The Dream Case || Dreamnotfound

2

"Good morning George!" Jack greeted.

"Morning Jack," George replied, running a tired hand through his hair.

Jack handed him his usual morning coffee and George took it. The two headed into the main office, where all George's work was done.

Pictures lined the walls, red lines connecting them. Time stamps, pins, and graphs joined the photos, everything connecting to Dream.

George took a slow sip of his coffee as he stood in front of the newest information. Everything from the day before had been added— from the cyanide water to the note on the bottom.

'Thinking of you is a poison I drink often :)' George read the most recent note, scoffing. He asked Jack, "Was there any more evidence found since I left yesterday?"

Jack shook his head. "Nothing new, Dream is good at his work."

"I know."

George sighed and turned to the table in the middle of the room. He looked at the map in front of him. The Florida map had pins and time stamps of all Dream's victims. From twenty years old to sixty-one years old— all fifty-four pins were near the Orlando area.

And George lived right in the center of all of it.

The victims didn't seem to have anything that connected them. Each person was completely different; doctors and surgeons, janitors and store owners. Nothing obvious connected them.

The only pattern that George had noticed was that Dream seemed to kill once a week, every week, without fail. The day or the time didn't matter, but every victim was always left behind with a note.

A conversational tidbit that Dream liked to use with George and the former detectives. Notes like, 'I left this for you' or, 'Do you like my gift?' and the most recent, 'Thinking of you is a poison I drink often :)'

What was that even supposed to mean? Yes, Dream most likely knew who George was, seeing as he was the detective on Dream's case—the Dream Case— as named by one of the former detectives.

"Do you think he'll ever stop?"

Jack looked to George and sighed, replying "I— I don't know. It's been a year, how many need to die for him to have enough?"

"He likes the hunt," George muttered, "the thrill of it— he likes leaving us notes, knowing that he'll never be caught. Something about it all must keep him going."

"If we stopped pursuing him, do you think he'd stop?"

George pulled a chair to the table and sat down, setting his coffee down gently. He rubbed his temples. "I don't know, Jack, there's so much that we don't know about him."

"That one witness— the cousin of Sarah Lingford— do you think she knows more and hasn't said it?"

"No," George responded, "she clearly hates Dream, based off her testimony. She would do anything to put him behind bars."

"Do you hate Dream?"

George looked at the map in front of him where fifty-four pins lay. Fifty-four bodies. He only dealt with four of them, but that was enough to drain him.

Weeks of sleepless nights, up late pacing his room and thinking. Up early, heading to the office to get on the job. He'd been in America only four weeks, but it felt so much longer.

George didn't hate Dream, per say. He hated what Dream did. How he killed every week without fail, how he left notes only meant to belittle George and his team, how he left behind bodies mercilessly for the victims' families to find.