2 Chapter 2

"What happened! Didn't I die fighting a monster?" John rolled out of his bed frantically, his hand clenched onto his beating chest, feeling his healthy and rapid heartbeat. He felt the soft fabric of his shirt sticking uncomfortably to his chiselled body, drenched by cold sweat.

It's probably just a bad dream.

Sliding open the curtains and windows to let fresh air enter, John quickly calmed his heavy breathing.

He glanced towards the bed he rolled off from promptly. Blue sheets, grey pillow and that heavenly mattress. And let's not forget about the World War Z posters hanging across his bedroom walls.

Yup, this was his room. Nothing out of the ordinary.

"Was that a dream?" John recalled a vicious monster jabbing its filthy claws into his chest, stopping his beating heart. That's when his life officially ended, in that particular dream at least.

"What am I thinking? There's no way I died to a monster. I'm just an ordinary John from…" John's thoughts were interrupted halfway by odd yet familiar words.

"From Planet Terra?"

John furrowed his eyebrows, deep folds representing his state of bewilderment. His head started to throb. Chaos broke out within his skull, jumbling with his mind as if someone had just sucker-punched him in the brain, rearranging its components.

"From Planet Earth?"

Myriad of words and memories collided and clashed, engaging in a civil war. Some words were being replaced; some remained unchanged; some were new and unbeknownst…

What is going on?

John thought he was hallucinating and hearing double. He focused on his brain, trying to recall specific particularities about the fantasy he just dreamt about, but he couldn't.

It was all so vague. No details. No nothing.

He squeezed his cheeks roughly to double-check whether this was actually reality.

"Ouch." Feeling a burning sting, John rubbed his cheeks in regret. He picked up his phone by his desk to observe the aching, red mark on his cheeks.

It was 9:33.

"I must have had a bad sleep. I just need to stop overthinking."

John shook his head violently, preparing to go back to sleep to maintain his sanity.

"Ow!"

Just then, a roar of pain travelled into John's ears.

After experiencing death in his dream, John was hypersensitive to the sound of pain, especially when the howl came from his father!

Alarms of distress blared in John's mind as he charged out of his room to sprint towards his father's bedroom.

"Dad! Are you okay?!" Without knocking, John barged into the room, only to see a middle-aged man rubbing his cheeks and arm simultaneously while a woman laughed at his goofy expression.

Realizing that it was just a false alarm, John rolled his eyes and patted his chest to settle down his nervousness. "Mom! Dad! You scared me! I thought you were in trouble!"

The man with two aching red marks on his cheek and arm is John's father, James, while the laughing woman who was clearly the culprit of James' shriek, is John's mother, Maria.

James and Maria, another two very common names.

When they were dating, John's dad found out that both of their names were on the "top 100 most common names" list.

He decided to make a joke about picking their children's names from the list. But he didn't expect John's mom to take it literally. 18 years later, John had grown up to be a bright young man.

James and Maria were in their mid-40s and unlike many others their age, they do not seem to demonstrate signs of graying hair or wrinkles.

Staring at his parents, an unprecedented emotion engulfed John. His lips quivered for some unknown reason, and his throat tightened.

Nostalgia. It was nostalgia that triggered his reaction.

All of a sudden, his mother's face began to flicker, glitching in and out between two distinct people. His mother's kind face converted to another face of similar features, yet entirely different demeanors.

Despite having similar features, the other face was barely recognizable. Sclera, pupil and iris…. The normal colours of human eyes were entirely absent.

They were grey, foggy, and dead.

This stranger who emitted a sense of dread was like an alternate version of his beloved mother.

Who is she?

Anxiety overwhelmed John as he began to panic.

But finally, the visibility of the horrifying face gradually decreased, eventually vanishing. There was no longer a face with a lifeless look in its eyes. What prevailed was his mother's real face, the one still smiling cheerfully from ear to ear.

"I'm definitely hallucinating. But… but why am I so… relieved?" As if set free from an invisible cage, John experienced an immensely peculiar feeling.

He was confident. He was ready to face the world. And he had an urge to redeem himself.

Masking the sudden wave of bittersweet emotions with a soft grin, John turned his attention back to the two pinches on his dad's cheeks. He remembered the pinch that he gave himself two minutes ago.

This made his eyes widen with shock as his heart dropped. He was now desperate for answers. Whatever he hallucinated about was too realistic to be a mere dream.

"Did you guys happen to have a strange dream too?" John peeked at his parents to find a reaction.

Exchanging a glance, James and Maria bore surprised expressions. Sensing urgency and unease, the family immediately sat down on the corner of the bed as they started to share their respective dreams.

"Oh no," John murmured. After a brief discussion, it was revealed that they all experienced varying dreams. But there was one thing in common.

They all met the same demise — perishing in the hands of a zombie-like monster.

Him alone having a strange and absurd dream could not prove any case. But with a second and even a third confirmation, John immediately knew something catastrophic was soon to commence.

His attention was quickly diverted away as he started to notice the cacophony of traffic noises emanating from a distance away.

"That's weird. Why were we asleep?" James' question hit the jackpot. Taking a glance at his phone, he scratched his head in confusion. "It's only 9:35 pm?"

Falling silent, John's dad abruptly stood up as he swiped a denim jacket conveniently hanging on the backrest of a chair. "Honey, John, did you hear that?"

His face portrayed visible traces of anxiety and puzzlement.

"Yeah, I do." John and his mother nodded in unison, bearing the same perplexed look.

They all heard a ghostly whisper, echoing in their ears.

"Earthling..."

Emerging out of nowhere, the voice was like a light breeze. Standing in this quiet room, a bystander would have barely detected the faint whisper.

However, that same whisper boomed in John's head like the deafening tintinnabulation of a giant copper bell, reverberating violently and relentlessly.

Creating a momentary chain reaction, innumerable images and thoughts began erecting sequentially in John's mind. He began viewing his 'dream' again from various perspectives. His beginning. His journey. His death.

Brief explanations of his unanswered questions, as well as, additional foreign information formed within John's consciousness.

The voice delivered into his head wasn't a hallucination.

It was an early reminder of the past— a warning to brace for the incoming apocalypse.