My heart beat angrily inside my chest. Pounding to an unknown rhythm that urged it, coaxed it faster, harder.

Isn't this what it is all about? The mindless thought crossed me, bared my soul unto the victim, the body splayed in front of my own two feet. My hands, the red, dripping hands, were held out in front of my face. Had I done this? Caused the horrid pain that the girl had been inflicted?

Yes. And oh! Hadn't it felt good? Gnawing the edge of my mind, eating away at my sanity! Oh! The pleasure of the first kill, the first moans and groans of pain. Then would come the shouts and screams! The begging, ha! Oh, how my body craved it. The alluring passion that it created within my soul. My fingers, spreading across the victim's upper arm, clenched roughly. Gripping tightly around her small porcelain skin. My arms yanked her up, pulling her tightly to my body, my chest. Oh, she was still alive! Her haggard breaths gasped into my ear. Oh the joy! The inescapable joy!

"You are mine." My soft whisper caused her body to erupt in shudders, violent rocks that shook her whole being. Her brown eyes filled with utter terror as pain and fear rocked her soul and tainted my hands. My smile was small, but she noticed it. The faintest hint of enjoyment in her killers face. My fingers tightened around her jaw, holding it in place.

"Ah, my sweet. You will die tonight, you know." I whispered softly, laying her softly back to the ground. Her eyes were now fluttering closed, as if incapable of being kept open. "Goodnight, my first lover." A new passion settled into my bones, residing deep within my battered and tainted soul. "Goodnight."

I awoke, sweat dripping down my back, my t-shirt stuck to my soaked chest. My breath was coming out in pants, trying to calm my racing heart. Thinking back to the dream, I shivered in fear. Tears were streaming down my already salty cheeks, such vivid pictures.

It had all felt so real. The blood, the air, the wind, the pleasure. That was the thing that scared me most. The pleasure I had felt. So vivid and alluring. I could feel it lingering within me. I was my biggest fear. I terrified myself, not knowing if I would break one day, snap on someone. Follow out my dreams.

Wiping my forehead with my palm, I growled. That was the catch. I knew it, right when my father had first whispered the fated words to me.

"Didn't you know? You'll turn out like me. Like father like son. It's the curse of our linage. Runs down from generation to generation." Ah, the words still haunted my thoughts, plagued my mind. The doctors, ah, those foolish doctors, they tried to confront me about my father, the psychotic killer. They tried comforting the information out of me! Like I'd tell them what had happened that brutal night, the night of his demise, his last breaths. He had smiled, really smiled as I was forced to kill him. My hand had shaken with utmost rage and desperation as I pointed the knife at him, waiting for his step, for him to inch any closer. I had given him a fair warning. Ha! More than once had I told him to back up, to let me pass! But he had smiled. Again, that smile. It had seemed cruel, warped in some crucial way.

"It's a curse, an addiction that stays with our family." He kept telling me, as if that would make it right. As if, that reasoning could make up for his deception, his betrayal. He had killed my mother! He had killed four others, but the last one had been his love! He had murdered her! And then he had come after me. Smiling, nonetheless! Oh, and he thought words could make up for that? Ha!

"Brandon! It's okay, dude! It's okay!" My roommate Nathanial yelled me out of my crazed thoughts. I looked at him, his hand were holding tightly onto my broad shoulders, his eyes held a hint of fear, as they always did, when I lost control of my sanity.

"Sorry. I'm sorry." I muttered, falling back onto my ruffled bed. Nathanial sighed and ran his long fingers through his short brown hair.

"Man, you have got to see a doctor." Was all he said before sitting back onto his own bed. We just sat there, me watching the floor while he watched me. This had happened several times before, every time ending with him getting violent with me. Every time thoughts of my late parents entered my brain, I couldn't hold back the rage.

"I can't and you know it." I replied after sometime. All he could answer with was another sigh, another breath. He laid back in bed, whistling a tune his own mother had taught him as a child. I took his example and laid back myself, listening as his tune got softer, fainter. And as soon as I was sure he has fallen asleep, I stood up. Hurriedly, I dressed, slipping a fresh t-shirt and some sweatpants on. I scavenged through our shared closet for my running shoes, the only constant in my life. As I slipped them on, I felt myself calm down, just a fraction.

The door opened silently under my skillful hands. As I jogged down the stairs and out the apartment buildings doors, I felt eyes watching me. I looked, yet nobody was in sight.

Keep running, I told myself. I followed my advice, since it seemed the easiest and best way out of the situation. My feet hit the pavement with a small pattering, intensified by the quiet around me. Thump, thump, thump. Ah, the sounds were familiar, comforting, soothing. I kept an even pace; following the same trail I had always followed on nights like these, when I lay awake in fear of what my dreams might conjure. Of what I might do.