1 Hidden from Sight

As school ended, Tristan Flores packed his bag and made his way to his part time job. As a high school senior who turned 18, the future was bearing heavily on his mind. His goal was to do well in the finals and hopefully get into a decent university.

In the smallish bookstore that basically sold academic texts, Tristan sat behind the counter with a dead look on his face. The cars whirred past on the road outside as he looked on, dazed. It was at that moment, he felt the sky suddenly darken and a loud boom of thunder sound out.

"Huh? The weather was forecasted to be clear skies, but now, there's a sudden thunderstorm?" Tristan wondered as he rested his chin on his hand, scrolling through his phone. The shop was empty with the exception of him and he was bored.

Suddenly, the door to the shop exploded and a woman was blasted into the store and crashed onto the front desk, shattering all glass panes and blowing Tristan away onto a wall, fear writ on his face.

The woman who crashed here was caked in dark red blood. She looked at the injured Tristan and made a creepy smile before leaking blood from her mouth. Then she breathed in... and exploded into a pool of blood that splattered the store as well as Tristan. However, it wasn't just blood that exploded, but her body exploded to send a powerful shockwave that brought down several shops in the district. Tristan fell unconscious.

When he woke up, Tristan was in a hospital bed. His entire body was covered up in cotton and he couldn't feel his body. He could see silhouettes looking at him and discussing something, but he couldn't make anything out. He passed out again.

Tristan suddenly opened his eyes and he was in the bookstore. When he saw that, he sighed in relief.

"So that was a dream! Scared me to death!" Tristan patted his chest to calm himself.

Yet, suddenly he felt the sky darken and and a loud boom of thunder. The door to the shop crashed into thousands of pieces as a ghastly woman blasted in, blood seeping out of every orifice. The creepy smile on her face, as if playing with a toy. Then she exploded.

Tristan opened his eyes panting heavily. He had been having this same dream for the past half year, ever since the shop he was employed in part time exploded along with several other shops in the district due to a gas leak in a restaurant. The dream had haunted him constantly and his performance in school had dropped significantly.

He consulted the post trauma psychologist assigned by the hospital after his injury several times, but no matter what suggestions they gave, they were useless to him. Today, he decided, would be his last visit to this psychologist. He had already been looking for an alternative.

At the psychologist's office, Tristan discussed his frustration with the psychologist's practices and he nodded.

"Tristan, I have been talking to authorities about your case, because it is very special. After much discussion, I have brought a person who can explain some things to you." The psychologist said as a man in a suit and black shades walked into the room. Tristan remained stunned, not understanding what his psychologist meant by this.

The man in the suit looked at Tristan for a bit before nodding.

"Mr. Tristan, in cases such as yours, we follow government determined protocol to ensure that no problems occur later, however, due to some reasons it appears that the protocol has failed to function as intended on you.

Allow me to explain from the beginning. I am an official from the Government's Strategic Defense Division. What I am going to tell you now is pretty much official secret, so I hope you understand the discretion." The official said as he adjusted his shades.

Tristan looked on, absolutely confused. Defense division? Secret? Was his dream not a dream?

"In this world paranormal phenomena exist. Yes, they indeed exist phenomenon which are beyond the scope of science and technology. In your case, you were a victim of one of these paranormal events that was the true source of the crash." The official said.

"So... my recurring nightmare... is what actually happened?" Tristan asked. He felt like a new universe had opened up to him, the paranormal... was real?

"Yes. The usual protocol of the governments around the world is to hide this fact from the general public. In cases of incidents like yours, we have an established protocol to wipe the memory of the incident to ensure that no trauma remains. However, in your case, the incident seems to have been branded into your subconscious, perhaps because of your extreme proximity to the ground zero.

Upon constant observation of your behavior for the past six months, it appears that the memory wipe will be ineffective on you and the dichotomy of your subconscious memory with the conscious notions of reality has caused a mental distortion. It was hence decided that the government will compensate you with a million dollars and the the above facts be disclosed to you." The official sipped a glass of water from the table.

Tristan was put into deep thought. "What do you mean by paranormal?"

The suited official shook his head. "The government cannot disclose any more information to you. It is best to act like normal and not get involved in these matters. Just take my business card, if you are in danger, give the number below a call."

Tristan walked back home... deep in thought. He wanted to know, what exactly did they mean by paranormal? He was shocked that his normal world which he had believed worked on established scientific principals seemed to be contrary to reality.

The government did pay Tristan a significant amount of money as compensation, which he did not use. Instead, over the next few weeks, Tristan had spent his time searching the web. Looking at conspiracy theories and all rumors about so called paranormal phenomena.

He finally found an obscure blog post by a conspiracy theorist about the incident Tristan was involved in. It was basically a rambling about how the author heard murmurs about the government hushing the incident, sealing off the place from press as well as rumblings that this was actually a paranormal phenomenon. After hesitating a bit, Tristan mailed the author of the blog asking him where he heard this.