Sleep is the most looked-forward to time of the day.  It’s what people yearn for on the most stressful and long days of taxing work.  They count down the hours until they can rest their head and shut off their mind. Rid themselves of the stress of the ordinary and fall into dreams with unicorns and sparkly puppies.  

    At least, that’s what I imagine dreams to be like for other people.  Sure they have the occasional nightmare with a scary clown or a dark shadow chasing them.  Even their worst possible nightmares, the most vivid dream they remember couldn’t possibly come close to mine.

    It happens every night.  I can’t stop it. I’ve tried not sleeping, but that just wrecked my body and ended up having too many close calls at work. When you work in the evidence department at a police station there is no room for error. I’ve tried sleeping pills and soothing teas and sleeping mantras and putting away devices with lights on them before I go to sleep. Nothing helps, and the sleeping pills just make my dreams more vivid, if that’s even possible. When I’m on those, I can actually feel the pain as if its happening to me. And since they’re not always pleasant dreams I have, I’ve ditched the pills. It’s not worth it.

    I can feel it coming again as I rest my eyes from the long day. I have gotten used to my vivid dreams over the last 26 years, so I know what to expect for the most part. I don’t wake up screaming anymore except on the sleeping pill days. It doesn’t make sleep any more enjoyable though.  Most people yearn for the night when I yearn for the light.

    It’s almost instantaneous sleep as I drift off to my nightmares and give in to what’s been pulling at me all day. It’s different every night. Tonight my mind has taken me to a nice suburb home it looks like. No scratch that, apartment building. I can hear my neighbors radio blasting through the small walls that divide our apartment. I move sluggishly towards my drink that is now empty. I discard the empty drink into the sink and grab the bottle of wine on the counter I had been pouring from and drink it straight from the bottle.

I don’t know my reasonings on why I do the things I do in my dream state. I am merely an observer most of the times. I feel myself swaying and feel my cheek before looking up into the mirror. I’m crying. Looking at myself only makes me cry harder. I go back out to my living room and take a large gulp of wine. My vision is hazy, but I stare at my phone, almost as if I’m waiting for someone to call.  I sit there for I don’t know how long while I drink and stare at my phone before I chuck it across to the kitchen and yell. I doubt anyone could hear it though with the neighbor’s music so loud.

I fall to my knees. “Please,” I moan clutching my arms around myself. I can feel myself crying more. “Don’t leave me.” I don’t know why I’m saying these things.  “Don’t leave me,” I say again with more feeling.

Suddenly my head snaps up when theres a knock on the door. I feel myself drunkenly scrambling towards the door. I rip it open and stand there still in the doorframe.  “You’re not him,” I say.  “You’re not him.”

“No,” the person on the other side of the door replies cooly. It’s dark and I’ve had one too many. His face is not clear but I can tell it wasn’t who I was expecting it to be. I’m sure disappointment is written all over my face. “But I know where he is.  May I come in?”

I don’t say anything but the stranger gently pushes his way in and closes the door behind him. “Where is he?” I ask, leaning against the wall, not feeling like I could support myself much longer.  The figure stays quiet, and it infuriates me. “If you know where he is just tell me!” I’m yelling now.

“He’s dead,” the man says slowly and matter of factly.  I feel my jaw drop and the tears fall harder from my face.

“No,” I say, backing away. “No no no you’re lying.” But my voice sounds meek and thin.

“He’s dead,” the man repeated flatly. “And you killed him.”

My head snaps up from the self-pity party I’m throwing, my tears stop and I stare at this man hard. “No,” I reply sharply, my senses trying to make sense of what was going on. I took a step forward and tried to stand without swaying. “I haven’t killed anyone!”

“You can lie to me, child, but you cannot lie to God.” The man made a cross gesture with his hands and then reached down toward my shoes that I left by the door when I came in that afternoon.

“I am not lying!” I protest, reaching for my shoe. “Get out!” Before I can reach the shoe he swings it out of my reach and hits my stomach, knocking me flat on my back.  The wind is kicked out of me as I gasp for air.  Before I can catch my breath again he hits me again in the stomach.  I can see the heel of my shoe puncture my stomach, my shirt stained red.  I can’t hear me screaming.  I can just hear the music next door and the merciless repeated stabs to my abdomen.

