Warning: This is horror fiction that contains bloody gross violence. If you choose to proceed, don't complain to me if your grossed out.

There was blood everywhere. It covered him from head to toe and Brian had no idea where it had come from. All he knew was that he was running from something. Something that scared the shit out of him, something that caused him to be covered in blood and out in the middle of nowhere. He couldn't remember what he was running from. He couldn't remember how the blood got there. Brian couldn't even remember how he'd managed to find himself in the woods crunching brittle leaves beneath his rapid footfalls. You see something had happened to Brian to cause him to lose his memory.

Brian's rasping breaths caused a fire within his chest. He didn't know how long he could keep running. He could hear strange noises in the woods around him. Could hear beasts growling in the distance. He could hear voices that he didn't understand and there were strange lights that came from behind him. All he knew was that he had to put much distance between them and him. And he had to do it before he collapsed.

His legs were beginning to grow weary at the pace he was running. It was no easy task dodging trees and bushes. His skin had tears from the briar patches he'd run through and his face was bruised from getting smacked by tree limbs that he'd recklessly ran into. The noises seemed farther away and the lights seemed dimmer. It was a good thing too because Brian stopped when the vision hit him.

Almost complete darkness besides an old light bulb that buzzed and flickered off and on. The glint of something metal flashed through the air. A strangled gargle heard. A spray of red rain. A thud.

Change of view: a body. A woman's. Her once blond hair is now the color of strawberry syrup. Her skin was sliced in a hundred 'V'-shaped cuts that caused flaps in her flesh that drooled blood upon the wooden floor beneath her. Her dead eyes looking up at the ceiling, caught in the final look that had crossed her features. She was scared and pleading.

Another view change: a kid. It was a little boy laying in the grass. His eyes seemed to stare up at the stars, but they saw nothing. Those eyes were dead eyes. His body was next to his head. The coroner wasn't going to have to autopsy the kid to state the cause of death. You can't live without your head. A large smiley-face was carved into the boy's chest with the words, 'Have A Nice Day!' etched beneath.

The vision quickened its pace then. Brian began to see body after body in a montage of mutilated flesh and perverse humor. Each dead individual had something peculiar done to him: a priest with his chest hollowed out and a Bible placed within his ribcage. A woman dressed in a French maid uniform who had been sawed in half. Her upper portion was impaled atop a vacuum cleaner. A guitarist who, in death, held a guitar made from his own legs and strung with his own guts. On and on these scenes flashed through Brian's head until he brought his hand up to his temples and screamed. Then they stopped.

He heard them closer to him now. The lights were brighter. He needed to run, but he felt like he was going to puke. Whatever had transmitted those thoughts into his head was something he could not explain. He knew that if he waited around, he'd be the next in the line of grisly art pieces. So he began to run again with abandon, upset stomach or not. He was going to run until his legs crumbled beneath him and if they did, then he'd crawl until his fingers were bare to the bone and the muscles in his arms grew so slack that he could no longer move them. Only then would he let the creatures following him catch up. Only then would he give in.

His body dodged through the forest that seemed like it would never end, but finally, it did. In a clearing sat a log cabin. None of the lights were on and there were no vehicles in the vicinity. Hell, there wasn't a driveway or a street around either. Brian pushed on towards the cabin and nearly stumbled up the steps of the porch. His breath caused sharp pains in his chest from all the running he'd done. When he reached out to open the door he found that it was unlocked, and so he went inside and closed it behind him. It didn't take long to fasten the locks.

The room he'd stepped into was sparse. There was a table with old newspapers on it. A few tattered chairs sat in a corner collecting cobwebs. There were some books on the floor near an old couch that had some holes where it seemed mice had eaten through the fabric in hopes of making nests of the inside. The books were classics with titles like, Crime And Punishment, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Of Human Bondage, and the like. There were some more recent ones too like Helter Skelter, In Cold Blood, The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers, and every Thomas Harris book. There were some anatomy and physiology textbooks as well. Brian, after reading the titles of the books, was beginning to think he had stepped into the wrong house. He was also beginning to think that what were following him weren't creatures in the conventional sense of the word. They were deranged humans and they were coming for him.

