Small town fever dream

Tank stood over the bodies. There were three, and he knew them all. Were they still people? A difficult question for him to answer, and not the first question he expected his brain to fish out of the questions he had swimming around in his head.

The bodies were mutilated past recognition, but Tank recognised them. He hadn't done the heinous act, but had found the aftermath.

His family, his parents - adopted, not many knew their real parents anymore - and his brother lay motionless, in pieces.

He remembered parking and walking up the drive. Upon entering the house via the front door, he found no one. Without anyone in the kitchen or living room downstairs, he scoured the house from top to bottom and found no one, yet they should all be home.

He didn't know how long he'd been standing there, in front of the opened garage door, but the light was fading so it must have been a while. He made a decision and walked trance-like to the phone hanging on the wall in the hallway.

999.

They arrived in minutes, a small town and the station wasn't far away, Wednesday evenings weren't busy, and this was big news. A triple homicide.

Tank was preparing himself for a vigilante streak, to hunt down and find his family's killer, to get his revenge.

Somehow it was only then that he noticed the blood on his own hands.

And it was at that point that the police officers saw the change in the young man, it was like a switch had been flicked, and the innocent man standing in front of them had been replaced.

Tank understood now that the man he saw in the mirror everyday wasn't just a bad dream, but a living nightmare.