Awake? Asleep?

Its 1030 at night and I just want to go to bed.  I want my blanket, I want my pillow, and I want it now.  I step out of my car and feel the warm summer air trade places with the full-blown AC.  It’s a greaceful way to transition into an evening in June.  I slug my way to the door code box.  The beep of the door code being punched in is an artillery barrage on my ears, but that’s ok, a few flights of stairs and I'm in a first class trip to dreamland.  The old door swings open and the stairs present themselves as an amusing obstacle course.  Just a small carneys game for the weary sucker.  The big prize at the end being my bed.  I accept the challenge and make my way up, eyes getting heavier along the way.  Each creaking step mocks me but I ignore it.  I make my way to the top and my head becomes lead as it fails to stay above my shoulders.  The door is there, just have…to…push… through.  My knees start to give as I grab the handle, turn the knob and go through.  I need to sleep so badly.  The door open with a flashing light, a light I know all too well.  The flash of light I see is the damn fluorescent flickering on and off again as I sit in the budget meeting. 

          Two coffees down and the CFO sounds as though he could bore a Jack Russell.  Predictions, analysis, planning, blah blah blah.  My mind wanders on various things and then it hits me, wasn’t I just here?  Did I go home?  No, its 230, too early to go home.  Way too early too leave, way too much to do. Right? Right.  One thing I do need to do is use the bathroom, bad.  I can barely understand a word he is saying, old fart.  How do I get out of this…think, think, think.  I know, the old fake cell call trick!  I reach into my black coat pocket for my phone and find it vibrating; I’m actually getting a call.  I see “DAD” in bold letters on the screen, perfect.  I slightly raise the phone, point to it, point to me, mouth a fake sorry and begin to stand.  The CFO waves me off without looking up. As I get up to leave I try to look around the room for dirty looks.  No one notices, no one looks up, no one moves, no one has moved, I don’t recognize anyone.  I shrug it off and head for the door.  I’ve freed myself from that prison and I look at my phone again to call my dad.  Wait, why am I calling dad, he died last year. Heart attack while fishing. Anyway, I move on.  I move past people I cant recognize answering phones I didn’t know we had and speaking in words I can’t understand. 

Do I even work here?  Yeah, I do..I think.  Oh, speaking of phones, nature is calling, got to go.

          I make my way to the bathroom area when Barbara steps out and greets me with a giant toothy smile.  I remember Barb right?  Barb…Barbara in the pink dress.  Barbara from the Christmas party.  She says something I can’t understand but I nod anyway.  As she walks by I remember that she works in HR and her favorite color is purple, like the dress she just wore, or was it pink?  I turn around and see Barbara from HR, I was right; it’s a purple dress.  Where did I get pink? I turn to the men’s room but shocked to see that it says LADIES on the door.  I instinctively turn left and there is the MENS room.  It was always on the left, right? Right.  Yeah left.  My knees feel funny again and I can’t stop yawning.   Going to sleep good tonight.  I reach for the handle and go through. 

          The freezing air slices my face with its typical winter trickery.  I always hated winter.  Then again, I thought it was supposed to be June.  I check my phone and in bold letters it says JANUARY.  WINTER ADVISORY WARNING! More wintery trickery.  It reminds me that I need to call Dad when I get a chance.  My brown coat is no match for this wind.  It’s a contender for a one-sided fistfight.   I need to get to my car.  I’m on the rooftop parking deck so this shouldn’t be too hard.  I look around the sea of silver sedans and can’t seem to find mine.  I pace around the rows and rows of cars and have a sudden thought, since when do I park up here, and what do I drive again?  I look for my keys but cant find them, just my cigarettes that I light out of instinct.  Since when do I smoke?  Always I thought, for the last few years at least.  I put the lighter back into my gray coat.   My gray coat, wasn’t it brown, …or black?  I cant remember.  I turn to the silver sedan beside me and look in the glass for a reflection.  It’s black, just like always, right? Right.  Just then my phone rings, its already in my hand.  I don’t look at the screen as I answer it. “Hello?”  No answer for a few seconds.  Then a voice, “Hello David.”  It’s a woman’s voice. “Have fun today?”  My name isn’t David, I think, but I answer anyway.

“Uh…not really…no.  I’m pretty tired, I just need to go to bed.”  Not sure how else to have better answered that.

Her voice was a little more authoritative this time, “Actually, now more than ever, you need to wake up.”

          My eyes burst open and I practically catapult from my bed.  My brain feels like static noise would in a confined space.  I sit on the edge of the bed and try to catch my breath.  Focus…focus…you’re awake now.  My heart slows its panic as I try to regain control of its quivering.  I look at the clock and it says 130am.  I need to get to bed, I have a budget meeting tomorrow, I have a lot to do.  I cant leave early either.  I lie back down and attempt to go to sleep. Suddenly, as if on cue to my closing eyes, my phone gets a text message.  Who the hell is texting me at 130 in the morning?  I grab the phone angrily and am about to give the sender a piece of my mind.  The message is in bright bold letters: THIS IS YOUR LAST AND ONLY WARNING…WAKE UP.

I sit up and the phone is in my hand, I am in my car. I am in my black coat.  I can’t remember how I got here.  It doesn’t matter. 

