Special Agent/Detective Dennis J . Whitaker, FBI.
summary . . . Bad things happen to Dennis every 7 years. At first he thought it was a coincidence, but then he realized normal people don’t have semi-prophetic dreams. When he’s 28, shit finally hits the fan.
warnings . . . if you’ve seen twin peaks, you sort of know what’s coming. murder, mentions of drug and alcohol use, smoking, drinking, crime (too many to mention), special agent!dennis, religious undertones, mentions and descriptions of sex, illusions to the supernatural, dennis being tortured by reoccurring dreams . . . to be continued!
WHEN Dennis John Whitaker is 7 years old, his brother hits him in the head with a piece of farm equipment. He blacks out for a few hours and wakes up four counties over in a hospital he didn’t know existed in Kearney, Nebraska. He’s got a pain in his right temple and he hears his mother praying repeatedly and his father yelling at his brother. He’s discharged a few hours later with painkillers and instructions not to fall asleep for the next fourteen and a half hours.
He falls asleep thirteen hours and seventeen minutes later, which is when the dreams start.
The dreams follow him everywhere. He sees a man he swears he knows but can’t really make out. Sometimes the man tells him things. Sometimes he gives him advice, sometimes he warns him, sometimes he just stares at Dennis silently. Sometimes all Dennis sees is his eyes.
This continues until Dennis is 14. He doesn’t tell anyone about the dreams— his mother would probably call an exorcist and his father would probably make him sleep in the barn— until they find Lyla DuPont dead in a cornfield.
She was some pretty junior cheerleader and there was a party the night after Homecoming. Dennis heard about it and a few of his friends told him to come even though he was a freshman, but he knew his dad would beat his ass if he found out. So Dennis did what normal 14 year old boys do— he climbed a tree on the property line and watched with his brother’s binoculars (in retrospect, he gets how weird that was). The cops break the party up at some point and as Dennis watches them escorting drunk high schoolers off the property, he gets that feeling in his right temple again.
Some girl screams. In the distance, someone’s dog barks.
Dennis is barely out of the tree before he blacks out again.
Luckily, he’s not out too long this time. Just long enough to miss the police finding Lyla’s body and taping off the spot where everyone had been sitting around and drinking and having a campfire amidst the half-dead October cornstalks. He walks home that night.
It’s when he wakes up the next morning that he finds out Lyla DuPont is dead and he realizes the man in his dreams warned him about this a few months ago (vaguely; he’d mentioned something to Dennis about being wary of his steps and looking beyond— whatever that means) and he immediately rides his bike to church and prays until he forgets how to speak.
He doesn’t see the man for a long, long time after that.
Dennis is 21 when he sleeps with his friend’s mom. He doesn’t mean to— he’s drunk and she’s nice to him and fuck, is he homesick. Said friend punches him in the face and he blacks out again. (Oops.)
Finally, he sees the man again. He ruffles his hair and calls him kid and even Dennis’ subconscious gets pissed off with him. He yells at the guy and he doesn’t respond. He asks him who he is and gets nothing. Dennis, even in his dream, prays to God (if God still listens to him… he wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t). The man just chuckles at his anger and his arguments. Dennis calls him a prick. (He’ll feel bad about this later.)
The man doesn’t say anything else to Dennis. He just pats his shoulder and then Dennis wakes up in the hallway of his apartment building with a bloody nose and a random phone number written on his hand. Oh, fuck.
When Dennis is 28, he’s living in Pittsburgh and working for the FBI. He met a guy at a chess match in a school gymnasium who said he should give him a call; that they were looking for minds like his. Minds like his— fractured and tortured by something he can’t name and that medication can’t suppress.
When Dennis calls the guy’s number (his name is Frank), he realizes it’s the one that he woke up with written on his hand a year before. One he wrote down and kept for some damn reason.
Anyway, that’s how he ended up investigating a string of homicides in Pittsburgh with Special Agent Frank Langdon five years later. They’d had a break in their case and decided to go out for a drink (Frank learned it was Dennis’ birthday and insisted on it), and Dennis is outside smoking a cigarette when his phone vibrates with a message from his superior. Maybe a Happy Birthday, Dennis! Thanks for all your hard work—
Need you on a plane to North Dakota tonight. Dead girl in a river. Community’s a mess. You’ve got 3 hours to get it together.
It’s right then when Dennis swears he sees the man from his dreams standing down the street, and right then when he realizes he is completely, stupidly, absolutely utterly fucked.
for those experiencing temporal phenomena
place to be . . . nick drake
this night has opened my eyes . . . the smiths
dirty hiroshima . . . air
call the doctor . . . spacemen 3
a short term effect . . . the cure
moon on the bath . . . japanese breakfast
delayed gratification . . . flooding
empty words . . . bowery electric
golden hair . . . slowdive
fool’s gold . . . the stone roses
all words & visuals by me. thank you for reading, to be continued. ｡𖦹°‧⭑.ᐟ
