In which creepy dreams happen and I try to be intense. 

Things to know:  Gable and Avery are boyfriends in love, but Avery goes missing and is soon found dead.  When Gable wakes up, he finds that he’s gone back a week to the point before Avery goes missing.  Now, he’s trying to save him from a crazy murderer who targets gay men.  There’s been three victims so far, so Gable is trying desperately to prevent Avery from becoming victim number four.

This story… has been a bit uncomfortable for me to write, since discrimination is a touchy, personal subject, and I’ve created this killer who does just that.  But it’s getting beyond that, now, because the bodies are found with derogatory terms written all over them after their bodies have been cleaned with bleach.  But along with those words are compliments, like, “Nice eyes,” and, “Pretty smile,” because the killer is attracted to these boys, but hates them at the same time.  

So yeah, leave it to me to write gay romance that’s… urm… yeah.

***

It’s a familiar scene.  
His bedroom, splashed with dull grays and whites.  A noisy silence that buzzes through his ears.  He can feel himself lethargically getting out of bed, bypassing his glasses as he stumbles over to the door to answer it.  His hair is disheveled and no matter how many times he rubs his eyes one of them still protests that it’s too tired to focus on anything more then closing and sleeping again. Somehow he makes it to the door, avoiding the dirty laundry booby traps and forgotten textbooks scattered about.
He opens it and is greeted by a detective standing in a wrinkled suit, face unshaven and rough around the edges.  The man introduces himself – Maurice Ashford – and flashes him a badge – No, no no, Gable whimpers, shaking his head as he desperately tries to wake up – asks him if he knows a young man named Avery Blair.  
The scene skips, rewinding harshly back and suddenly he’s stumbling through the room again.  This time he does grab his glasses, as if they can help his eyes focus. He trips over one of the textbooks this time but keeps his balance.  He opens the door, not surprised to see the detective standing at his door.  
The man doesn’t need to introduce himself this time, doesn’t bother with showing his badge.  Maurice Ashford tugs at his tie nervously, stumbling through the same explanation that’s become a common phrase for days on end.  His boyfriend is DEAD – wake up wake up – and the detective’s really sorry that all of this happened – wake up wake up wake up! – they’re doing everything they can to find the killer, Avery is victim number four – murderer, there’s a murderer, WAKE UP!
He steps back, his foot landing on a bundled set of papers.  It’s the script from Avery’s play, the pages breaking apart to spread across the carpet.  The words are written in red, scrawled angrily across the page.
Dripping.
Looking up he can see the words stretched across his wall, over his dresser and dripping onto his bed sheets. The red makes his eyes sting, a harsh color against the bland background of his dorm.  Gray.  White.  RED.  It looks as if, while he’d been trapped in a deep and depressed slumber, half the dorm has come into his room to write all over everything in blood red crayon. Five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred minutes. How do you measure, measure HE’S DEAD!
He pushes his glasses up and rubs his eyes, knowing that’s not the right lyric.  So why is it there? – Avery Avery – When he looks again those words are smeared out and rewritten.
Now it’s not the script, now it’s the news reports from those websites he had been looking at last night.  The printed pages are plastered across his walls, glued to his T.V., molded onto the gaming system that Avery kept in his dorm in fear of his roommate using it as a coaster for his many cans of beer.  The printouts contain pictures of the victims printed in black lines, their bodies a blank white like pages from a coloring book.  They’re colorless, unmoving, until the blood red crayon is frantically scribbled across their paper bodies.  Their naked white backs, their thin legs, outside the lines as if blood is spreading out from underneath them.  
An odor fills the room and he covers his nose and mouth with the palm of his hand, eyes tearing up from the strong stench of thick, crayon blood that slides off the papers and onto the wall.  Melding with the rotten crayon smell is a strong perfume of bleach, as if it’s poured all over his dingy, dorm room carpet. Words begin to form over the paper, dark and unforgiving, the words large like the bubble letters he’d use to draw in the homemade cards he’d give his mother on special occasions. The Horrific Homophobe strikes again-
HOMO beautiful eyes.
Another body was found today on the-
QUEER soft skin. He’s thrashing in the bed now, the mattress protesting to the harsh weight of his back bouncing against it – He’s backing away again, sure he’s moving toward the door and the detective, but he trips, lands hard in a sea of dirty clothes, script pages and …an arm with a familiar white and black striped shirt.
He looks to the right to see Avery laying amongst the pages and laundry on his dorm room floor.  Eyes wide and lifeless, freshly bleached body branded with sharp, angry words FAGGOT gorgeous eyes and HOMO beautiful smile written onto the beautiful skin he had held in his arms night after night – lips parted, breaths hard and wheezing – this time the crayon is gone, replaced with fresh, warm blood that stains the carpet below – wake up wake up wake up please, he’s scratching at the covers, no no no! – Somewhere in the background Gable can hear the detective’s voice as he speaks the words to him, that dreadful sentence that strangles him with grief.  It’s loud, too loud, knocking against the walls in a terrible scream, “I’m sorry, son, but-” “No!”