Nightmares

I see a broken window, glass shattered everywhere. Beside it there is a golden colored paper with a number 1 contrasting from it. All over the situation that is displayed in front of me I see yellow tape lathered around the window with the words “CRIME SCENE - DO NOT ENTER” printed on it with black letters. I notice that the glass is shattered on the ground from the outside. With that information I came to the conclusion that someone was attempting to escape from the inside of this small cottage that the window was attached to. I quickly jot down my suspicions and put my notepad into my back pocket. I hear my colleague, Mark's voice. He says something about calling it a day and heading back to the office to drop off the notes we both created. After I replied with a firm nod, we both rushed to the office swiftly with hopes of finishing work earlier than we usually do. 

We arrive at a familiar building with the name “Detective department” plastered on it with big white letters. We both enter and turn in our papers for the day. After saying our goodbyes we went our separate ways. I went back to my small home on the west side of town. Seeing the pure hearted children play in my neighbor's yard while their dog practically jumps up and down made me smile. I enter my home and throw my keys carelessly on the table along with today's mail, without bothering to check it. I head upstairs to get a good night's sleep since I haven’t fully had rem sleep in a while. I get under my bed sheets and look outside my window and see a full moon radiating dim light into my room. My eyelids slowly get heavier and heavier. Before I know it I drift off to sleep.

I feel myself gently arising from my bed placing my feet down on the cold hard tile and pacing towards the door. Leaving my house heading to where my legs take me, I am clueless on why I have departed from my house and why I am entering a complete strangers home. I pry the door open, my body completely oblivious of the term breaking and entering. I escort myself to the kitchen and without my knowledge my arm immediately goes for a knife that is laying carelessly on the kitchen counter. As I head to the master bedroom of my neighbors home I feel my aura slowly change from ignorance and confusion to anger and frustration. I have no idea why these feelings were pondering inside me. Why did I feel like all this anger in me will explode? My thoughts came to an abrupt stop as I opened the door to the master bedroom of a stranger's house and before I knew what I was doing I ran towards this unfamiliar resting face with the knife in the air bringing it down towards the person. My emotionless face just stared at the scene that was extended in front of me. The last thing I see is the pure vermillion colored blood that was everywhere.

 I immediately jerk up and I can feel my breathing heighten while my eyesight becomes dizzy. It was just a nightmare. I’ve never really experienced these episodes before. After recovering from the situation I just encountered, I hear a dim buzz almost as if 1,000 bees are in my house. I try to find where this sound is coming from. I found the source of the sound which is my phone. I see that I have 50 messages and 15 missed calls. What could have happened in the past 5 hours? I quickly call back one of the missed calls and wait till I hear them pick up.

“Where have you been? What are you doing? Why haven’t you picked up any of my calls? You know what, never mind. Just come to the office as quickly as possible.” He hangs up the phone and I swiftly move from the bed getting ready for what I could tell would be a long day.

I soon arrived at the department of criminal investigations. Walking with swiftness as I can tell some things are not right, I get to the main desk where I see the friend that called me. The whole office was in chaos. A large portion of the people were taking phone calls with what seemed like non happy people. While in the front of the building where people pushing news reporters away from the door trying to create a human barrier protecting the door and what was inside. Concerned, I head over to Mark, the man who spammed me with phone calls and messages. 

“What is happening? Why is everyone going crazy?” I questioned. 

“A huge murder came out today. Someone went bizarre and killed a man with a kitchen knife while he was sleeping in the middle of the night after breaking and entering his home. This man has serious problems." 

This was peculiar indeed. I felt like I had experienced deja vu of some sort. Where has this memory come from? Then all of a sudden it hit me. I had experienced the same exact thing in my nightmare last night. Maybe that was a sign that this was going to happen. Maybe that nightmare was foreshadowing the real crime. 

“Were there any witnesses? If there was, where can we find them?” I ask hoping the answer was yes so we could finish this case and everything will be resolved.

“Actually, there was. She is the wife of the victim. Unfortunately after coming home to see her husband killed she was in so much shock that she can’t form any words.” 

“Let’s just go and inspect her and see if she can help us out with finding the description of the person who did this.” 

“Alright, I’ll take you to where she is.” 

We both start to arrive at a door. We could hear silence. There was almost an eerie feeling that was overflowing through the door. Mark opens the door leading me in after him. I see him start to talk to the women. She was calm, almost in a numb state. She was only looking at Mark with blank eyes. They both look at each other for sometime and then I walk into her peripheral vision. I see her face more closely. She had dark chocolate brown eyes with a matching hair color. She had a light complexion and it looked like the light from her face was sucked out. As soon as she saw me, her face twisted into an inexpressible emotion of complete horror. She stared deep in my soul with her dilated pupils and screamed on top of her lungs. I flinched at the sudden outburst she had. I couldn’t figure out what I had done to get this big reaction from her. Part of me was offended while the other was confused. I looked over at Mike and he looked back at me with a quick shrug and started to try to console her now shaking body. Noticing that my presence was not doing any good I quickly fled the scene. Why did my face make her act like this? I quickly shake away the thought because I have more important business to take care of which is trying to find the murderer that killed her husband. 

I go to the murder scene and a shiver gets sent down my spine. This was the exact setting where my nightmare took place. What was happening? I look around and the deja vu I once had came back. I look at the pool of blood that is surrounded by the yellow caution tape and try to figure out who could possibly do this.

