About Last Night

Dreams

The next day, school is canceled due to the attempts of the Trenchcoat Gang to shut down the school with threats. They apparently called the school secretary and told her that if the school didn't stay closed until they said otherwise, then they would blow up the school at the end of the week.

Theo sits back on his laptop and visits some subreddits while his mom is yelling at the TV. He reads posts about how people are over the Trenchcoats, and they should do something extraordinary to get everyone to like them again. One person says they should rob a bank and then buy a big load of tea to dump in a river to save an endangered fish species that lives in that river. Theo thinks to himself how stupid some of these people are and how they should leave it to the professionals to deal with these matters.

Theo falls asleep on the couch, waking up six hours later in his room. He gets online but immediately starts to feel nauseous. Feeling like vomiting before passing out entirely. He has dreams about how he has lived in Chesapeake his entire life. He thinks of himself as a good citizen who has never broken the law. How he has been a lifeguard at the local swimming pool for the last four years. Being the captain of the swim team in high school, and is a very physically fit person. He dreams about saving people who are drowning.

He wakes up with a start.

"Open up! Police!" He hears a voice yell.

Getting out of bed, and looking through the window. Theo sees several police cars with their lights flashing. A small crowd has gathered across the street, watching as police in riot gear try to break down his front door.

"Theo, what's going on!?" His mom asks.

"I don't know!" Theo yells. "Go in the back!"

His mom rushes off before turning around. "What about you?"

"I'll be fine; if they find anything, just say you don't know where I am," Theo says.

He goes downstairs to the basement as he hears his front door smash open. He looks out the window and sees several police officers enter his house.

"Theo Morgan?" One of the officers calls out.

Theo grabs his phone and sees a text from Alice, the girl who was with him when they found Ben's body.

Theo, you got to get the hell out of your house. The police are at my place

He starts pacing back and forth. "Oh fuck oh fuck..." He mutters over and over as he hears the screams of his mom.

If you run out now, they'll catch you, and you'll be taken in for questioning. He says over and over in his head.

Theo looks down at his hands and sees that they have some kind of liquid on them. He goes to smell them and gets a strong scent of gasoline. This is crazy. This can't be real.

"Maybe I'm still sleeping," Theo says. "Maybe this is still just a dream."

Take a deep breath; you have to wake up. Theo shakes his head and takes a deep breath. He looks at his hands again and sees no change. He still has gasoline on them, and the police are screaming at his mom for information.

"Fuck it, if this is a dream, I'm not waking up," Theo says.

He opens the door leading to the upstairs of his house before something catches his eye. It's a decaying human arm. It looks like it's been torn off and is covered in black-colored pus. It's squeezed through a small crack in the wall. It seems unnatural in its position as if someone went to great lengths to make it look like an accident.

"What the fuck..."

Theo wakes up in a panicked sweat. He gets up to look out the window and is relieved to see no police group outside, just an ordinary morning street.

"It was just a dream, thank god."

He gets himself together and makes his way downstairs. He pokes his head into the kitchen and sees that his mom is already up. She's always an early riser.

"Hey Theo," she says as she stirs something on the stove, "you're up early."

"Yeah, I uh... had a bad dream." He says as he comes into the kitchen.

"Just a dream?" She asks. "Just a dream..."

She looks at him for a few seconds. She looks like she wants to tell him something but stops herself.