“What does that mean?”

He shoved the gun in my face, until the barrel was hitting my forehead and shouted, “It means you’re fucking done, man! Get your ass walking. I’m not taking you out on my porch.”

He shoved me and my body screamed in pain. He kept telling me to move, steering me in the direction of the field just beyond the house. Jesus fucking Christ, I could do nothing but move, and even that was chaos on my limbs.

“Don’t do this,” I told him, feeling parts of my emotions shutting off. Self-preservation, maybe. Fuck if I knew. I was strangely calm on the surface.

He didn’t reply to that. Just kept screaming to move. Pretty much telling me I was walking to my death. This kind of whiplash numbed me. I came here to give him money. Now I was going to get a bullet to the head?

What the fuck?

“What’s going to happen to Allie?” I let out, taking step after step with a wince.

“That dumb bitch made her bed the second she got with your dumbass brother.”

It felt like someone had stuck their hand in my chest and squeezed the life out of my heart. I made to turn around when the gun came smashing against the side of my head. My vision blurred and white-hot pain seared through my skull.

“I said to fucking move!”

But I couldn’t. I collapsed to the hard earth, trying to shake the pain away. I was so scattered. I couldn’t concentrate. Couldn’t even look straight.

I saw both his legs in my peripheral taking a step back. Heard the click of his gun. I knew he was going to shoot me. For a split second, I didn’t care. I was so physically broken, I could do with sleeping for an eternity.

“We’ll have fun with that girl,” he then said.

Then all at once it hit me.

Allie alone in that apartment. Unarmed. Unsafe. Waiting for me to get home.

It was like a crack in the armour for me. I could feel an immediate sense of possessiveness over her; it was the need to protect her at whatever cost. I looked up at Ricardo just as he put his finger on the trigger, and then I felt it… a spark of some kind.

I lost it.

I leaped at him, knocking him back just as he pulled the trigger. The sound of the gun went off passed my head, temporarily deafening me in my right ear. He shouted incoherently as we fell back. He landed hard on his back, firing a couple more shots from the gun in his outstretched hand. I grabbed at his wrist frantically, whacking it against the earth to dislodge the gun from his grip. It was a struggle consisting mostly of animalistic grunts on both parts. He scratched at my arms with his gloved hands as I pried the gun from him and threw it as far away from us as possible.

He swung his fists at me, tried twisting his body beneath me, but I had the advantage of size, and the pain was barely felt anymore. I punched back, tearing apart the bandana. His mouth was open, his shouts were gibberish to me as I focused solely on that gold fucking tooth, aiming every punch against his mouth.

This man was going to kill me.

This man was going to kill Allie.

This man didn’t deserve to live.

Before I knew it, I was standing and ramming my boot into his body. The adrenaline was rushing through my bloodstream, frenzied and unstoppable. My heart hammered inside my chest as my boot continued to slam down against flesh and bone. My vision blurred as the sweat broke free under the dark sky. I exerted every shred of my energy into striking him.

Hard.

Harder.

As hard as my strength would allow me.

I was possessed. Monstrous. Rage and fear merged together. I’d almost had my head blown to smithereens, and I wasn’t going to allow that to happen again. So I continued, until the earth was coloured with red and the smell of copper and sweat merged in the air around me.

It was like seeing, but also being blind at the same time. I knew what I was doing. I knew I should stop. But I was too blinded by that fear – by that desperate need to survive – I couldn’t stop myself.

One second I was on him, the next I felt like I’d been shoved back by an invisible force. I was panting hard, my body suddenly shaking as I blinked and stared at the unrecognizable man. Face first into the soil, his head was completely flattened and his body lay motionless.

I couldn’t focus on my thoughts. I couldn’t hear anything but the rush of my own blood in my ears. But what I felt… it was slowly inching its way into every corner of my being. That repulsed, sick and twisted feeling you get when something horribly indescribable has happened. My head swam and my breathing lightened.

“Fuck,” I muttered before I bent over and threw up.

I just killed a man. Oh, my fuck. I just killed a man.

The nausea hit me hard. I fell on my knees and heaved until my stomach ached. Then I wiped my mouth and stared at the man I killed. In that moment I felt like my life was over. I was going to be put away for this. I was going to rot in prison while the best years of my life faded into oblivion.

Allie.

Fucking Allie.

I felt a pinch in my chest. I wasn’t surprised to feel it. Because it was telling me that I didn’t want anything to happen to her if I got put away. Who would look after her? Who would take her in and help her? She would be completely on her own in a piece of shit town with a baby I convinced her to keep.

I sat back, continuing to stare at what was left of Ricardo. That fucker had it coming. I didn’t want this. I didn’t come here to kill a human being, even if that human being was clearly a piece of shit that didn’t deserve the oxygen in his lungs.

I tore my eyes away from him and stared up at the sky blanketed by clouds. The rain was coming. Which was good. I needed this huge patch of blood to disappear somehow. And the body.

Yeah, and the goddamn fucking body. Shit.

How was I going to do this and get away with it? What the fuck do you do with a dead body? I wasn’t even sure I could stomach carrying the bastard in my arms without vomiting again.

This was too surreal. I almost felt like I wasn’t even inside my body going through the motions. I was staring at myself from another angle: at a man that was covered in blood and bruises, gazing out into the empty fields around him like the lost soul, unrecognizable soul he’d become.

Eventually, I got up. Operating solely on that adrenaline, I left him behind and went to the house. The door was still partially opened. I slowly walked up the porch steps. I knew nobody was inside. If there was, they’d have come out when they heard the gun shots.