Good Morning

Sleep never fades away quickly.  It has to be shaken off, layer by layer, before reality can reach you.  That is the way every morning works for me.  There are some days when I will sit at the edge of my bed for almost an hour, shedding remnants of dreams slowly.

Thursday was just like every other Thursday before it.  I pushed off the blue down comforter to my left, creating the usual landscape, breaking apart the sunlight forcing its way through the weak parts of the blinds.  My body transitioned to a vertical state with much patience and my brain started its work of putting the mess back together.  I sat there, envisioning little men stumbling around in my head, picking up after an outrageous party fueled by vodka, LSD, and coffee.  Each worker branded with dark, sunken eyes and skin shining with the residue of intensity.  They moved slowly and only half-deliberately, like they'd been caught in the act when I woke up and this task of cleaning up was all my fault.  This is why it takes so long, I thought, the little bastards are severely hungover and disgruntled.

Then, all the men started running in all directions.  Each face plastered with more fear than I'd ever even imagined before.  Pure terror laced with doom and tragedy.  As they moved about, they threw their hands up, motioned to each other wildly, then ran again, repeating that process every two or three seconds.  I looked on in wonder, trying to figure out how my imagination could have taken such a strange turn.  This wasn't part of my process.  Maybe I was still asleep and dreaming about waking up.  I've had that happen before and that is where my thoughts were when it stopped.

I died then.  The aneurysm struck with such force that I was gone in just minutes.  The workers knew what was coming.  As they panicked, my head grew brighter with light until it blinded me and all the patrons of my head.  They let out a collective scream and then it was silent.  They were gone and so was I.