreat such a beautiful person? What gives him the
right?
As he struggled to transfer his weapon to his free hand, I batted it aside, then pounded him
one, two, three times. He tried to headbutt me, but his motor skills were impaired and all he gave me
was a whiff of the alcohol on his breath. I stood up, and as he tried to follow suit I kicked his neck. He
howled and was promptly knocked out by my boot that caught him on the jaw.
Straightening up, I remembered about the girl. She was watching me with intense eyes, bigger
than I first realised and sombre; sombre and slightly slanted up at the corners.
 "Thank you." She said after a few moments of silence. I nodded, our breath making quick
plumes in the air.
"Well, I wasn't going to stand by and let some dickhead stab you."
The telltale bell of the reception door opening alerted us to the gangly teenager poking his
head around the corner. "Is everything alright back there?" I told him we were fine, and whether or not
he saw the passed out body on the ground it didn’t matter.
The seconds awkwardly passed, and the shadows stretched from the headlights of a truck
hurtling through. Unsure, I proffered my hand. “Newman.”
She returned the gesture warmly, despite the circumstances. “You can call me Julia.” My heart
rate still pumping double-time, I nodded towards the din of the pub. “Care for a drink?”

The lively atmosphere inside was almost as warming as the crackling fire. The tables were
full of what must’ve been all but a few of the town's residents, a serving girl bustling around rocking
chairs and catcalls desperately trying to keep up with the constant flow of requests.
Julia’s story was, unfortunately, all too common. Dad walked out at a young age, and unable
to help her sick mother and pay the bills she had allowed herself to be coerced into being an escort.
Upon arriving at the seedy motel in an area where nobody knew her, she decided that she
couldn't sacrifice what dignity she had, so she attempted to sneak off while her client was shooting up.
That's when she ran into me.
"So," she asked, "what sort of work are you in that requires you to stop off in this truck stop
town?" I downed the rest of my glass, a crappy lager overproduced offshore somewhere.
"Uncle owns a successful construction company. I got a generous job offer from him as soon
as I left high school. Having lunch with wealthy clients to wean a few more dollars out of them. Lots
of travelling." My life in 4 sentences. How depressing.
Julia daintily took another sip from her glass of water. I was old enough to not believe in love
at first sight, but looking at her made me feel something. You'd laugh, but then you wouldn't if you'd
have seen her. Heard her speak. She was flawless, and I was undoubtedly not the only man in the
room to think so.
I was about to make another shot at conversation - something nonchalant and witty - when
one arm of a big, burly man pushed my chair aside, the other one sliding its way around Julia's neck.
“Hello love, this man bothering you?” She squirmed away from his arm. I was about to say
something though I wasn’t entirely sure what when Julia spoke up.
“Not at all, in fact, I was just enjoying a conversation before you pushed him away.” She
shifted her shoulders, facing me but subtly excluding the man. Although the remark was polite and the
notion minuscule, he was obviously ill-acquainted with women not returning his offers of
companionship.
“I can give you something else to enjoy if you come back to my place.” I cringed at just how
awful this man was trying, and Julia downright ignored him, instead opting to turn to me and pick up
our conversation where we left off.
The brutish man glanced back to his buddies, who were turning from the rugby on the TV to
watch him getting brushed off. One of them muttered something and they burst into a round of
boisterous laughter. Flustered, he turned his attention to what he understood to be the problem.
Me.
His hand came down on my shoulder, grasping it tightly. "I think you're done with that drink."
"What?"
"I said, you need to get your ass out of my seat, fella. You are a fella, right?"
I might not be the most masculine of men, but I certainly wasn’t going to let myself be walked
over.
"You're quite the flower bud yourself," I said. "I thought it was the serving girl wearing
perfume, but I'll admit it's lovely on yo-"
He struck my face with the back of his hand, sparkling white stars springing up across my
vision.
 "If you're gonna fight, take it outside." Coming from the bartender it sounded more like an
automated reply than a response to the current situation.
Julia watched, almost curiously, as I was picked up by the hem of my collar and pulled from
my seat, heels dragging, towards the back exit. I came back to my senses and pushed myself away
from the man, at which point the final conversation simmered into silence. The whole pub was
watching
The jeering friends were passing around crinkled banknotes, placing bets on who would win.
It seemed that this was a somewhat regular occurrence. "Gareth's easy knockin’ his head in, look at
how thin his arms are!"
Yet I felt my resolve harden.
Ripping my arm free from his grip, I walked confidently into the dimly lit alleyway out the
back. But it wasn't confidence I felt at that moment. It was rage.

