As soon as the thin sheets fell against his body Shaun felt relaxed. He could tell that sleep would come easy tonight, no tossing and turning before his mind could rest. The day had been full of more surprises than normal and his brain and body were ready to rest up.
Almost as soon as his eyes shut he found sleep.
Even though he had been fighting and killing others for most of his life, the nightmares never seemed to fade during sleep. He had accepted the fact that all he was good for was killing, and he lived his life without regret, but his deep conscience always found a way to drag up the unpleasant memories in his head. Tonight was one of the bad nights.
Hundreds upon hundreds of dead bodies littered the streets in front of him, blood soaking the ground. He stood with a semi-automatic in his hands, his finger on the trigger. As he looked down at his hands he saw that they were covered in red. The thick, sticky liquid was all over him actually, he could feel it coat his skin, could smell that rust and salt odor of it. In horror he dropped the weapon and stared at his hands, then tried to rub the crimson from them on the dust-covered ground. It did no good, he was still bathing in the stuff.
Warily he looked out across the sea of carcasses and immediately took in every detail of them. Some still had blood gushing from their wounds, others were missing limbs, their arms or legs ending in ragged stumps. One body, a young boy of maybe thirteen, was missing half of his face, his features blown off by a blast of bullets. His one remaining eye stared at Shaun, the fear and pain still evident in it.
Suddenly, Shaun was sick, puking up his guts up onto the dirt.
HE had done this... he had killed all of these people. A monster, he was a monster...
Tears began pouring out of his eyes, and then he was a child again, catching his reflection in the shining black metal of the gun.
The scene shifted; he was back at his childhood home, staring at the broken, mangled bodies of his parents. He was standing there, staring at their lifeless eyes, not believing what he saw. Then a man, a dirty, bloodied man loomed over him, the barrel of a pistol pointed at Shaun's head. He pulled the trigger and Shaun was now looking at himself from above, seeing his head explode into a million shreds of muscle, skin, and bone. His headless body fell with a thump to the floor, next to his dead parents.
He flashed forward to another time, another place, seeing himself kill person after person. Soon he saw himself as he was now, a twenty-seven year old man, the blood of hundreds of lives stained on his hands. Back in his own body now, he watched, no control over himself, as he slaughtered even more people. The starving, hopeless people he had come to live around ran at him, their faces twisted in fear. He would shoot them in the face, move to the next, take out his hunting knife and slice a child's neck, move on to the next. An endless cycle of murder and bloodshed. He wanted control of his body so that he could end this, stop the senseless killing and misery.
Stop it... stop it... I can't take this anymore. STOOOOOP! he screamed, trying to take hold of himself, but he couldn't. All he could do was watch as the violence escalated and he screamed. The bodies piled up until only one person remained; himself from when he was nine years old. He could feel his face grin, though he was not controlling it. He saw his hand lift up, holding a pistol, aimed straight for his own head.
The boy that was him had tears flowing down his face, the horror filling his eyes. His finger was on the trigger, he squeezed, and the bullet flew, sinking into the boy's flesh right between his scared, wide eyes.
Shaun's eyes flew open as he jerked awake, his breath coming fast and hard. He hadn't had a nightmare that bad in a long time, and his body was covered in a film of sweat, his chest rising and falling with his heavy breaths. He looked down at his hands to find that they were shaking slightly and forced them to still. Even though the nightmare had plagued him all night he had managed to sleep his normal cycle. Soft, gray light filtered in through the cracks in the blinds, showing that it was just after sunrise. Finally, it was time to start his new job, no more waiting.