One night I had a dream, the next day I shot my best friend.
These are two things that you would not normally hear follow each other. But in my story it did, and I know that it was necessary.
It was Sunday night when I dreamt the dream that changed my life, the start of a new week, start of a new phase of my life. The dream was dark, foreboding, threatening and hinting at things to come. I know deep in my heart if would have come true had I not acted. It was a city; from the rich people's businesses and homes, down to the narrow lanes among the warehouses, clubs and flats downtown filled with fear. Not the normal everyday fears of the normal man but pure terror. Fear of one man and what he symbolised. What he had potential to do, the irrational madness he processed. Before my eyes I saw innocents die, cruelty and horror. And then explosions filling my vision till darkness took over, and out of that oppressive darkness a face. A face and a laugh, that chilled me to the bone.
That evening as I entered my flat I knew he was there, watching TV as normal. I walked up quietly behind him, watching the news from over his shoulder. From my pocket I drew a gun a pointed it at the back of his head. I now had a decision, could I kill my best friend, the one who had helped me throughout my childhood or let him live. For what had he done to me, but my dream filled my mind, the death of the innocent, the psychopathic madness and my face hardened. My finger closed around the trigger.
That was how the police found me when they burst in, having been alerted by someone who heard the shot. Standing over my best friend's body with a gun in my hand, I hadn't moved.
Sitting in a police cell after my trial, I was not surprised at the outcome. Life in jail. I had killed senselessly, with no motive that was admitted or could be found. I was discovered standing over the body with the very gun that killed him and had admitted to the crime. But I found it ironic. That city would never know what I had done for it. I had chosen this path, a life behind bars for a city I had never seen, for it too be freed from terror.
As I fell asleep I heard the judge's words echoing around my head.
'You are hereby found guilty of murder…. Sentenced to life in jail…. For the murder of Jack Napier.'