It was pushing half past 10, and the clouds previously covering up the sky had left, exposing
the full moon in all its glory. A fleeting moment of serenity went by before my buddy's buddies came
pouring out of the door. I didn't need to look to know that lingering behind them, wearing a poker
face, was Julia. It was eerie to know that she would be there watching, just as I knew that it would
have been cold outside.
"Oi queer! Come and get it!”
Curse this bastard. I would normally have submitted at the first hint of trouble, but a heavy
cloud of anger blotted out all logical reasoning. What right did he have? What right?
I sensed a slight hesitation when he saw the look in my eyes, but he wasn’t going to back
down. Not a big burly man like him. Not to a liberal, uptight sissy like me. At least, not in front of his
cronies.
He came at me, fists swinging, but I stepped under it and knocked his chin. Before his other
hand could land, I ducked behind him and kicked him forward, into the wall. I have little memory of
what exactly happened, but I think it was at this point that I started laughing.
Head bleeding from the rough brick lining of the alleyway, he spun around and knocked my
nose. Even with the amount of adrenaline coursing through my blood, it still should’ve hurt. It didn’t.
I was feral. I moved to kick his crotch, but he caught my leg and threw me to the ground. His friends -
who had gone quiet when I pushed him into the wall - started jeering at me again. I jumped up and
punched his throat, landing it this time. The man's eyes widened, and I shouted. I brought my other
fist hard into his stomach and he keeled over. I wasn’t that strong, certai]nly not compared to this
hunk of beef, but I sure felt like it when I smothered his face with my knee. He grunted, then
collapsed.
I didn’t stop. He was trying to crawl away, trying to escape, but I was leaping around, meeting
every available part of his body with my boots. One of his friends stepped forward.
"Cut it, creep!” I leapt around his arm and slammed his nose. He stumbled back, and I
pounced on the body in the middle of a growing pool of vomit and blood, wrapping my hands around
its neck. I was going to kill him.
“stop it stop it help me mum I’m sorry help me please HELP ME-” His blubbering face
stopped whimpering as it turned purple, but I was suddenly knocked aside by his allies. Leaping back
up and turning to face them, still cackling maniacally, they backed off. Three muscular men, all scared
silly. Standing above a bawling husk of a man, staring down a herd of sheep, I was the most powerful
person in the world.

And then it was gone.

Emotions came flooding back into the head of my mind, and I stepped back from the mess on
the pavement. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry-”
“Fuck off, you animal! I’m calling the police.” One of the man's friends pulled out his phone
and started dialling. I stepped forward in protest, “He started it!”
“Go away. I’m calling the police.”
 “I’m calling the police.” He reiterated it, almost reassuring himself about what he was doing. I
didn’t imagine his sort of character would have particularly good experiences with the boys in blue.
Not knowing what else to do, I turned and half-jogged out of the alleyway, watching over my
shoulder. Not looking where I was going, I walked straight into somebody. Julia.
“I don’t know what came over me, I-”, before I could begin to explain myself, she wrapped
her arms around me.
“You were brilliant!” I stood dumbly for a few seconds, then returned her hug.
She pulled away and looked me straight in the eyes. "He deserved everything you gave him.
Come on!" She pulled me by my arm towards a side street opposite the pub, then started pressing
something in her pocket. I realised it was a car key at the same time that the headlights blinked from a
dusty red ute parked along the curb.
"He left his keys and wallet on the ground before fighting you, so I figured I'd keep an eye on
them for him. Dibs shotgun." She slid into the passenger seat and leaned over to start the car.
Taking the cue, I got into the driver's seat and did up my seat belt. Even though I had just
beaten up a man, I felt uneasy taking his car. Julia’s confidence and lack of hesitancy reassured me,
though, so I put it into first gear and drove into the middle of the street. The ute was tired, and tinny to
drive. A great plume of smoke burst from the exhaust as I accelerated onto the main road that ran
through the middle of the town. I had no particular destination in mind, only to get us away from the
awful men and the soon-to-arrive police.
Julia whispered in my ear to follow the highway north, not telling me where it leads, and then
rested her head on my shoulder. I wasn’t sure at what point the radio had been turned up, but she fell
asleep to Elton John as the road and night wore on.