Its 1030 at night and I just want to go to bed.

Topic challenge

Parameters:
1. Mountains
2. Lightning.
3. Wings
4. "I never saw it coming."


     This village was mostly known for its surreal sense of peace.  The people were strong and humble with the days work at the for front of their minds.  The farmers tilled the land, the shopkeepers displayed their wares, and the children always seems to find a way to get into things as children always do.
     Walking amongst the rubble told a different story.  It casted a dark blanket of despair over the eyes of those who looked upon it.  The village was gone, the villagers dead, and they never saw it coming.  Piecing through the bits of house and shop told a story of an act of God gone mad.  The blackened holes restructured the landscape in its own precise madness.  The few survivors with whom i encountered all told me about the horrors of that day.  These stories I would hear and try to piece together what happened.  This was my job, I found shit out, and the truth of today would be forever painful.
     The village elder, (the oldest of the survivors), told me that in the mid afternoon, a choir of Erin-tet had descended upon their village.  The people had come out of their homes to praise and rejoice in the visit of those to whom they prayed countless hours for.  The people would fall to their knees as the Erin-tet passed by and looked upon them from the heavens.  "It was a sign from Ur-han! (their God), we have worked hard and lived our lives to the code.  The Erin-tet were here to give us a blessing."
   Not being a true religious man, I took what the old man said with a grain of salt and asked him to continue.  I cared less about his faith and was more interested in the facts.  He then told me that the Erin-tet came at night.  The villagers were awakened by their presence and stood in awe by the confusion.  They had always come during the day, never at night.  As they passed the mountain in their usual fashion, the people gathered in the town square and waited for the Erin-tet to return as they always have.  This time it was different, this time they had brought their wrath.
     "They struck the village with bolts and bolts of lightning."  the old man said shakily.  People and houses fell where they stood while the rest of us scattered.  all we could do is run to our homes, lie down and pray.  we gathered what few we could find, and fled into the caves.  The Erin-tet began to sing, and their song was followed by destruction."  As I was listening, I began to notice a few things about his story that somehow turned on a light in my head.  Something about these Erin-tet didnt seem right to me. Its as thoug they seemed familiar.
      "How many of these Erin-tet were there?" I asked.  That should have been question one.  He told me there were 4 or 5.  He told me that the first Erin-tet, the Erin-Din, would lead the other four.  My heart began to race with the hearing of these words.  I knew exactly what he was about to tell me, and I prayed that i wasnt right.  "How were they flying?" I inquired.  He took a small stick from the ground (one of thousands) and drew a diamond with a line going vertical from the top.  I didnt need to hear anymore.  I went on anyway.  "What does Erin-tet mean in your language?"  I knew the answer.  He didnt have to say it.  "It means Man of Wings."
     I stood there for what seemed an eternity.  My head grew faint as the truth chilled my blood.  A few weeks back there was an investigation into the mishandling of a mission involving our bombers and a unit needing air support.  i wasn't involved at the time, but heard bits and pieces through the gravevine.  What I gather was that a unit was under attack and requested a bombing run.  The pilots said they knew the area well because they patrolled that area constantly.  The pilots reported back with mission success, the ground unit reported never seeing them.

The Drop

      The funny thing about living in space is that you get to break all the rules.  In space there is no air to breathe, food to eat, or water to drink.  There is no sound, no heat, and no gravity.  There is no concept of direction, no up or down.  Yet there is an endless bounty of stars and galaxies waiting to be touched and discovered.  Being the curious yet stubborn species we are, we figured out a way to beat the challenges of space, and seize that bounty as our own.  The life support station of one ship negates the infinite vast freezing vacuum of space.  Once we expanded, colonized, grew and evolved, the fascination of space life, once fearful and gripping, is soon wasted away into adjustments to gravity/anti-gravity and the occasional "Hey look, a comet.  Whens lunch?"
      Today though is different.  Lunch was skipped for a more important priority.  War.  No matter how far we advanced as a society and a race, war had a way to worm itself in, and mess things up.  The insurrectionists have reached the Esus system and have incited an all out rebellion against the local government.  The Esus system was never a prosperous planet to begin with.  The UNSC was trying to establish farms, mines and factories to employ the local populous and bring precious resources to other systems. It was a well thought out plan that had one weakness, it absolutely had to work.  Failure was not an option.  After a few years of planning and development,  things were starting to get underway.  Crops were shipped out, minerals were mined for various uses, and research stations helped expand the scientific community.  The innies however had different plans.  When they heard about the success of Esus they immediately attempted to halt operations.  Normally they carry out bombings and shootings, typical terrorist tactics, but this time they got smart.  Through propaganda and manipulation they were able to get the people to launch full scale riots against the very government that employed them.  They wanted to gnaw off the hand that fed them.
     After several bombings and murders of high UNSC personnel and engineers, the government had enough and evacuated all employees off Esus.  This wasnt without a fight.  The insurrectionists launched an attack on the holding station for the evacuees and after several hours of fighting, 20 Marines were killed and 45 people were kidnapped and are currently being held hostage.  The Marines are blocked off by the newly turned citizens, they have wounded and need evacuation, the hostages are no where to be found.  Shit has officially hit the fan.  This is where I come in.  Well, we to be specific.