That’s when I’m glad I haven’t taken sleeping pills that night.  I would have been able to feel the pain in my stomach and the dizziness of my head. At least I have before when someone was being hurt in my dreams. Usually I rouse awake after a scene like that. I feel frozen to my bed  for a moment. It takes a while to find feeling in my body again but I sit up eventually, clutch my head and try to shake out the mental images I have now.

Like I said, sleep is never something I look forward to.

I stop by the employee lounge at work the next day to grab my breakfast. Coffee with more sugar than coffee and a bagel.  Most people I work with are fairly nice. Some have a little bit of a God-complex if you asked me. Quentin for one.  He was a detective that always seemed to get assigned cases I was on.  He’d pride himself on being right and brag about it all the time.

“Avery!” a loud voice boomed as I turned the corner.  Speak of the devil.

“Morning Quintin,” I say throwing my bag down at my desk.

“Don’t get too cozy we just got a case,” he said matter of factly, sliding a piece of paper onto my desk with an address before throwing on his coat and headed out the door without much else to say. I sigh and sit down. Working in homicide had it’s perks. Nothing scared me anymore, and I got into this career because I was so used to seeing blood and guts every night. The good thing about the dead though, they would still be dead after I finished my bagel.

“Hey Avery, how’s it going?” a sweet voice to my right called.  I swivelled my chair over and smiled at Nia.  She was my assistant in the evidence department.  Mostly did a lot of the filing work that I didn’t want to do. It worked out because I always said she was too sweet for homicide. Filing wasn’t too bad a job though.

“Pretty good, how are you?” I say while sipping my coffee and warming my freezing cold hands.

“Not bad.  Quintin almost made me drop these papers by running out of here so fast,” she said with a simple shake of her head.

“Yeah got a new case this morning.  As you can tell I’m on my way,” I told her taking another savory bite of my bagel.  It really did seem more delicious the more I made Quentin wait for me at the crime scene.  Nia laughed and went about her work.

I got to the crime scene eventually.  I might have stopped to check my mail and get a refill on my coffee before headed out.  I knew Quentin was going to try and jump my ass for this, but as long as he didn’t squeal to the lieutenant about my tardiness I would be okay. It’s not the first time I’ve made him wait.

Maybe that’s why he didn’t seem surprised when I showed up late.  I was putting on gloves and carrying a bag with me around my shoulder.  He didn’t even notice when I walked up behind him. “What do we have?” I asked as professionally as possible like I wasn’t 15 minutes behind schedule.

“There you are,” Quentin said half-heartedly.  Not the full blown argument I was anticipating. He had a deep look in his eye. “Look it’s not pretty in there,” he said.  “Just, brace yourself.”

I gave him a skeptical look.  “I’ll be fine,” I said, wondering what could have made him so shook up over this case.  I followed the team inside. There was a light drumming coming from a neighbors house which I could hear under the conversations of others around me.

“Victim is Wyatt Rudder. Female. Age 19. Stabbed to death.  All contusions in the abdominal area.”

I shudder as I walk in.  This all looks very familiar.  I glance at the wine glass in the sink and the knocked over bottle in the living room. The phone tossed on the kitchen floor. This was all so familiar. Too familiar. Visions of last nights dreams rushed back to her as she remembered in detail how a strange man came in and stabbed her. Stabbed this woman. I try very hard not to look at the woman, knowing exactly what I’ll see. Somehow it’s shaken me. Dreams were just dreams, but to mix them with reality was disturbing and scary. I didn’t want to see who it was.

“The shoe…” I whispered without meaning to, looking around for it.

“What?” Quentin asked, suddenly serious.

I shook my head, pointing down.  “She only has one shoe by the door.  Has anyone found the other one?”

Quentin nodded as if he could see where I was going with this.  “Bag this one and sweep the  apartment for more clues. The murder weapon hasn’t been found yet and this could be it.  Don’t miss anything.”

I try not to scoff as he blatantly pretended finding the other shoe was his idea, but I did as I was told, starting in the other room to get away from other detectives for a bit. My mind was racing and I had to get it together. I had a job to do, but my job was the same dream I had from last night. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep getting to me, I think to myself. It must be. I couldn’t have seen something before it happened. And yet, here I was for the first time in my life thinking I might actually have something wrong with me.