The car hadn’t much fuel in it when we’d left, and the meter was reading practically empty
when a half-hour later a petrol station appeared as an oasis of light in the distance. It was starkly
empty, save for a pile of slept-in blankets beside the LPG refill terminal. Coming to a stop alongside a
diesel pump, I gently shifted Julia’s head off my shoulder and onto the headrest of her car seat.
Mountainous silhouettes bore down on me, looming in the distance. I opened up the fuel tank
and coughed, the smell was pungent.
The reek of diesel overpowering everything else, I quickly filled the tank and walked across
an open stretch of asphalt to the building to pay. The doors creaked as I pushed one open, and the
blankets rustled and a scruffed up tramp-type sat up. He muttered something unintelligible, or maybe
it was just a growl. He was obviously high on something. I continued inside, his glassy eyes watching
me the whole time.
The lanky teenager sleeping on the counter woke as a buzzer alerted him that someone was at
the door.
“Pump 2,” I said as he straightened his uniform.
“Yeah, hold on… I gotta-” He yawned, stretching his arms in an almost comical sense.
“That’ll be one hundred and… and…” He paused again. “One hundred and twelve, please.”
I handed him cash from the stolen car's wallet, and after watching him fumble around trying
to open the register for several seconds I told him to just keep the change. He murmured a thank you
and had his eyes closed and head on the counter before I’d even turned around.
Upon walking out the doors I was met by the sight of the drugged up homeless man pressing
his face against the car window, Julia still asleep inside. Me watching, he opened the door and reached
over her with his ragged hands. I shouted and started sprinting towards him, and he glanced over at
me, a wild look in his eyes. Julia chose that moment to wake up, and she screamed upon seeing the
filthy derelict bent over her - then proceeded to kick him away - but not before he snatched her purse.
I saw red. What right did this tramp have, this dirty good-for-nothing vagabond? What right
did he have? I was infuriated at his impertinence, at his disgusting little makeshift bed. If I thought I
was angry before, I was blind.
“Pervert!” I bellowed, but it came out as an animalistic howl. I leapt forward and tackled him
to the concrete, grazing his head severely. Possibly mine too. His long fingernails started scratching
and scraping my face and neck and I wrestled him. This putrid drop-out of society, his rancid stench
violating my nostrils as it wafted in, omnipresent. Bringing my fists down onto his nose, he cried out
in pain as blood poured out. Once more and he was unconscious.
“Hey, mister?” The clerk's voice broke, and I leapt up and spun to see him standing in the
doorway. My breathing was heavy. “Are you ok?”
Julia’s voice cut in. “This druggie just went psycho! He started sprinting around then
collapsed, my friend was just checking that he was alright.”
I caught on. “Yeah, he's just lying on the ground, unresponsive.”
The gawky teen started walking towards me. “I think I should call an ambulance, dude.”
Upon getting a closer look, he gasped. “Jesus Christ, there’s blood on this guy! What’d you do?!”
I was coated in a layer of intense paranoia. This person was a busybody, a snooper. A nosy
parker, someone in our way, somebody trying to hurt us. I was tired of being hurt.
Bringing my left elbow around his neck, I used my right hand to push his head into my knee.
Then did it again. He went limp, blood dripping from his mouth onto my jeans. I strangled him. I
strangled them both. They were trying to stop me. Trying to stop Julia. They were out to get us.
I looked up at Julia, and she wore a mask of disgust, triumph, joy, and love. We were safe. I
went into her open arms and kissed her. Her lips were cold, and she was shivering in my embrace, but
her tongue was warm. I sunk my hands deep into the recesses of her hair, and the wind roared around
us.
She whispered in my ear. “Let's go.”
I nodded and got into the driver's seat of the pickup truck. Julia bent down gracefully to pick
up her handbag, then got in the passenger seat next to me; not touching but close. Every minute
movement sometimes prompted a strand of her hair to land on my neck, each one like a conductor
sending volts of electricity through me.
Starting the car, we took off down the highway. I could see the outline of a mountain in the
distance, silhouetted against the moon. When asking where our destination was, the only reply I got
was to keep following SH6. It didn’t matter. I had Julia, and Julia had me. We were intertwined, as
one, transcending this realm.
The road was long and empty, and as we got further into the mountainside we encountered a
light snowfall. There was only one car heading in the other direction. I eventually took my eyes off
the road and caught Julia watching me with a fierce intensity.
She giggled when I shifted my hand onto her leg. Too entranced with every sensation, I had
failed to notice that the surrounding hills and farmland had turned into a small truckstop-sized
residential area - and I was now doing 50 above the speed limit.
A flash of blue and red lights illuminated our car from behind. Dirty cop. What are the
chances of there being speed enforcement in a ghost town like this?
I looked to Julia for instructions, and she nodded to the side of the road. We were already out
of the town again, that’s how small it was. However, as I signalled left I met an icy patch on the road
and started skidding.
“Damn!-”
The rear end of the ute slid, and we swerved around 180 degrees. The policeman tailing us
braked, but the ice got them too and the cruiser butted our bonnet. No airbags went off, though it
wasn’t much of a surprise considering the condition of the vehicle.
Staying inert and deathly quiet, save for a hissing noise coming from the engine, I wrapped
my hand around the fire hydrant under my seat, then shifted my legs to conceal it from outside view.
Julia pressed something into my hand that she’d just taken from her purse. A nail file.
A tired yet angry face got out of the cruiser and made his way over to us. I opened the door to
talk to him.
“Sir, I hope you have a very good reason for travelling 50km/h over the speed limit.” What a
drab voice. The porky officer proffered his flabby hand. “License and registration please.” The pig.
The bloated hot water bottle of a person. He was just another person out to get us. To get Julia. What
gave him the right? With lightning speed, I shoved the nail file into his jugular. He squealed like a pig,
and before he could reach for his pistol I bought the fire extinguisher up and battered his chin.
He collapsed. Julia laughed, such a sweet laugh. Such a pure tone. I pressed the nozzle into
the bigot's mouth and let loose, filling his insides with dry powder.
“The engine won’t start,” Julia said as she left the ute and got into the cruiser. “We’re almost
there anyway.”
“Where exactly are we going? You’ve still kept me in the dark.” I rolled the body over into
the roadside ditch, then wiped my hands clean on my jeans. Julia took the wheel, so I climbed into the
passenger seat.
The police radio buzzed static until it was switched off by Julia.
“Just out of this pass, there’s a place my mum used to rent when we’d go on holiday. It’s
very…” She took her time choosing her next word. “Secluded.”
And we were off into the cold night, leaving a beat-up ute, an officer, and a few skid marks
behind us.

