Chapter 1
..
..
Flash has heard people say certain things about dreams.
Like...
You can't read in your dreams.
Supposedly if you look at your hands in your dreams you won't have the correct amount of fingers.
You're supposed to not be able to dream in color
If you die in a dream then you die in real life.
When Flash was very small he had a dream that he was in a car. The car went into a flooded ditch and the car then began to fill up with water.
He had, had that dream repetitively throughout his very early childhood. At least once a week when he had been between the ages of three through six.
He is now sixteen and he still remembers the dream to this day. Down to the exact details.
And the dream had always been the same.
And he had always still been holding his breath when had woken up.
Terrifying... Right?
Those dreams had always been in color. He even remembers the color of the car.
It was a gross, old Yellow car straight out of the seventies or eighties. It had been rusted right over the back wheel on the driver's side.
The dream had always gone like this
He's standing somewhere completely unfamiliar to him.
Some guy wearing a poofy brown jacket that's fully zipped comes out of nowhere and very roughly grabs him by the arm on his left side and starts dragging hin towards the car and when Flash starts struggling there's suddenly another guy that also seemed to have just appeared out of thin air. Unbuttoned Denim jacket. Blue plaid button up shirt underneath. This guy that joins the other grabs Flash on his left side.
They forcefully haul him into the back of the car.
One gets into the driver's seat.
The other gets into the front passenger seat.
Flash is unable to get away as the car starts driving.
Now after about four times of experiencing the dream in exactly the same way, Flash had eventually recognized the pattern and figured out that what was happening always ended exactly the same and started struggling in the car, feeling a desperate need to get out. In the dream he begs, yells, shouts, pleads. Telling the men of the horrible fate that awaits them all. They never listen.
Then as always in the dream it starts to rain.
The car has driven quite a ways, but in the dream it's as if the vehicle just teleported to where the cruel fate awaits them all.
Wherever it is, the city is no longer in the skyline.
It's very rural looking.
Like maybe Upstate.
Or even somewhere South.
New York City could be a four hour drive or less to just about six States depending on the direction they were driving, traffic and whether or not they had taken the Interstate.
And there was always this sense in the dream when the car is in the city then blink not in the city, there's this sense in the dream that maybe Flash has been asleep or unconscious in the space in between one blink and the next.
The dream continues.
The rain gets heavier.
Flash becomes chilled. He starts to shiver. He feels cold dread of knowledge of what is to come and the knowledge that he can't stop it because every other time he dreamt this dream he had been trying ever since he started recognizing the patterns of the dream he had started fighting to either change the course of the dream or fighting to wake up.
There's a low water bridge.
It barely has maybe an inch or so of water over the top, but the water underneath it is a raging river.
Flash does not want them to try to cross the bridge.
He is in fact very vocal about how much he does not want to do that.
He struggles. He shakes. He cries.
The car proceeds to drive.
The second the tires hit the water there's a tugging, yanking sensation as the front of the car gets pulled sideways.
The front tires go off the bridge.
The nose of the car rapidly begins to sink.
All too quickly there's water filling the front seat.
The water gets up to Flash's neck.
He's struggling to get in just one last deep breath to try to hold it to escape the car.
He wakes up.
He's still holding his breath and then he starts gasping.
A constant reoccurring nightmare that had kept in until one day they had just stopped.
But he still remembers them.
Flash is sixteen now.
And now he's having a different reoccurring dream.
Almost every night for three weeks.
He dreams that he opens his eyes and his hands aren't his.
Sometimes he opens his eyes and his hands are covered in gloves that he recognizes from the costume of a hero he pretty much worships. Sometimes he opens his eyes and the hands still aren't his but there's nothing covering them. The dreams aren't exactly the same but they carry the same theme. There is a pattern. Well more than one pattern really.
In the dreams with the Spider-Man gloves, Flash will get excited knowing he's somehow Spider-Man.
He opens his eyes and is in the city. He looks down at his hands and sees the Spider-Man gloves. He tries some of the things he's seen videos of Spider-Man doing. Like Flash will try to climb a wall.
And it works!
Then excitedly knowing he's Spider-Man he goes to the nearest reflective surface and starts to lift the mask so excited to finally get the chance to know who Spider-Man is.
Then he wakes up.
In the dreams without the Spider-Man gloves he looks at his hands and is curious.
He is in some kind of bedroom. He walks to the wall.
He is able to stick to and climb the wall.
He knows that he is whoever Spider-Man is he just isn't wearing the costume.
He tries to go to the mirror but suddenly the floor is like a quicksand treadmill.
He somehow manages to trudge his way to the mirror.
But just as he is about to see the reflection.
He wakes up.
It's a Monday in October. It's the third month of school.
Flash gets ready for school and then goes downstairs and gets into his car and drives.
By the time he is at school he is no longer thinking about his dreams.
Instead he gets to his locker..
And there on the other side of the hall there is Penis Parker talking to his geeky friend.
Flash doesn't understand why. But just laying eyes on Parker just... Irks him. Frustrates him... Annoys him.
Flash's family have a lot of money but Flash himself still doesn't exactly have the best home life.
His mom is a lush that's always doped up on some kind pharmaceuticals. His dad is an abusive drunk.
So maybe just knowing that Peter Parker might be living below the poverty line but still somehow had a better life than Flash?.. Maybe that was why just seeing Penis Parker set Flash off...
But Flash couldn't help but sometimes wish..
Well he could never switch places with Spider-Man...
But if he could choose anyone else to switch places with. It would be Peter Parker.