Controlled Chaos (Deadly Dreams Book 1) (4 page)

Chapter Five

4:00 a.m. Tuesday Morning

I woke up, and I was in the hospital. I had no idea how long I was out. I looked up and Steve was sitting next to me in the hospital room.

“How did I get here?” I asked.

“By ambulance. Are you okay?” Steve looked at me with concern.

“I don’t know. Am I?”

“You were attacked, Hunter. It looks to be by animals. You have bite marks all over your body.”

“It wasn’t animals,” I said. “It was human beings. Three guys attacked me in the park for no reason.”

“When the police found you there was no one there. You were bleeding to death.”

I tried to remember the last thing that happened. I was being attacked and I heard a police officer identify himself. He or the other cops had to have seen them. I paused and stared at Steve. “They said I was lying alone?”

“Yeah they did.” Steve seemed as surprised as I was.

“That doesn’t make any sense. The last thing I remember was a male policeman stopping them by calling out that he was indeed a cop.”

“Don’t try to worry about that right now. Get some rest. I was worried about you, man. I thought we were going to lose you. You lost an outrageous amount of blood. I feel like shit letting you walk home.”

“Letting me? I know you might feel bad, but I have walked through that park a hundred times over the years. Most of the time at night. Those fuckers were eating me. They were biting my body everywhere. It made no sense why anyone would do that?”

Steve looked over at me. He seemed to have a lot on his mind. “Listen, Hunter, we’re going to catch these assholes that did this to you. I won’t rest until we do. Right now, you need to rest. I’ll come back and see you later in the morning.

“What time is it?”

“Four in the morning.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“Munson came to the scene and he called me. He recognized you as they put you in the ambulance. He called me immediately.”

“He always seems to be there at the right time, doesn’t he?” I said to Steve.

“He’s the best cop on the force.” Steve got up out of his chair and walked over to me. “I’ll come by tomorrow. I’ll probably bring Munson.”

Steve left the room. I was surprised that Steve was the first person I saw when I woke up. Not a doctor, not a nurse, and not a policeman to take down my report. I looked outside and recognized what hospital I was in. I was in the same hospital that I had been in hours earlier signing ‘end of days’ papers for Dave.

I had no business making that type of serious decision for him. Was this my karma?

I closed my eyes. I was real sore and real tired. I had an IV in my arm that must have been dripping painkillers into me. It was making me terribly drowsy, too. Before I knew it, I was out.

I was in and out of sleep all night, which meant sleep paralysis would be making an appearance. My condition was always worse when my sleep was disrupted.

I was having a jumbled dream that was a mixture of three ideas like most dreams are, but then something happened; something very specific. First and foremost, I fell into one of my dream seizures. I could feel my panic level rising and my heart rate was beeping off the chart. I could open my eyes and see the room, but yet I was still dreaming. I could see my heart monitor. I was in my seizure, watching my heart rate rise well above 175.

I tried to will myself awake. I can do that sometimes if I’m real focused, and I will snap out of my seizure in the beginning. But not this time.

This time, everything was different. It wasn’t this chaotic mess where goons and ghouls pop out and scare me as if I was in my own demented haunted house. Instead, my dream was very real. Nothing chaotic, as if the dream unscrambled and I saw the dream world perfectly clear. That was all fine and dandy, but I was dealing with the unknown fear that happens to me when I fall into this condition. Usually, I do all I can to jolt myself awake or I eventually just go back to sleep.

Not this time. I endured the panic attack. I endured the misfiring of neurons that sent a chilling fear down my spine. I tried to look past all of that so I could concentrate on the dream.

It was as if my dream became perfectly clear and my consciousness was watching it, as if I was in a theater watching a horror movie. I say horror movie because what I was witnessing was a nightmare. But it wasn’t a nightmare about me. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t in the dream. I was an outsider. I was watching from afar as if I was peeking through the window.

I could see a young a man. He looked to be in his early twenties. He was really skinny, with long, black hair. His skin was pale and he seemed malnourished. He was wearing a blue windbreaker with blue sweats. He was snooping around someone’s apartment. He was going through drawers and looking in closets. I saw an older man come home, and the long-haired guy was hiding behind the door. The old man knew someone was in his apartment. He crept around and made his way into the bathroom where the man was hiding in the shower.

The old man yelled out, “Who’s there? I know you’re in there. I can hear you breathing.” The old man now seemed to be a little bit of a bad ass. This wasn’t his first rodeo or break-in.

The man hiding in the shower didn’t answer. The old man grabbed a baseball bat that was at the side of his bed. He must have kept it in his room for this very reason. He yelled out one more time. He knew the man was in the bathroom. “I’m calling the cops. I know you’re in there!”

Suddenly, the long-haired man jumped out of the shower and tried to run to the hallway.

Then the old man did something foolish. He should have let the guy run out. He hit the young kid in the back as he ran by with the metal bat. The long-haired kid fell to the floor and the old man jumped on top of him. The young guy was far too strong; he chucked the old man’s body off of him. The old man got up and put his body in the doorway.

