Dream Confirmation Bias

II

Josh was rather peculiar in his habits: his being a rather uneventful existence, his dreams were something he could not hope to forget.

To remember better, he kept a list-- a comprehensive one, about each dream, with the cause of death, and date.

He had seen 1,347 dreams, and all of them were listed chronologically. The methods of death varied, from the mundane, to the really unexpected.

To keep his stuff safe, he had several copies of this list-- two on his desktop, three on his external hard drive and one on his phone, besides the countless hard copies he had printed out or written down.

One could say he was obsessed.

Reaching home, he quickly went through the pages of his last hard copy.

He checked Death #1.

Sure enough, there was the date, with "crushed by blue pickup truck" listed under it.

The list went on and on, over several pages, and the font was really small (to save paper).

***

The following day, Josh was invited to a party.

It wasn't really usual for him to be invited to parties. But then it was his cousin's birthday, and he was turning 6. Also, his cousin lived in a highrise. The view was pretty cool.

***

As expected, the party was lame.

Then again, there was not much he expected from a 6-year-old's party.

The rooftop was a place of interest, because you could pretty much see the entire city from there.

Josh leaned over the front of the parapet and looked down below. Everything seemed so...puny.

The deja vu followed shortly afterwards.

His second death had been from a similar position. He had looked down from the edge, and then he had jumped.

Josh was about to throw himself over the side when he heard someone yell, "Josh, no!"

He froze as his uncle ran towards him.

Time slowed down as his uncle dove towards him in a bid to tackle him to the ground and stop him from jumping. However:

Josh moved at the last second, and instead of tackling Josh, his uncle tackled only thin air.

He was so surprised that he kept moving until he hit the parapet and fell off the roof.

Horrified, Josh looked down from the roof and watched his uncle splatter himself to bits on the pavement below.

***

From a birthday party, it quickly turned into a funeral. Actually, the funeral was planned for the next day, so there was another social gathering he would have to attend to.

His aunt went hysterical. From what he had heard, she hadn't been too attached to him, yet she slapped him and screamed at him for "taking her husband away from her" until other people were forced to drag her away from him.

Josh wasn't in the least bothered by all this; in fact, what he had affirmed was that his second dream had also been realised--by a different person--yet again.