I talked to numerous people about the dead victim's life and who his close friends and families were. As dusk grew near I had more and more names on a list that could possibly be affiliated with this crime. After all of this hard work I decide that it is time to retire for the day. 

I say my goodbyes to the people at the office while handing in my evidence for the day and leaving. I enter my home and I head straight to my bed. I feel these waves of tiredness hitting me like I am in a lazy river. Before I know it I am fully sound asleep.

I feel the light of the moonlight glisten on my face as I stretch my arms and release a slight grunt and take the bedsheets off my body for me to get up off of bed. Feeling numb to the cold tile beneath my feet I stride to my kitchen and click on the light. I rummage through the drawers, trying to find something I am completely ignorant of. When my body finds what it wants it grips onto the object and packs it into a backpack. My eyes narrow, attempting to distinguish what this object is. As I look at it with a questioning look, it suddenly hits me. It is lighter. Why would I need a lighter? Where was I going in the middle of the night? What soon to be adventure would I face? 

As my body enters my garage, I panic when my hand picks up a tank of gasoline. What am I doing!? I grasped the doorknob of my front door with a tight grasp. I could feel the smooth cold metal in my warm hands. As I turned the knob I quickly exited my home, hoping nobody would see me. A couple blocks down I come across a house. This structure had white bricks lathered on the base of the home. You could see that it was very modern. It had a sleek black roof. Stretched across it were big windows. As I watch my body pause while on the way to pass this house it stops. I started to move to this home and I was coming near a window to peek into it. All I see is a small green blinking light that I assumed was the alarm surrounded by darkness. Assuming that everyone inside was sleeping I quickly break the window and swiftly move to the alarm system to break it too before it can make any noise. Successfully stopping the alarm, I headed to the kitchen. There, I placed my backpack I carried down on the floor and started to pour gasoline all over the floor. Ignorant to what I was doing, my hands started to click open the lighter I had packed in my backpack. Panicked at my situation, I try to gain back the control that I lost over my body. Sadly, it didn't work. All I could do was watch. I felt like I was the audience to my own life, sitting back and watching the train wreck I was causing. Before I could think another thought my hand dropped the lighter and my legs started to sprint outside of the house, attempting to escape the chaos that I created. Standing in front of the home that I just broke into and lit into flames, dread and regret consumed me. As I watch my decisions affect the lives in that house the feeling of guilt, sadness, and frustration with myself started to turn to happiness with my doings. It felt like I didn’t have remorse for what I just did. Lost in my thoughts I hear screams that snaps me out of my dazed state. I quickly fled the scene and went back to my unburned home. 

I rose up from my sleeping position drenched in sweat and breathing heavily. It was just another nightmare. I have no idea why I keep having these. I look outside and see the sun in its full glory. I could hear my phone going off with a phone call. I look at the name of who is calling me. My screen lit up with the name “Mark”. I pick up the phone with a tired “hello”.

 I hear a panicked low voice through the phone that belonged to my best friend/colleague. “You should come now and see what I'm looking at.”

What was happening? 

“Ok, give me 20 minutes and I will be there.” I said with a firm voice, as I quickly ended the call to get ready.

After brushing my teeth and taking a shower, I pour a glass of milk and eat a granola bar. As I am eating I turn on the TV to look at the news. I see the screen in front of me projecting a picture of two people smiling. I hear the news reporter saying “Last night a married couple was burned alive in their home. At first many people came to the conclusion that they left a stove top on and it lit fire to everything around it causing the house to set on fire however, people are starting to unravel the truth that neighbors saw a man entering their home and exiting.” After that they showed the picture of the house that was burned down. I looked at the television with wide eyes. What I saw in front of me was the same exact house that was in my nightmare. How come the same exact things that happened in my nightmares are coming true? 

I try to conceal my wonders while I head out of my home and leave for work. When I get to the detective office I rush to Mark’s cubicle. I see a confused Mark staring at his computer screen. He has a wrinkle in his forehead and his hand on his chin. He looks like he is trying to process a big thing that is happening on his screen. He glances up noticing me staring at him and then looks at me with even more confusion. 

“What? Why do you look so confused?” I ask him with confusion clear in my voice. I look at him straight into his eyes and I see that another emotion was unlocked inside of him. Fear.

“We got a new case. A husband and wife were in their home at 1am and their house was engulfed in flames along with them. We asked the neighbors of the couple if they saw anything suspicious that night and many people say that they saw a man entering their home and leaving right before the house went into flames. I had no idea how to track him down so I sat down and thought for a while. I looked at the sunrise on a bench at the park near here and watched as the sun rose. While I was staring into oblivion, trying to think on what to do to solve this case, a phone dropped in front of me. I picked it up and handed it to its owner. I looked at the camera attached to it and an idea hits me. I should look at the security footage of the crime scene and also of the other case we had to solve. With that, I go to the house of the victims and attempt to find any undamaged footage from the fire. Luckily, I found the main entrance camera and went through the footage. I looked through it and...well you should come see it for yourself.” He says while waving me to his computer screen.

I look at his computer screen and he rewinds the footage to a certain timing and it shows someone breaking through the window. I can only see the man's back in the video. For some reason I recognize that person's back. Who could this be? 

Finally the face of the man was about to be revealed as he was turning to face the camera. When I see his face I am in complete shock. My jaw drops and I have no idea what is happening. I couldn't process fast enough what was going on.

The face was mine. Maybe it wasn’t just a nightmare.