“Fucking move. You fucked me. I didn’t fuck you!” the younger man yelled out.

The old man didn’t budge. The young man grabbed the bat that the old man had dropped by the door.

“Look, it didn’t have to go like this. You gave me no choice.”

“I cut you off. That was all I did.”

“Then you owe me.” The young man took a swing at the old man and yelled at him to get out of the doorway.

“Fuck you, Felix, you’re a lying, cheating scumbag!” the old man yelled.

Then Felix snapped. He hit the old man over the head with the metal bat. The old man tried to protect himself, but the force of the bat was too much. He collapsed on the ground and the young did the unthinkable; he smashed the old man’s skull in with one good swing. Felix looked on in horror. Blood was all over his face and clothes. Felix ran out of the old man’s house.

Then the dream ended, and it was just in time. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. It was the longest seizure I had ever allowed myself to endure. I saw every horrifying detail. I was sweating from head to toe. I crawled out of my bed and made my way to the doorway. My arm was still stuck to my IV. I was dragging the darn thing behind me. A nurse saw me at the doorway and told me to get back in bed.

“May I have a pen and paper?” I asked her.

“Sure, get yourself back in your bed, sir. I will bring it to you.”

I got to my bed and the first thing I noticed was that it was still dark. I had only been asleep for maybe an hour since Steve left.

The nurse brought me a pen and paper and I wrote down every detail of the dream I just had. I was strongly drawn to do so. I wrote out the dream and by the end of it, I had fallen asleep again.

This time I woke up in sheer pain. My very own face felt like it was on fire. I woke up instantly and the morning sunlight was coming through the window. For whatever reason, it was stinging my face and arms in a way I had never experienced. I yelled out, “Nurse! Doctor! Help me! Someone help me! Anyone!” I covered my face and arms with my hospital bedspread, but it was doing very to little help.

The nurse came running and asked, “What’s the matter, Mr. Simon?” I recognized her voice. It wasn’t the nurse. It was Dr. Gomez, the doctor I had spoken to the day before about Dave living or dying.

“Please do something about the sunlight. It’s burning my skin!” I said, sounding like a madman.

She ran over to the window and put the blinds down. “How’s that?”

My skin still felt like it was in a pan of grease on an open fire. “Please get me out of this room. Put me in a room where there is no sunlight.”

“The only place there is no sunlight is the hallway.”

“Then fucking wheel me out there!” I said, pleading.

Then a couple of men came in the room.

“Please help me move Mr. Simon to the hallway. The sun is hurting his skin.”

The two men wheeled me to the hallway, and the second I was out of the sunlight, my skin felt normal again. I was still under the covers. I peeked my head out and could see Dr. Gomez and the two men staring at me. The men were hospital orderlies. Everyone was looking at me like I was fucking crazy. All I knew was that my skin felt like it was on the surface of the sun.

“Thanks,” I said.

The doctor looked me over to try to get a read on me. She had the most amazing eyes. They pierced right through me as she tried to figure out what the hell was wrong with me.

I smiled at her and let out a deep breath. “Thanks everyone. I have never felt pain like that in my life.”

“It’s okay, Mr. Simon. You have been under a lot of pressure these past couple days. I think you might have just had anxiety attack. We’ll try to find you a room where there isn’t any outside light coming in. For now, please go back to sleep.” She gave me a warm, soothing smile and my eyes were still heavy. The drugs were definitely working. I quickly fell back to sleep.

Chapter Six

2:00 p.m. Tuesday Afternoon

I was in a much deeper sleep this time. I only woke up once and saw that I hadn’t been moved from the hallway. As I fell asleep again, my scattered dreams were swept to the side and I was having a very specific dream, as I did earlier in the morning.

Then I was struck with another one of my sleep paralysis seizures. Fear bolted throughout my body as if I was being struck by lightning. I could hardly handle the anxiety.

In my dream, I could see a coffee shop. It was a cold night. It was Grind Away, a coffee shop in the city of Buena Park. Again, I wasn’t in the dream. It was as if I was floating above the scene and had a perfect view of my main character. Once again, the star of my dream was the long-haired young man that had killed the old man in the previous dream.

Felix was wearing blue jeans and a black T-shirt. He was walking out of the coffee shop. He had a large cup of coffee in his hand. He walked across the street to a light brown apartment building. The outside of it read Casa Vista. It appeared to be where he lived, because he scanned a card that got him through the outside gate. I saw Felix walk up a stairway to the second floor. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. He walked in and now I was seeing inside his apartment. He walked to the back of the apartment to his bedroom. He took his jeans and black T-shirt off and just threw on a pair of blue sweats and decided to remain shirtless. He had a pretty good build.

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. Felix went to his only window and looked out of it. He seemed to recognize who it was, because he opened the door.

It was a white guy. He was real tall and real skinny. He was wearing the same color blue jeans as Felix, but he was wearing a black leather jacket.

“You got the shit, Felix?” the guy asked.

“You got the money, Tyler?” Felix fired back.

