Wandering Ends A Flash Fiction Collection

Sleepless Nights

Seneca had always been plagued by vivid dreams and visions she considered hallucinations, but lately they had become all to real.  The previous night she had dreamed that she was a child being forced into a dark, black van.  The abductors tied her up, then began to torture her.  They burned her with cigarettes, they slapped her around, and ran a knife back and forth across her cheeks.  She could feel everything, but to her relief she woke from the nightmare, although, uncomfortably covered in sweat and shaking uncontrollably; at least she was not that poor child anymore.   As she wiped the sweat from her face, she felt marks across her cheeks.  She scrambled from her bed to the bathroom mirror.  What was looking back at her sent a shrill, terrified shriek out into the deafeningly silent apartment.  Blood was pouring from her cheeks and her throat was purple with choke marks.  Except, it was not actually her face in the mirror, it was the young boy from the dream.  Staring back at the boy, Seneca noticed the side of his skull was leaking gray brain matter.  With that, she doubled over the toilet, throwing up everything she had ate that day. 

Sleep was no longer an option for Seneca, besides, she had to clean up her face and bandage the wounds.  Terror-stricken from her last encounter with a mirror, but needing one, she pulled out a mirror from her makeup bag.  Holding the mirror for several minutes, she finally flipped it over to see the damage on her face.  But, when she looked there were no marks or blood, it was just her looking back at herself. 

At work, following the worst night of her life, Seneca tried to go about her day.  All day long she was asked if she was feeling alright.  Her skin was pasty white, her eyes looked sunken, with dark, almost black, circles around them.  She looked like she was on the verge of death.  She was not feeling alright. 

After work she went straight home.  She turned on the TV and decided to try to eat some dinner.  While she made her dinner, a breaking news story caught her attention.  A young boy had gone missing, they had not found him yet but the picture they had of him was the face she saw in her mirror the night before.  She could not believe that her dream was real but the feeling that it was could not be shaken.  Any appetite she did have left with that.  She threw what had been cooking into the trash.  It was time for her to get some sleep, she threw back half a bottle of some liquid sleep aid.  Thirty minutes later she passed out.

Seneca tossed and turned all night, actually she thrashed violently.  She was trying to break free from a very bulky and strong man in her dream tonight.  He was on top of her, forcefully holding her down.  His hands kept going into her pants as he was ripping her shirt off.  She was screaming and crying, begging him to stop.  His hot breath kept whispering into her ear that she wanted this and she was going to get it.  He slapped her hard in the face, enough to almost knock her unconscious.  While she was momentarily stunned he yanked her pants down.  Seneca woke up crying, sweating again.  She did not check the mirror this time because she was afraid she might have to relive that terrible moment again. 

Instead, she decided to call the police.  She explained that although she sounded crazy she had dreamed of the boy that had been kidnapped the day before and she had just dreamed of a women who was being raped.  They assured her that they took her seriously, but she doubted it.  To prove it was not just a bad dream, she told them the details of where the boy was killed.  The officer on the phone explained that they did not know if he was alive or not.  She knew and she told them just to look. 

The officer decided to humor her and sent a unit to the abandoned warehouse she had described.  What they found had shocked them.  They found the missing boy, they also found several badly decomposed bodies in a dark black van hidden in the warehouse. 

While the officers where investigating the warehouse a call came into the police station about a potential rape and homicide.  They sent a unit to investigate that as well as a unit to go pick up Seneca.  The police chief wanted to interview her a little more to find out about her involvement in these crimes.  He did not feel she dreamed this, she had to be involved. 

Seneca was sitting on her couch, afraid to sleep, when a loud knock startled her.  Two police officers greeted her when she opened the door.  They told her to come down to the station with her to explain, again, to the chief what had happened.  She felt relieved they were finally taking her seriously. 

When she arrived at the chiefs office he was not cordial as she thought he would be.  Instead, he was accusatory.  He kept asking why she would do something like this and what was in it for her.  She was confused and hurt by the accusations.

 While he was grilling her a unit of officers was picking up a suspect in the rape case.  In fact, he was wanted in over thirty rapes in the city. 

One of the arresting officers interrupted the chiefs meeting to inform him of the arrest.  He looked at Seneca while her tired eyes glared at him.  He briefly stepped out of the office and just as abruptly popped back in.  He apologized profusely but was also confounded as to how she knew all those details.  She could not explain it in a way that made sense but she explained that the dreams and visions had been happening since she was a child and had recently become more intense.    He wanted to make her part of the department, she just wanted to stop seeing these things.  In the end, he convinced her to help them out as long as she could.  She agreed because she felt she could do some good, but she was afraid of everything she might see.