Go to shortscarystories
r/shortscarystories
6 yr. ago
aceofbase_in_ur_mind
And There Is No Interpreter
It began with the dream about the upside-down lightnings. Two lightning bolts that struck from beneath the horizon, branching upward. Then a roll of thunder shook the ground like an earthquake.
A day later, dad hit a deer on the road. It loomed in the headlights with the suddenness of a pale-blue flash. It had branching antlers. The car shook.
Jake knew better than to tell anyone. It would probably mean more psychologists with their fake caring smiles, more pills, more feelings of being weird. He might even end up in one of those institutions.
He did start a secret dream journal, though. But there weren’t any more dreams like that. Or maybe they meant something small and he missed it.
Then one night, he dreamt of a UFO crashing through Antarctic ice into a colony of penguins. The ice was clear and the penguins were underneath it for some reason. One got killed.
The following day, the Atlanta Thrashers played the Tampa Bay Lightning. Not the Pittsburgh Penguins, who’d already beaten the Thrashers 5-3 two weeks ago and weren’t playing on that day. Still, Jake was quite sure he knew what was going to happen. The puck would fly off and injure or kill someone in the stands. Or maybe not, if Jake stared at the TV hard enough. He was, after all, psychic.
The Thrashers lost 3-4, but no spectators were hurt. Jake wasn’t sure if he ought to congratulate himself.
Then the news came. There’d been a shooting incident in town. A stray bullet went through the window of the Penguin Ice Cream Bar and killed a patron. The shooter’s middle name was Roswell. Like the Roswell UFO.
Jake felt helpless and angry. He should’ve considered less obvious interpretations. Then again, who decided to give this mission — if it’s a mission — to a boy of ten, with enough on his plate as it is?
He continued recording his dreams, even though they felt like regular junk dreams. Then, almost six months later, came a dream that he immediately knew meant something.
He was standing somewhere, holding an ice-cream cone and wearing shorts. An insect came buzzing loudly and stung his leg. Then another one stung him in the other leg. Bright allergic rashes broke out. He knew he had to keep standing there, but the itching in his legs was becoming unbearable. He shifted a little. At once, he began to sink into the ground until he could no longer see his legs.
Jake woke up with a start and thought, here we go again. He had no idea what to make of this one. It was just weird. Did the ice cream have to do with the shooting in March? Why did he hold it above his head? What were those unusual silvery insects?
As Jake wrote the date for the journal entry — September 10, 2001 — he told himself to stop panicking. He still had a whole day to figure it out.