Elliot finds himself standing in the middle of an empty room; it’s dark and damp. His spine tingles. There’s an ominous feeling that hangs in the air. Something is coming. He glances at his hands and finds that they are not his own. They’re slimmer – a woman’s.

Lightning flashes. He sees a face in the shadows, the sneer ugly on his face. The hairs on his neck stand, and Elliot can’t shake the feeling of dread that rises. The man approaches slowly. The body Elliot is trapped in shivers.

The next time lightning flashes, Elliot jolts awake in his own bed.

A dream.

Elliot wants to feel relieved, but the uneasy feeling that tingles down his spine doesn’t go away. Numbingly, he gets ready for work. He hopes that the monotony of his routine would help in easing his nerves, but when he sees the police on the steps of the disco where he performs at, the feeling of calm that had just started to seep into his bones fly straight back out of him. He steps inside the place hesitantly.

“Are you Elliot Harvey?” an officer asks him.

Elliot nods. He starts jiggling his leg nervously when he sees other police officers start to stare at him. “You work with Evangeline Harper, correct?”

“I do. She’s the guitarist of the band that always performs after me. Why, what happened?”

“She was murdered last night. Someone dumped her body in the ditch over in the next alleyway.” The man leads him towards the manager’s room. “Would you mind waiting with the rest of Ms. Harper’s bandmates while we finish up our interrogation with your manager?”

Elliot would rather be alone, but he nods anyway. “No problem.”

~~~

Work is cancelled for the rest of the day, so when his interrogation ends, Elliot decides to go back home. As usual, his eyes land on the display window of a watch repair shop.

“What are you looking at?” a voice suddenly asks.

Elliot jolts and snaps his head towards the woman. His mouth hangs open. “Evangeline? What’re you… what are… what?”

Evangeline continues staring through the display window, unperturbed. “That’s a pretty watch. You going to buy it?”

Elliot blinks. “I thought you died.”

She looks at him, then. “I did. I was murdered last night, but you already knew that, didn’t you?”

When he blinks again, Evangeline is gone.

Heart pumping, Elliot quickly speeds up his pace back to his apartment. He doesn’t look back.

~~~

Elliot is back in the dark room. Lightning continues to flash; thunder continues to rumble. He’s in the woman’s body again. Unlike his previous dream, the man is merely an inch away now, his face still darkened by the shadows, but he can recognize those features. Elliot’s eyes stray to the object glinting in the man’s hands.

The man starts to yell at him. “You don’t talk to me like that! I am your boyfriend. I demand respect from you more than anybody else. When I call, you answer. Don’t give me excuses; I don’t care!”

Elliot – the woman? – flinches when the man raises his arm. Something metallic slams into his head, and Elliot reels backwards. He doesn’t expect the second hit to come so quickly. Or the third. Or the fourth. Elliot tries to struggle away, but the man pins him down.

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Elliot wakes up, pooled in sweat, struggling against his sheets. He breathes heavily and shudders despite the warmth of the sun against his face.

He pictures the man’s face in his mind. It’s a face he sees every day. The hairs on his arm begin to rise.

“I need your help,” comes a voice from the side of his bed. Elliot tries to scramble away from it, his heart pumping on overdrive. “I need you to find something for me.”

Elliot places a hand against his chest. “Was that you? The woman in my dream, the one who got hurt?”

Evangeline shrugs. “The one and only.”

The fact that he was talking to a dead person makes his head spin. “Was our manager really your boyfriend? Him? Out of all the people?”

“A lapse in judgment.” She rolls her eyes. “So, will you help me out or not?”

Elliot can’t believe this is happening. He studies the woman in front of him. Her request was posed as though Evangeline wouldn’t mind what his answer was whether he said yes or not, but the look in her eyes tell him she’s desperate. Please help me, her eyes beg.

Elliot was always a sucker for eyes like that. He hangs his head. “Sure. What do you need me to find?”

“A metal water jug. The one I got him for Christmas.”

“What do I do when I find it?”

“The police are going to sweep the place for evidence. I just need you to make sure they find it. My blood should still be on it. He was always a careless cleaner.”

~~~

And that’s how Elliot finds himself sneaking into the basement of the very place he works at. Evangeline is by the stairs, keeping watch for him. The room makes Elliot shiver with a familiar sense of dread. He pushes the feeling away.

The room is relatively empty. There’s a small window to his right, a wide desk in the corner with a ratty chair that faces away from the entrance. There’s a pull-out couch opposite the window. Besides the circular rug in the middle of the room, no other decorations adorn the place. The place is dark, but Elliot makes do with the sliver of moonlight that filters in through the window.

He’s about to check the desk when Evangeline appears next to him. “He’s coming.”

“I thought you said he wasn’t going to be here today,” Elliot hisses.

“Hey, he has a busy schedule most of time. Wednesday nights are supposed to be poker nights.”

Elliot scans the room and makes a beeline towards the desk. He hides underneath it just in time before the lights are flicked on, and his manager enters the room. Elliot doesn’t think he can be heard over the booming voice of his manager as he talks on the phone, but he tries to breathe as lightly as possible anyway.

“I did kill her, but it was an accident,” the manager says. “I hit her a little bit too hard in the head.”

Elliot hears a vague voice on the other side of the phone. “I had the perfect alibi, relax. We’ve spent years hiding our relationship. Hiding this shouldn’t be any different.”

Chills run up Elliot’s spine when he hears the laugh that ensues. He takes a quick peak over the chair before he returns into hiding. The feeling of dread resurfaces tenfold when he sees that same face engulfed by the shadows.

It takes him a minute to realize this is the place of his dreams. He can’t shake the evil smile etched on the man’s face from his memory.

Elliot itches to leave the room. He tries to silently adjust his position when his clammy hands slip, and he bangs his elbow against the chair.

The sound is a little muffled by the manager’s voice, and Elliot sucks in a breath in silent anticipation. The manager stops talking.

“Hold on,” he says. “I think I just heard something.”

Elliot shuts his eyes, his heart beats uncontrollably in his chest. Time seems to move slowly as his manager’s footsteps draw closer.

Before he can make it towards the desk, there’s a commotion that comes from upstairs that stops him in his tracks.

“Sir, we have a situation. You need to come up,” a new voice comes from the other side of the room.

“What’s wrong?” the manager asks.

There’s a pause before, “I think you need to come and see it for yourself.”

They exit the room in haste. When the coast is finally clear, Elliot allows himself to breathe. He shakily gets up from under the desk.

“That was close, wasn’t it? You good?” Evangeline appears next to him.

Elliot jumps. “Do I look ‘good’ to you?” he glares, shaking uncontrollably. “Did you have anything to do with what happened upstairs?”

She winks. “You could say that. I had a little help.”

They make quick work with finding the murder weapon. Elliot makes sure to remember where it’s hidden before they leave. He eyes the window. “Can I fit through that?”

“You want to leave through there?”

“You really think I can leave the way we came in?”

Shuffling footsteps and arguing voices can be heard coming from upstairs. “I suppose not.”

Evangeline’s eyes move from Elliot to the window. “You should be able to fit. It might be a little tight.”

~~~

Elliot hears word that their manager gets put to jail the next day. Despite being ecstatic over the news, he admits he’s a little disappointed because he hasn’t seen Evangeline since that night. It makes him wonder if this was all a crazy fever dream.

Then two days later, there’s a voicemail that’s left in his telephone. The message was short. No greetings, no name, but he’d recognize this voice anywhere. He’d spent many days listening to this voice crooning out love songs through a microphone after all.

“Thank you.”