December 1st

Lucas had his first period of class, had two sausage rolls for lunch, and spent his time in the library until the fourth period. In the fourth period, the professor announced the date for the finals, and the girl sitting beside him asked, ‘sorry, can you lend me-

“Sorry, can you lend me a pen?”

Lucas glanced at his side. The owner of that voice was a student with peachy blonde hair. She wore an unbuttoned checkered blue shirt, showing her white spaghetti top underneath. Lucas could smell a faint scent of a flowery fragrance, perhaps from her perfume.

At that very moment, he heard an abrupt yawn from the student behind him and the sound of an eraser dragged against the blackboard. On the corner of his eyes, he observed the professor, who just erased half of her writings on the board.

Those might be normal occurrences. However, they were the exact same,

Every single thing he saw, heard, and smell.

“Umm, excuse me?”

Lucas quickly returned to his sense and handed out a spare pen that he didn’t use that much. 

“Thank you!” The girl smiled and started to write in her notebook.

Lucas turned his attention to the professor again, trying to focus on the class. However, no matter how much he tried, his mind unconsciously keeping track of those details from his dreams.

It had been about a month.

It had been about a month that he saw his everyday life on his dreams, from every class he took, to what dinner he had. They were fairly common dreams until he realized that it wasn't that simple. They were his experiences in the future.

The dreams were shown at random. He could see the scene from tomorrow, or even from three weeks later. Yet, those weren't the only thing he saw.

Most of the dream he had was about monsters and strange creatures. Crawling with their hideous limbs, opening their jaw, and gobbled people down to their throats. There were various monsters, but they all the same. They ate human consecutively, crunching on them like fries. He also saw some races like fairies, giants with red skin, dwarves. Yet, their existence didn't mean that it was a wonderland where he could drink some tea and looked for some rabbit. He kept finding his friends dying in a cruel way one after another.

Seeing those scenes countless times, Lucas could feel his spirit slowly fading away.

After all, who wouldn't be faltered if they kept seeing the same atrocity over and over again? He ignored sleep, keeping himself awake with dozens of coffee. Eye bags formed below his eyes, his body was getting thinner, and his face slowly turning pallid. Though he tried his best not to fall asleep, he always ended up dozing off and let the enormity tortured him again.

As Lucas tried to focus on the lesson again, a new notification popped up on his phone. Lucas involuntarily took a glance at his phone, only to find something that he saw in his dream a couple of days ago.

[The case of missing US students on the trip to Bali island....]

The moment he read that news title, billions of images and information were rushing to his head.

It made him felt fuzzy. Unable to contain them all, his head started to throb like crazy, almost like someone was pricking him with a thousand needles. Something dripping out of his nose. Lucas touched it just to find out it was blood.

At that moment, his sight turned blurry and his body went limp.

"Fu..ck…"

The last thing he saw was a growing red stain on his desk.

etherealbao

Dear @Cloudwatcher who waited for me for so long (is it a year already?), this is for you :)