The inside of his head felt like the Fourth of July.  Small explosions built up from the center of his head, exploding near the cap of his skull, with each thundering beat of his heart.  He groaned softly, as he rubbed his temples with this thumbs, and squeezing his eyes shut with all the strength his lids could muster.

“What did I do,” he lamented.  The memories of the night before still rested beneath a blanket of alcohol.  His body ached in places he was not used to feeling.  His shoulders and arms felt heavy from exertion, the muscles stretched further than they had been in years.

The knuckles of his right hand had been swollen when he’d first opened his eyes, but a few minutes beneath a bag of frozen corn, and a couple of ibuprofen, had brought it down a little.

“…if fucking her makes me a bad person, what does killing me make you…”

Andy’s voice floated out of the darkness, a disembodied memory that demanded attention he couldn’t yet give.  John flinched at the sound of his voice, but the truth in the words weren’t yet strong enough to affect him.  At that moment, he had bigger concerns.  He stumbled with all the grace of a marionette, bouncing twice off of the walls in the hallway between his kitchen and bathroom, as a tidal wave of nausea suddenly overcame him.

“Better than you,” he said absently, an answer he’d neither thought of, nor intended to give, as he lunged toward the bowl.

He clutched at the belt of his porcelain God, opening his mouth wide as an ages old prayer erupted from the bowels of his soul.  Only, instead of mossy colored liquid he expected, he watched helplessly through watering eyes as a viscous red geyser splashed into the water below.

He coughed violently when a large mass threatened to clog his airways.

He whimpered as another spasm overcame him, dislodging the mass from his throat.  It was followed by another rush of foul liquid, and then a second blockage that passed easier than the first.

He struggled for breath, horrified by the crimson pool before him.  What was once white, was now covered in a red, oozing, smear.  But it wasn’t this on which he focused his attention.  Staring at him from foul soup of death were two milky white eyes.  Beneath these, and centered nearly where they belonged, were the partially chewed, nose, lips, and left cheek, of Andy’s face.

He didn’t know how he knew the gruesome mess belonged to the paedophile. There was nothing recognisable in the mess before him, and had what happened next, not happened, he would have later questioned why this thought came to mind.

“What’s the matter John?  Don’t you like having my meat in your throat?”

When the lips began to move, he felt the fear creeping into his soul.  When they spoke, it overtook him so completely that he began to shriek.  It was a high-pitched sound, higher than what should have been physically possible, and one that mercilessly shook him from the world of dreams.

Everything faded into the shroud between dreams and reality as his upper body sprung up from his pillow.  His eyes bulged in their sockets, and he clutched his blanket against his neck, as he shrieked until there was no breath left in him.