Conciousness On A New Scale

The recollection of this one didn't hit me until I was at the vending machines. I still don't know what triggered it.

I was running through the halls of the hospital, knocking people over and out of my way. In front of me, just several steps ahead, there was someone else running from me with a hand cannon big enough to blow a hole in the world.

"MOVE!" I screamed running after him. All these people were in the way. Again, they were faceless. In brief moments, things seemed to slow down and that's when I'd noticed him. He'd spun around, the barrel of the semiautomatic .50 caliber handgun bearing down on me.

"FUCK!" I barked as I saw the flash of the muzzle. I tried to dive out of the way but the bullet zinged past my ear, taking a small piece of the lobe with it. More bullets flew as I watched people being hit left and right and falling over in the panic. People scattered and some didn't know which way to go. Finally, the shooting stopped and I heard him start running again.

I started after him. I ran until my legs burned and my viens pumped sulfuric acid through them. It was when I stopped and levelled the small revolver at him that he stopped, grabbing one of the nearby nurses and whipped around with her, pulling the gun to her head and screaming at me.

"Right there!" he shouted, "You ain't movin or I'mma kill this girl right here!"

Even from our short distance, I noticed something. The nurse was already dead. She was half-bruised from where the blood had settled and looked as though she'd come straight from the morgue's drawer. Her hair was dark, limp and damp. Her eyes were glassy and her mouth hung open.

"Wrong again," I shouted back, "because she's already dead."

A scream issued from the dead nurse and her body fell to the floor of the hospital, bleeding out in the process. Two more shots rang out and I took advantage of the adrenaline I felt to dive behind something.

He started running again with me following suit, jumping over the dead nurse.

Now I was shooting as I ran after him. Soon, all six rounds had zinged past him and I was out.

It was time for one last move. I tossed the gun. It was useless and I bore down on the strength of my legs, forcing them to move faster beneath me, leaping and bounding over whatever I could, shoving whatever else I couldn't jump over that was in my way.

He spun around one more time and that's when I performed a solo-style Fastball Special. I bent into a low crouch...nearly a squat with my arms out to my sides and then sprang forward using whatever was left of my strength to do it. Now, I was flying, quickly bridging the gap between him and me and my arms were out in front of me, turning me into a human, two-fisted projectile.

My fists missed him but my right shoulder hit him dead on. He folded into half as he went backward. When we went to the ground, his head had hit the hard tile floor and bounced a couple of times. I looked into his left hand and the gun was still there. I ran my knee over his wrist and I noticed that, from the time I leapt forward, everything had slowed to a crawl. My knee was now a mainstay weight on his wrist and I'm nearly certain I'd heard a bone snap and then.....

"BANG! ....BANG!" I'd heard the last two shots in the handgun ring out. I had both hands around his throat, strangling him. It wasn't intentional. I was trying to keep him down. I had heard a scream again and that's when I noticed it. My knee had been driven into the underside of his forearm and four holes had now found their way onto me. He'd used his thumb to pull the trigger and had unloaded two more shots into me.

I heard a scream again. Now, I wasn't on top of him like I'd thought. I was on the floor next to the nurse dead eye to dead eye and hearing a scream erupt from her mouth.

That's when I woke up. The alarm screaming at me. I brought my hand down onto the snooze button, nearly karate style. The last vestiges of the nightmare had simply vanished. I couldn't remember it. I had remembered that the entire thing was really weird. They're getting more and more fuckin weird by the damn day. I'd given up trying to remember what hellish nightmare had visited itself upon my brain and then, I was at the vending machines at the hospital on a routine babysitting when it happened. It flooded me. I could have sworn I was actually going through it and it seemed to happen within a split second until...

"Hey, man," I heard, "It's been awhile since I seen you."

It was one of the hospital's security guards on his rounds.

"Yeah," I said, getting my Coke from the machine, "They don't like to send me up here as much."

"You ok? You don't look so good," he asked.

"I'm cool." I said, "just remembered something is all."

"Yeah, aight," he said, "holla at us if ya need anything."

"Thanks," I said as he left.

On my way back to the elevator was when I caught my reflection in a pane of glass. He was right, I didn't look so good. I looked as though I haven't slept in weeks. I still look that way. It's been a real struggle lately...these nightmares. Seems like they're really pulling some moves on me.

Time for a vacation, I think.