“Of course.” Tyler reached in his pocket and flashed a bundle of cash. Felix smiled and turned around to go to his bedroom. As he did so, Tyler quickly reached into his pocket and pulled out a gun. He held the gun behind his back and slowly followed Felix into his bedroom. Felix had no idea he was about to get ambushed with a gun.

He reached underneath his bed and pulled out a black metal box that had a lock on it. Then Felix took his keys from his hip pocket and unlocked the box. The second he did so, Tyler stuck his gun into Felix’s left temple. “Put your hands up, junkie.”

“Are you fucking serious? You’re going to fucking rob me?” Felix said. “You know by robbing me, you’re actually robbing Douglas?”

Douglas? Who the hell was Douglas?

“Who the fuck do you think is robbing you, fuckhead?” Tyler said.

“Douglas? Are you fucking serious? Why would Douglas rob me? I’m his best contact,” Felix said.

“You’re a shithole, piece of crap, motherfucker is what you are.”

“I know he thinks I stole from him by not turning in all my earnings. Well, he’s wrong. I turn in all earnings; that’s agreed upon. I never screwed him!” Felix’s eyes went crossed and I’m not sure how he did it, but he ducked under the gun in one quick motion and elbowed Tyler in his nuts as hard as he could. Tyler dropped the gun and Felix grabbed it and shoved it right under the guy’s chin. “Who’s the piece of shit now?”

Tyler looked terrified. “Hey man, don’t kill me.”

“Wasn’t that the plan here? Why else would you tell me Douglas was the one who was robbing me? You know why you told me? You didn’t give a fuck because you were planning on putting a bullet in my head, weren’t you? Was that what Douglas wanted? A bullet in my head. ”

“It wasn’t like that at all,” Tyler said. “I was just running my mouth!”

“Guess what? You fucked up! You didn’t cross your T’s and dot your fucking I’s. You fucked with the wrong motherfucker today!”

“Felix, this is not you. You’re not a killer, man.”

“But you are and that’s what you’re here to do. I know your reputation. If I don’t kill you now, I will always have to look over my shoulder. So the way I see it...I only have one option. I have to do what I have to do to survive. If I let you live, you’ll kill me later.”

“No I won’t, I prom...”

Felix pulled the trigger and shot a bullet through Tyler’s skull, entering from his chin and coming out the back of his head and into the wall. I don’t want to even describe what the scene looked like in my dream. It was horrific.

Felix stood over Tyler’s body and began screaming some insane random shit. “You made me do this!” Felix dropped to his knees just inches away from Tyler’s body. This rocked his world. This dream was rocking my world. I could barely breathe coming out of the seizure. But the dream ended and so did my seizure simultaneously.

I was soaked from head to toe with sweat. I had stayed in that dream as long as I could. I needed to know as many details as I could. I grabbed the notebook that I was given previously and wrote down the words ‘Dream Two’ and proceeded to write every detail I could. I had to stop several times as I wrote due to the room spinning. I wrote down everything from the coffee shop in Buena Park to the look on Felix’s face once he killed Tyler.

What the fuck is going on with these dreams? I’m losing my fucking mind! Who the hell is this guy Felix?

I woke up and I was back in my original room. It was dark outside.

Dr. Gomez came in and said, “My shift is nearly over. I’m getting off at six. I just wanted to check on you before you left. I have a question for you. I read your report from the nurse last night and she said you came in here with a series of bite marks all over your body.” Dr. Gomez looked at my neck, wrists, and feet. “I don’t see any marks on your body. There were some markings earlier, but they seemed to have healed very fast.

“That’s impossible. My bites were so bad that I thought was going to die.” This made no sense to me. What was happening to me? The dreams and the sunlight. Now this?

“They either healed quickly, or you wrongly diagnosed,” Dr. Gomez pointed out.

“How do you misdiagnose ripped flesh?” I asked, beside myself.

“I don’t know. I’m waiting for the nurse to come in so she can check you out. She was the one who was here when you came into the ER last night. I’ll be back with the graveyard shift nurse in about half an hour.”

“I thought your shift was over?” I asked.

“So did I,” Dr. Gomez said. “This is too unusual. I will stay on the clock another hour.”

“Please don’t on my behalf. Go home. Enjoy your husband or boyfriend.”

“That’s a ‘no’ and a ‘no’.”

“How is that possible? You’re beautiful career woman who is a flipping doctor. You must have a line waiting out the door.”

Dr. Gomez looked behind her and said, “Nope, not me. I see a grand total of zero men waiting outside my door.”

“Wow,” I said. “Maybe someone should do something about that?”

“Maybe someone should.” Dr. Gomez gave me a flirtatious smile and my heart skipped a beat. She was a beautiful, brilliant woman. Could she be so far out of my league that she indeed was in my league? Every so often, really hot successful women slid under the radar. It was because their careers meant so much to them. They don’t try to land a man earlier on in their bid at life. So here is a rare breed. A beautiful female doctor who seemed interested in at least the idea of me asking her out.

Good to know.