“Cascaded darkness
Walls close in on me.
Nailed shut but my eyes still see.
Severe anguish as my body evolves.
The pain of life after death it resolves”
“Live Undead” – Slayer

I thought smoking pot and getting baked before I slept would help but it didn’t.  I still woke with a choked scream, my sheets wet from perspiration, the half-smoked joint still in my makeshift ashtray, all it seemed to do was to weaken the resistance to the nightmares that plague me.

The first one was short, I was dead I knew it, I felt so cold, so alone, I could hear without understanding, see without distinguishing shapes, touch without recognizing shapes and textures.  My eyes were glazed, expressionless, I was unthinking, all I wanted to do was eat, to attack and eat anything that was food I was alive but undead, in pain but unfeeling.  Aware but unable to… the dream broke off.

I fell into a further deep sleep and I dreamt of my time before The Cabal, my first experience of mercenary work, and what those sick bastards did, what they had me do, the acts they perpetrated to intimidate and bully people into submission, torture and murder of anyone, young or old, men or woman, alive or dead just for their own sick amusement.  I remember what I had done, why I had to leave, what they made me do… oh god, I remember it all, maybe I deserve to die for being too dumb to see I was being used, maybe I should stop running and let them find me, pay for what I have done.

I woke as described, sitting up I lit a smoke and sat there in the dark trying to stay awake.  Maybe everything that is happening to me on Arklay is happening for a reason, maybe the illness, the being attacked, everything is part of the penance I must pay for what I have done in the past.  No one truly knows me except Cain, or I should know the main I once knew as Cain but I no longer recognise.  If they come to the island would I run, fight, all I know is I can not let anyone else get harmed trying to defend me,