It took less time than usual to gather all the evidence needed in that case.  I already knew where everything was. I took pictures of the scene and bagged the evidence that was needed to be analyzed in the lab where I could hide my confusion and fears behind a computer screen and files. Everything that I saw in my dream last night was now sitting before me.  Real. The pointed high heeled shoe that had been used to puncture her time and time again was missing, and I knew it was the murder weapon.  All I could do now was suggest it on a hunch.  People lose shoes all the time, but it could usually be found in the same house somewhere. That definitely put up a red flag for the detectives so I didn’t have to say much.

“Whats up with you?” Nia said with a twist of her head.

“Huh?” I said distractedly.

“You’ve been super quiet ever since you got back.  No talk of the case or nothing.  It’s like you don’t even notice I’m here.”  She almost seemed offended at the thought.  I forced a small smile at her.

“It was just not a pretty scene.  She was so young, you know.  Kind of reminded me of my old roommate in college,” I lied with a shrug and returning my gaze back to the evidence.  It was crazy how easily these lies came to me but they seemed to appease Nia for now.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said changing her tone drastically.  “Can I do anything to help out?”

“Yeah can you just document these while I take this one for fingerprints,” I said grabbing the lone shoe.

“Sure thing.  Are you coming tonight?”

I stop in the doorway and turn to look at her.  “It’s karaoke night at the bar.  A bunch of us are going for a few drinks.”

“Oh right,” I say.  I vaguely remember her mentioning the bar to me before.  I’ve never been much of a social drinker but I agree.  The thought of going home and sleeping early does not ease my mind.  I’m afraid of what I might see tonight.  If last night was real, what if all of my dreams were real? I could chalk them up to a vivid imagination most nights, but the thought of them all being real haunts me to the core.

There was this one night I took sleeping pills and had a dream about someone coming into my home with a shotgun.  I hid under the bed and the gunman opened fire through the bedding. I could feel the bullet go through my hand and hear the cry that gave away my position. I was sure I cried out in my sleep too. I woke up right before I was dragged out.  That was one of the worst I had felt, and the reason I stopped taking sleeping pills.  It was so vivid.  Was that real too?

The scientific side of me said to research it.  Maybe look for similar cases to my dreams.  The odds of finding a match were slim to none.  But the human side of me didn’t want to know.  If I was seeing murders in my sleep, real murders happening, I wouldn’t want to be responsible for that.  No one should have to carry that burden on their own.

I put on gloves and reached in for the lonesome shoe.  The feeling I got when touching it was chilling. I could almost feel how the murderers back of their index finger scraped this shoe as the words passed through my head.  Murderer….so helpless...so innocent.

I dropped the shoe in surprise.  The words were so clear in my head.  I jumped slightly as I heard a shout from across the room.  “Be careful with that Avery!  If you compromise the evidence I’ll find someone who’s better at your job than you are.” It was Lieutenant Harper. The boss of everyone in the homicide department. He waited a beat then laughed stiffly before moving on. He was the type of person who tried to be personable with everyone, but it was hard to tell when he was being serious and when he was trying to crack a joke.  He was terrible at sarcasm and therefore a lot of people were intimidated by him, me included.

“Sorry, Lieutenant,” I say quickly, picking up the shoe carefully.  This time, no voices came, but I still had that sick, queasy feeling in my stomach.  I swallowed hard and just continued.  Just do your job, I think to myself over and over again.  Just another case.  You work on these all the time.

Yes, I do.  But none that I actually have answers to.  I wasn’t a detective.  I never labeled myself smart enough for that job.  But I knew things they didn’t.  I knew the victim was waiting on someone to call her.  I knew she got visibly upset when the person didn’t.  That’s why she chucked her phone.  And I also knew the killer justified his actions away by calling her a killer as well.  She didn’t look like the killer type to me, but then why was she so upset? I had some leads, but if I came out with them, I’d look like a suspect, or even worse like a nut job.

Keeping a secret from a homicide department was draining.  I was wiped by the end of the day, but again I didn’t want to go home and sleep.  I decided to go on to the bar with a bunch of my coworkers.  Perhaps a drink would calm my nerves.