I struggle to remember the exact events that followed, as my body was fatigued and damaged,
but my mind had never been more alive. What resulted was almost a trance-like state, or maybe that
was the effect of Julia. I had not a neuron in my brain that wasn’t firing with passion, lusting over this
beautiful creature.
We pulled to a stop outside a rustic wooden cabin, and she didn’t even bother to turn the car
off. She didn’t plan on leaving. There was native bush right up to the edges of the long gravel
driveway leading back onto the country road, and cobwebs and posts alike held up the splintering
deck leading up to the door. Of course, it was locked.
I returned to the cruiser and got the pistol that I’d left lying on the floor. While Julia was
looking for a way in, I fired a round at the lock. The gunshot was splitting, but the door easily creaked
open afterwards. It probably would’ve given in after a decent push anyway.
I stepped inside, gently, but was quickly grabbed and dragged - almost painfully - to a small
bedroom with a pitiful amount of furniture. Everything was old, some of it possibly antique
heirlooms. Sitting, gathering dust.
Giggling, Julia pushed me down onto the mattress. I let myself fall. She pounced into my
arms and stared me straight in the eye. I was overcome by my desire to feel that stare on me at all
times, on every inch of my body. I wanted it to pin me down and saturate my every being, to
intertwine myself so intricately and tightly with her that we would never be untied.
Then she slid off her top.

I awoke to flashes of blue and red coming through the curtain, and engines stalling. A demand
issued from a megaphone broke through to me.
“Come out with your hands up!”
Instantly alert, a thousand thoughts raced through my head. Julia? I checked the bed. She was
still asleep. How did they find us? The cop car we took. That radio we didn’t reply to. How foolish I
was to not think they would be fitted with locators.
There were several voices, too many. They were after us. There was no me anymore, Julia and
I were one. It was a conspiracy. The kid from the gas station. The homeless junkie. They were all part
of it. They were in our way. Partisans of the enemy, the evil. They were evil. The evil.
I picked up the pistol I had dropped earlier. I returned to Julia’s side.
“We will fold and freeze together, my love,” I whispered. “For there is spring and sun and
green forever, far away from here.” She shifted in her sleep. Soon, our bodies beside each other, I will
let her skin begin to blend itself with mine.
Climbing atop Julia’s naked body, I admired its flawlessness one more time. The evil thinks
that it can stop us from being together. We shall be united, as one, in everlasting peace. I smothered
Julia’s face with a pillow and fired a bullet directly into her skull. Embracing her, I turned the gun
around and sunk my teeth into it. What right did they have? What right?
I pulled the trigger.