The awakening

Jason woke abruptly on the floor next to his bed, cold as ice. He had no memory of how he got there; but of course, he had been asleep the whole night. He thought about the vivid nightmare that he had dreamed tonight; it was already fading away. He felt extreme exhaustion, but that wasn't unusual to him. These strange nightmares that he could never quite remember the details to had been pestering him for weeks, and he always woke up tired. In fact, a week ago his enervation had reached a point where the only thing keeping him awake was coffee and energy drinks. Not a good state for a detective.

Jason got up, drank a cup of coffee to make it through the next half hour, got dressed, ate a hastily made breakfast, brushed his teeth and hair, drank another cup of coffee and went to work. The day was like usual; clues, dead ends, Red Bull and his boss pestering him about not paying attention to his work. This wasn't true; Jason tried his best, but his lack of energy didn't allow for him to constantly work.

The only interesting thing about the day was the victim tonight; but today it was just another homeless junkie.

Finally, after a seemingly endless, laborious day, Jason was released home. He was currently part of a team of detectives who he had met about twice, digging into an absurd case; every night, from about a month ago, someone was murdered. No matter what restrictions the police put up, no matter what anyone did, a murder happened every single night. But the murders weren't gunshots or stab wounds; the people were simply ripped apart. It seemed like the murders were done by an animal with claws, like a bear.

However, there were no bears or wolves of any kind around the town that Jason lived in. In fact, there were no wild animals at all, apart from birds. The only leads that the detectives had were witnesses and rumours; but of course, people lied a lot about being witnesses to gain popularity and listening to rumours about this sort of thing was about as reliable as flipping to a random page in a book and reading a random sentence.

Their only lead so far was a camera recording done by one of the detectives, but the audio file had corrupted, and the video quality was terrible. However, through multiple computer processes, the video was clarified and taken apart frame by frame. It showed the attacker in only a few of them, since it was taken out of a reflective window and kept going back and forth.

The street had been dark at the time, and the attacker was still blurry; but it looked fairly humanoid, so as to not raise any concerns, the newspapers were given a human who was on a killing spree but will be stopped soon.

However, the truth was far from it.

Firstly, the figure looked more like bigfoot than anything else, but nobody would accept that; and even if they did, giving it to the newspapers would probably cause public panic by exaggeration. And secondly, the killer was almost impossible to stop, because of his irregular way of doing things. The times of murder had no pattern, apart from night-time, and the locations were scattered all over town, leaving absolutely no clue to where the next one will be.

All in all, it was a rather desperate situation.

Jason crashed into his bed and fell asleep immediately; he hadn't even had dinner; he was that tired.

The next three days were the same; another horrible nightmare, another murder, another ten cups of coffee, another gruesome murder.

On the fourth day, Jason woke up outdoors.

He was lying down on a sidewalk. At first, he thought that maybe he had sleepwalked outside his house; it would certainly explain his exhaustion in the mornings. But as he looked around, he realised that he had woken up in an unfamiliar neighbourhood.

But no; looking at the street sign, he saw Brook Avenue, a street three blocks away from his own. Confused and scared, he got up and went home.

The day at work was, in one word, horrible. His coffee didn't seem to affect him at all, no matter how much he drank; and his boss, after yelling at him for not doing anything for about 15 minutes threatened to fire him.

Jason went home barely thinking at all, and almost got hit by a car once, but only noticed after he got to the other side of the road.

Stumbling into his apartment, Jason just managed to set up a camera and a light before collapsing onto his bed and falling asleep.

The next morning, he looked at the camera footage.

It was him, sleeping. It seemed normal at first, but then things started to take a more unnerving turn. He started twisting and turning. Jason at first thought that maybe he was a sleepwalker after all and calmed down slightly. However, then his deepest, darkest fears came true. The video showed him growing dark hairs all over his body; he grew larger by the second. He was, slowly but surely, turning into the attacker from those few frames of video.

His head spun as the realisation washed over him.

He was the murderer.

He had been investigating himself  for a month.

At first, he thought of handing himself over to the police. But they would just put him on house arrest, and even if they threw him into jail that monster inside him would probably break out.

Then he thought of a solution. It made him feel sick; he was almost overwhelmed by it.

But better one person than many.