Campbell woke up in a daze, and for a moment, he couldn’t figure out where he was.

He saw tiled floors, lockers lining the walls, showers at the back, and several benches spread across the room.

It felt oddly familiar to him. And then he realised why it felt like that. It was a locker room.

How did I get here? He had no way of explaining how he had got here. The last thing he could remember, it was lights out and he was lying down on his bed in his cell. Next thing he knew, he was here.

He hurriedly got up from the bench to search the area and it was then that he realised that the pain that he was so used to feeling had disappeared. He looked down at his leg in surprise, and couldn’t help but sit back down.

He brought his knee up to his chest so that he could investigate closer, something that would normally result in the pain getting worse, but felt nothing. He moved his leg around, turning it, shifting it from side to side, and came to the remarkably absurd conclusion that his injury had somehow healed.

And not just healed, but fully returned to how it had been before the injury took place. It felt better than it had in years. In fact, his entire body felt like it had returned to his prime.

He was as fit as a fiddle. Somehow, he had returned to how he had been back when he was playing basketball at university.

“How?” he murmured quietly. He couldn’t understand how this had happened. There was no reasonable explanation for how this could have happened.

“Am I dreaming?” That was the only explanation he could think of to explain this. But even then, everything felt too strangely real for it to be a dream. That has to be it. Since he couldn’t think of any other reason, he forced himself to believe that was the case.

After spending a while in a daze, just getting used to the feeling of having a healthy and strong body again, he stood up.

He looked around the locker room, and after searching for a little while, he found a locker with his name on it. It was right where he remembered it.

It took him a while to remember the combination, but he eventually did. He opened the locker, and inside were his old basketball shoes, jersey, and shorts.

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He reached out to touch them, and felt a wave of nostalgia. Following this feeling, he got out of his prison clothes and got changed.

It felt great. Wearing these clothes sparked old memories and he couldn’t help from getting wrapped up in the feeling. He never thought that he would be able to wear this again.

All of this was like a dream come true. He walked around in the clothes, and even couldn’t help himself from breaking into a sprint.

He jumped and pranced around the room, completely disregarding how strange it looked. He was just too excited about everything.

If this really is a dream, then it’s the best dream I’ve ever had.

It took him a while to calm down, but eventually he stopped and wiped the sweat off his forehead. He started doing some stretches in place, all the while taking in the room from his memories.

His eyes trailed around the lockers, and he noticed something odd. The names on the lockers were ones that he wasn’t familiar with. What?

He was sure that he remembered the names of all of his teammates. He couldn’t possibly forget them. After all, he would regularly scroll through their social media accounts to see what their lives were like.

He was jealous that all of them got to continue playing and living their lives.

But the names on the lockers didn’t belong to his teammates. They were the names of strangers.

Starting from one end, he went from locker to locker, trying to find a name that he knew. After several names that he had never seen before, he found a name that made him freeze in shock.

It was his brother’s name. Dylan Midgley.

Why? Why is his name here? His forehead veins bulged as he clenched his fists. His expression grew stormy as he looked at the name that he didn’t want to see.

He knew that what he did wasn’t right, but he didn’t regret it. And he would do it all over again given the chance. Dylan stole his dream from him. Campbell didn’t believe that Dylan deserved the success that he had, and that it belonged to him instead.

The jealousy and resentment had festered inside of him for a long time. Although some of it was released when he killed Dylan, a lot of it still existed.

He’s not here is he? He looked around, hoping that his brother wouldn’t suddenly appear here.

Seeing his brother’s name soured his mood, and made him feel like this dream was turning into a nightmare.

Please wake up, please wake up.

Slap!

He smacked himself across the face, trying to wake himself up. The smack reverberated around the room, but he didn’t wake up. He was still in the locker room, staring at his brother’s name.

As he was lost in thought, he heard the muffled sound of footsteps and people talking.

He looked towards the exit of the locker room, and a few people walked in.

“Oh hey Campbell, you’re here early.” One of them called out to him and walked over, his hand raised up for a high five.

Campbell instinctively reacted, high fiving the stranger. “Ugh yeah, just had some time to kill and nowhere better to be.”

People came in sporadically. Some were in groups, some came in pairs, and some entered by themselves until the locker room was filled. Everyone stood in front of their lockers, and started getting changed.

Only his brother’s locker had no one standing in front of it.