It starts like it always starts. I wake up. Vaguely unaware of whether the dream projector has continued to roll, I turn my head toward the television, searching for the clock. The cable box and its digital display lay obscured, hidden behind a stack of outdated DVDs: Lawrence of Arabia, Animal House, Mulholland Dr., The Matrix box set. I sigh. I sigh and roll my freshly opened eyes, overwhelmed by the prospect of raising myself from the coarse, irritating fibers of the living room coach. Still, I crook my right arm and tense my abdominals. The neon green numbers spell 9:33. What a shame. I must be awake. There are never any clocks in my dreams. My dreams are timeless.
Undaunted by my disappointment, the 46" LCD across the room spews the normal tripe of morning cartoons. I like cartoons. The underlying premise makes me feel safe; none of the actions have repercussions. Regardless of whether Wile E. is plummeting from a cliff or Peter Griffin has drunkenly maimed the pope, all living can truly be done in the moment. I'm not well versed in the program on the air. Something about a boy genius, there is a whole pile of them.
I do not know what to do. This is mostly because I am incredibly ambivalent. I could get up and go to class. That I could do; that I should do. However, the monumental futility of attempting to flourish as a cog is inescapable. The rhyme is so tired I do not even take the time to verse it this morning. I rationalize once again. The one hundred and four degree temperature of the day past serves well as an excuse to do nothing at all. Trying to focus only on this moment, I lay my head back down upon the pillow and close my eyes.
This is when I realize that something awoke me at 9:33, something other than my innate desire to contribute to the world around me. My dogs, my beautiful tiny girls, are not in the living room with me. They are on the far end of the apartment. They are scratching at something. Mona, the younger are larger of the two sisters, has a tendency to dig vigorously for stray pieces of kibble that have lost themselves about the dark crevices of modern life. Unable to free them unaided, she will paw at the entrapped kernels and whine until the summoned assistance arrives. This is a different noise, something that I have heard before yet that I cannot place.
The increasingly present pressure in my bladder propels me to my feet. I rise slowly, kicking the sweat and blankets from my lower half. I feel weak. Yesterday's fever and fatigue provided the perfect excuse not to exercise. The blood throbbing in my temples only gains in intensity as meander through the empty dining room amidst the acrid reek on the poorly trained Bichons' urine. I certainly cannot consider that particular failure just now. Approaching the bathroom, I see the ten pound balls of fur stationed outside of the closed bedroom door. Mona peeks quickly toward me before resuming her travail with the door jamb. Her older sister, Mumu, is growling lowly, almost under her breath, occasionally sniffing at the seam of the carpet and the wood. Shaking my head I flip the door open and head across the hall to the toilet.
Every time that I take a piss, I become painfully aware of my blood pressure. I might have a problem, but, then again, over the past couple of years, I have felt sure that I had been afflicted with everything from a staph infection to cancer. Inhaling again, trying to forget, I focus on the relief in my bladder, the blue water in the toilet middling to green. They say that if your urine has any color then you are dehydrated. Am I dehydrated? Why would I be dehyrdated? I drink a lot of water, a lot of diet pop. Could there be something in the diet pop that dehydrates me? I should drink less of it. Maybe I would feel better when I wake up. Maybe I could actually accomplish something.
I step away from the bowl, choosing not to flush. Somehow I have successfully convinced the wife that this is the best ides, that the water waste of constant flushing is simply too detrimental to our deteriorating natural environment. Yay, I helped. Exiting to the small hallway, I glimpse the dogs atop the wooden bed. It had been mine as a child. Then a loft, I can clearly recall the day that my father set it up. In vivid detail, I can conjure the image of tucking myself underneath, in the dark, and reading comic books by flashlight. I can still hear my father's caveat when, in my teens, I asked him to cut it down to a normal height, "Be sure, because once it's cut, there's no putting it back together." Indeed.
Mona is whining, Mumu silent. Entering the room, I am shocked. My wife, Cindy, is still in bed. She was supposed to be at work hours ago. Why is she here? Why isn't her phone exploding? Before I even reach her, I grab the cell off of the nightstand and stare, flabbergasted, at the absence of missed calls. "Cindy! Wake up! You're late! You're really late!" I reach and grab her shoulder, shaking her to life. At least expecting to. Her soft body is limp, unresponsive to agitation. It's only when I succeed in flipping her over that I recognize that something is very wrong. Cindy's face, beset with its thin sheen of peach fuzz, is calm, peaceful. Her eyes are gently shut, her lips closed pleasantly in an almost smirk. And her skin, my wife's skin is tinted a pale blue. Breathing quickly, I place the back of my hand to her cheek already knowing what I would find, the cool chill of death.
I don't know what to do. Should I call 911? What can they do? Should I call her parents? They'll ask why I didn't call 911. I raise my hands to shoulder height and lower then slowly, hoping to calm myself. I need my pills.
In the kitchen I pop open the bottle of Wellbutrin and pick a Prozac off of the counter. From the refrigerator I snare a Fresca and pop the top. The pills drop down my throat followed by a long swallow of the citrus soda. Again, I inhale. Should I call my mother? She's still so sick. My father? He's too worried about my mother. So, I do what I do best, I turn on my netbook, the netbook that I spent six hours in the freezing rain to get at Best Buy on the first Black Friday that my mother spent in the hospital. As the computer hums to life, I try to gather myself. I must not be awake. This must just be a queer dream that does have a clock. How can Cindy be dead? What the fuck do I do now?
The dogs have remained loyally by her side. I smile at how much she would enjoy knowing that, even though she never will. The blather from the television can no longer be abided so I reflexively press 3-3 on the remote control, sending the signal to ESPN. Even before I look up, the broadcaster's voice, both the unfamiliarity and the somber tone, take me aback. "...at ABC apologize for our lack of on-site reporting. We are actively attempting to establish communications with most of our local affiliates and, as we do so, we will bring you live to all of those outlets." Why is ABC news on ESPN? This is like 9/11. What is going on? "The numbers are still sketchy, and we have even less information internationally, but preliminary estimates are that as many as four and no less than two of every five Americans have succumbed to an as yet unidentified fatal malady during the overnight hours." The newscast drones on. I stop listening.
The world is quiet. I would have expected disarray. Upon opening the window behind me, I see no rioters in the streets, no burning buildings, none of the anarchy that science fiction breeds us to imagine. It is simply as if everyone decided to sleep in and play hooky. I need more information. I need to call my parents. I need to bury my wife. But, first, first I need to get some gas.
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