The Disaster Diaries: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Apocalypse by Sam Sheridan Page B

different when
shaved and cleaned up. In the photos he was standing next to a pretty blonde
woman and two young boys. They must be his family. ‘Come this way.’ He led me
down the hallway and took a right at the first doorway. I momentarily froze, as
I stepped into the room. My eyes scanned high and low, left and right, but my
brain was still trying to digest it all. Every single inch of the wall was
covered in A-4 paper, but they were drawings and paintings of Lucy, me,
Samantha, Isabella, Clarissa, Brendan, his family, the town, destruction,
flames, blood, gore, death and carnage.
    My eyes fell upon the painting on a stand in the
middle of the room.
    I moved towards it.
    ‘That one is still wet,’ said Brendan. ‘I have
literally just finished it.’
    ‘I dreamt this last night,’ I muttered a reply. It
was the image of a man sitting in a chair with a smoking gun in his hand. The
face had been completely destroyed from where the person had shot himself. ‘How
did you know I dreamt this?’
    ‘I dreamt it, too. I dreamt all of these. I never
understood why I dreamt them all, but the images are so clear and vivid. It
helps me to remember them when I paint them.’ I walked around the edges of the
room and glanced from one picture to the other. I was starting to notice a sort
of order, or timeline. There was a picture of a man smiling. It was Brendan. He
is sitting in a cafe with a woman. In the next painting the woman is then
wearing a wedding dress. Next she has a baby bump. Brendan is holding a baby.
The baby is a little boy. The little boy, Brendan and the mother are on
holiday. The mother has a second baby bump. A second child is added to the
family. The timeline depicts the children growing up, going to school, making
friends, birthday parties, Christmas, and playing all sorts of different sports.
The final picture is of the mother and the two boys in a bloody car crash.
    ‘I dreamt that the night Pam was driving back from
her parent’s house. I woke up and called her. I wanted to warn her to stay
where she was. I would drive up and pick them up, but she was already on the
road.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘Yeah...’
    ‘When did you start dreaming of me?’ I had to know.
    ‘I don’t really know when it began. I just started
seeing this man. I never really understood why I would dream of you because
most of your dreams are boring.’ That sums me up pretty well. ‘Let me explain.
I would dream of my life with my wife and family. I would dream major life
events before they happened, but once they died my dreams turned towards you. I
just started dreaming about your life events. I dreamt of you writing, selling
books, meeting women, your family moving away, losing your baby...’ I clenched
my jaw at the very mention of it. How did he know all of these things? It
wasn’t possible for anyone to know this much about me. ‘I dreamt of us meeting
and the things I would give you. It was like my life was put on hold until the
day I could give you this information.’
    ‘Your life was on hold? What information?’
    ‘Yes. I have plans, but I have not moved forward
with them because I have to give you some vital information. I don’t know why
you are important. It isn’t like I see into the future. I see stuff that is
going to happen in the near future. To be honest, half of it doesn’t even make
sense to me, but I have faith that it has some meaning for you.’
    ‘It is the same for me,’ I confessed. ‘I sometimes
don’t understand the meaning of a dream until the events have already gone by.’
    ‘That is generally the case with psychics like us.’
    ‘What information do you have for me?’
    ‘I cannot tell you, yet.’
    No. I needed answers. I had waited too long to learn
what all this meant.
    ‘Please, I need to know what this means. My dreams
have been counting down the days until the apocalypse since I was a teenager.
The world is going to end in three days. I don’t understand why I am