The chairs were the first things pushed up against the door, then the table. They'd have a hard time getting through the door, and by that time he'd find something to protect himself. He looked around the room frantically. He could hear them outside, approaching, their voices still indiscernible though clearly closing in. There was nothing in the cabinets or the drawers. He was running out of time quick. There had to be something in this house worth using, so he searched further. The first thing that caught his attention was a door that opened up to a set of stairs that descended into a basement. A rank odor came out in a cloud of putrid air that nearly knocked Brian on his ass. He didn't want to go down there, but there was nothing upstairs to defend himself with. So, swallowing his fear, he descended into the dark. The visions hit him again.

"Why are you doing this, dad?" It was a child's voice, a little girl, and a strained voice that was barely above a whisper. It was pained.

"Don't hurt me, daddy... I won't... I won't tell...." A glint of steel in the darkness.

"Da..." The gargling of blood cut off whatever words would have been issued next.

Brian's body shuddered at the vision. He could see the little girl's body on the wooden floor. She looked like a broken doll. A discarded porcelain doll that had once been loved and cared for but was now nothing more than dead weight. Again the nausea filled him like a rushing tide. This time he didn't hold it in, but instead began puking out whatever he had eaten earlier that day. When he was finished vomiting, he reached into one of his pockets for a handkerchief and pulled it out. Something fell to the floor in the darkness. Brian wiped his mouth with the handkerchief and then bent down to reach for whatever had tumbled from it. He couldn't find anything blindly so he began feeling around on the wall for a light switch. He found one. The bulb that lit up was an old one that flickered on and off ... and it buzzed. He almost fell over in horror when he saw what the light revealed.

It was a human slaughterhouse. A torso hung upon a hook that came down from the ceiling - one of those hooks to hang beef carcasses from. Blood dripped in a trickle of drops that sounded like rain falling into a puddle. There were limbs piled in a corner of different colors and sizes, old, young, black, white, red, or yellow. The killers were indiscriminate, the ultimate in equal opportunity selection. Flies buzzed around a bowl that held a mixture of guts and blood. A bookshelf held heads upon it in varying states of decomposition. It was a basement of horrors beyond anything Brian could bring himself to imagine. He fell back against the wall; his chest heaving with labored breathing. A picture fell to the floor at his feet after being disturbed from its hook. He looked down. What he saw caused his legs to give and he fell to his knees.

It was a family. Two children: a boy and a girl. He'd seen them before in his visions. One in a field, the other resembling a doll. There was a woman smiling as she held the children to her. She was beautiful and she was also familiar looking. She had blonde hair and he remembered those eyes. He'd seen them filled with fear and pleading. Then there was a man who had his arm wrapped around her shoulders. He too looked familiar, very familiar. It was Brian. Once more, the visions hit him.

The knife flashed in the darkness as it sliced across soft, supple flesh. The light bulb flickered and buzzed in the background. A sink. Water ran from the faucet and rough, calloused hands washed the blood away from their fingers. A mirror and a face covered in blood, but still recognizable. It was his. In that instant, he knew it all. He'd gone mad. It could have been a nervous break down. It could have been something in the air. He didn't know what had driven him mad, but he knew that it drove him to kill. He killed his own family, his wife, his daughter, and his son. He left the house and began killing everyone that he'd come across in a spree of murder that spanned the course of two days. A rage had filled him. It felt like he was not in control of his own body, like something had pushed his soul out and took control of him for as long as it took to kill those people. Then it left him to deal with the consequences. Yes, Brian knew that that was what happened, a demon or an evil spirit possessed him. Those lights and voices in the forest were police searching for him. He was going to turn himself in. Seek counseling. Talk to a priest.

Brian went up the steps and left the basement. He heard footsteps and voices outside of the house and so he began to clear out the obstructions in front of the door. They would understand. At most, they would lock him up in an insane asylum for a few years. He'd get out on parole. All he need was to go out and explain himself. He reached out with his hand, turned the handle, and pulled.

The door wasn't even open halfway before the gunfire tore through the wood and entered his flesh. He died almost instantly.

* * * * * *

The officer in charge, Detective Glenn Orr, couldn't remember why the shooting had started. He didn't even remember reaching the house where the suspect had holed himself up in. He couldn't remember who he was, why there was a smoking gun in his hand, or even why a whole crowd of police officers looked at him in shock. All he could remember was a rage that was slowly dying down within him.