Trance-fusion Part 2

* I recommend reading Part 1 before you read this*

After a night of uncomfort and restlessness, it was to a grey morning that I woke. I had tossed and turned for most of the night, fighting off memories of the dream. The night seemed like an eternity of staring at the ceiling, begging for release from the exhaustion. I decided it was time to get up: if I couldn’t sleep earlier I wasn’t going to sleep now.

My notebook lay open on the bedside cabinet, I closed it pushing away every thought of the dream. It wasn’t real, it couldn’t be real. Just because nine of the girls I’d dreams about turned up dead, didn’t mean this one would.
I sighed, what could I do? I couldn’t do this, living day to day with the images of those girls lodged in my brain, clouding my thoughts. I was meant to be a journalist, writing articles about important world news. How could I write about that when I was too busy thinking about this?
The clock beside me flashed, 8:21 way too early to be up on a day like this. Outside it would be freezing and all I wanted to do was to curl up in bed and sleep, but I couldn’t sleep, not without dreaming again. I made my way into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face, it was an effort which was supposed to make me feel awake but all it did was get my hair wet. Tucked into the mirror was a photo, it showed me, my best friend Aoife from school and Phoebe, my sister. The photo showed us on holiday in Italy the previous year, all three of us hadn’t been together since. Both Aoife and Phoebe were Police Officers at the local station, they worked alternate shifts so we never had time to go out anymore. I returned the photo to its place and went back to the bedroom and cleared my thoughts, I had more important things than my social life to worry about at the moment. My laptop was laid on the table, I opened a new document and recalled all of my thoughts on last nights dream; maybe remebering it would make me forget? The recollections filled two pages, I relived the girls blood curdling scream, the way her eyes were filled with tears barely disguising the fear. How the murderers face was hidden in the shadows but somehow it was twisted with excitement. The ribbon of blood as it fell past her face and gathered in pools at her feet. But always as I remembered I was distracted by the surroundings, cream walls beaming with light, white silk curtains which rippled in the soft breeze and beyond the curtains there was a paved courtyard where small birds scuttled over a light brown mosaic. Faintly I heard a soft music whispering in the background... How could someone this evil kill in a place so beautiful?

Beside me my mobile beeped bringing me back into the real world. I glanced at the message on the screen: it was Aoife and she wanted to meet me earlier than planned.
Recently, I had been going to see her about these murders, I never told her directly that I dreamt about people being murdered because she would probably think I was mad, I just let her do the talking. I grabbed my coat of the armchair and made my way out of the flat. We always met in a small cafe down the road, it had been our favourite hangout when we were at school and it was just a few streets away from my flat and the Police Station. As I entered the cafe I saw her sitting a couple of tables away, I called over the waitress and ordered a coffee then sat down at the table. She was still dressed in her work clothes, with her dark blond hair tied back in a bun.
‘Hi’ she said, I returned her greeting. Her eyes shifted around the cafe like usual, checking to see whether we were being overheard or under a threat of any kind. Even though she was a Police Officer she always shocked me with her protectiveness of me and her wariness of strangers.
‘So,’ I said, ‘what was so important that you wanted to meet at 8:45 and couldn’t wait ‘till our meeting tonight?’. She looked at me directly, for the first time she stared into my eyed, I percieved a sadness there, something I had never seen before. That shocked me, normally she was composed, she never betrayed her emotion. Something was wrong.
‘Bad news,’ she said gravely.