158

August 17, 2012

Your eyes pop open, and you suck in a cool rush of air. Your heart pulsates beneath your breast bone, and your body is clammy despite a coldness filling the room. In the ambient light from a nearby lamp, you see the stretcher on which you lie and a white nylon sheet covering half your body. Around you are similar medical tables, all empty.

You must have fallen asleep downstairs, so you rise and step into the hall. And you must have lost your clothes somehow, you realize, as you glance down at your naked body.

Dreaming, of course.

A brilliant glow streams from the hallway. You move into the light, and your body slows as if caught in gossamer, thick and celestial. Your hands glide through the weighty air, skin shimmering with a yellow hue. Through the hallway you move, stumbling as you walk, over the sterile tiles, past the plain white walls.

You enter your office and flick the light switch. The overhead lights flicker and bathe the room in a sheet of pale green. Sitting at your desk is a man completely covered in a lab coat, except for his head. His features are pronounced: cheeks and jaws oblique, mouth full of yellow teeth, eyes pink, brown hair slicked back with dark moving spots crawling across his scalp. He strokes his thin beard with one hand and holds a clipboard in the other.

Your left hand tenses, and you stare down at a knife on the floor. The man stands and extends a hand in greeting, and words leap in your mind across the silent room.

"It's time, Rezo."