About Last Night

In the Night

Theo gets out of the shower dragging a towel behind him. Still cursing at himself for getting so messy. Opening the stall door, he's blasted in the face by a flashing light. He looks up and sees a camera with a big zoom lens.

"Smile, you're on Crime Watch," Says a short, balding man.

The man asks the kid what he's doing out here this early. The kid quickly searches his mind wondering who this man is, then goes on to tell him he's a paperboy and he crashed his bike, falling in some mud, so he decided to get clean before heading back on his route. The man seems satisfied with the answer and turns off his flashlight.

Theo quickly gets dressed and leaves, taking his dirty clothes with him. After he leaves, the man goes into the bathroom and inspects the stall the kid was just in. There is a fair amount of mud on the floor, and it appears to be fresh.

"Nothing tonight," the man says, disappointed. He goes back to his car and heads home for the night.

The man is sitting at his desk, editing videos for his YouTube channel when he hears a knock at the door. He gets up to see who it is and sees a few FBI agents looking at him like they want to beat his face in.

"Hello, Officers?"

"We need to come in and search your house."

"Do you have a warrant?"

"We don't need one. We're FBI," one of the agents says, "Now, is there somewhere we can question you?"

Theo's mom goes up to his room to check on him.

"Looks like he had another long night," she says to Jack while looking at Theo sleeping.

"I'm gonna wake him up and get him some breakfast." Theo is awoken by a shove from his mom.

"Morning, sweetie," She says.

"What's for breakfast?" Theo asks in a groggy voice.

"Whatever you want, sweetheart," says his mom.

"Pancakes."

Theo looks over to the man standing next to his mom and says, "Hey Uncle Jack, didn't know you were coming over today."

"I wasn't, but I just came back from my latest trip, and I need to talk to your mom about something, so we need you to leave for a while," says Uncle Jack.

"Fine," says Theo, "I was gonna go see if I can go back to work anyway." Theo gets out of bed and walks down to his basement bedroom, where he thinks for a while.

His mom has been pestering him about trying to "move on" from Alice, so he knows he needs to either try and meet another girl or just focus on his programming career. He heads out to the living room where his mom is waiting with a plate of pancakes. He gives her a kiss on the cheek, takes the pancakes, and eats them while watching some TV. After he's done, he heads outside. Opens his phone and gets on TikTok. He browses some of the posts from his friends. Most are posting about how they're bored and looking for something to do or complaining about school. Nothing interesting. He keeps flipping through more videos, then he finds someone with a post containing a QR code. It's just a video with some weird music that says:

The Truth behind the Fire.

He scans the code, and it takes him to a website called WhatDoYouKnow.org with a bunch of seemingly unorganized videos.

"Hmmm..." he says. He starts searching through the videos with vague titles like:

What was the actual cause of the Vietnam war?

Is the earth actually round?

Was World War 2 actually necessary?

"This is just some crazy nutjob stuff," he thinks, then he sees a post called "Patrick Turner, The Truth About The Paperboy."

He remembers that name from somewhere. It doesn't come to him until he remembers that it's the detective that acted nice to him. He scans the QR Code, and it takes him to a video called The TRUTH About Patrick Turner. Theo immediately regrets this decision, but out of sheer curiosity, he watches it anyway.

The video starts with the thumbnail, which is just a picture of Patrick in his police uniform with some ratings and a date that says (4 months ago). Then the camera points at a clock on the wall in what looks like a police station. It is here that he sees the back of a man wearing a police uniform with lieutenant bars on his shoulder epaulets. He has short graying hair and wears glasses. The cameraman has a thick Boston accent as he begins to speak.

"Patrick, I want to thank you for doing this. " He begins. "I know you're a very busy man, and as a coordinator for the APB program, I'm sorry I need to take away some of your time."

Patrick starts off by introducing himself and states he was a detective in the Philadelphia Police Department. He says he had been working on a case involving the arrest of a drug lord in the north part of Philadelphia. He explains that the gunfight resulted in three deaths and two officers wounded. The cameraman asks how he was involved in this arrest.

"I was separated from my partner and got lost," Patrick says. "I tried to help one of my fellow officers when I was shot at by the drug lord's personal bodyguard. I was hit three times in the crossfire, twice in the leg, and once in the back."

The cameraman says Patrick was fortunate to be alive after all those gunshots.

"I know," Patrick says.

He then goes on to say, "But we got that bastard. Theodore Morgan is dead, and I'm still going strong."

This makes Theo drop his phone. "What the fuck?" he says. "That is so close to my name."

He picks up the phone and watches the rest of it. The cameraman begins to talk to Patrick about his experience being a police officer. Patrick talks about his time in Special Investigations and all of the crazy murders he's solved. He also talks about how he stopped a school shooting. As the video goes on, Theo starts to feel dizzy and sees his mom coming toward him.

"Theo?" his mom asks, "are you OK? You don't look too good."

"I'm fine," Theo says as the room continues to blur in and out of existence.

"You sure?" she asks.

"Yeah," Theo says with one last deep breath."I'm sure."