3/8/2019: Week 1 Essays

A reminder of last week's prompt...

"Waking up in a strange room was not something that he expected." JournalBuddies.com 

The Dream Is Real  by Maggie Mae

Beep……beep……beep……beep…….Why don’t they shut off that damn alarm. I’m having an interesting dream and I am not ready to wake up. I would really like to see how this dream ends. It’s entertaining, exciting and I’m the star! Beep……beep…...beep......beep. Any chance of continued sleep was useless. Sam opened his eyes, looked around, and realized, “Jesus, I’m the one that’s beeping! And, I’m wired! What the hell?”

“Ah, you’re awake finally. How are you feeling?”

“I don’t know. Where am I? Who are you? Why am I beeping? What are all these wires attached to me?”

“I am Dr. Grant, and you had quite an accident. You’re in Park City Hospital”.

“I don’t remember having any accident.

“Do you remember your name and how old you are?”

“My name is Sam, Sam Spade. No, no, that’s not right. Sam Snead. No, not that either. Sam Anderson! I’m Sam Anderson, although I’d probably prefer to be Sam Snead. As to how old I am, I wish I was 21, but I think I’m 45. What kind of accident did I have and am I okay?”

“Surprisingly, you are okay, just a slight concussion and a few bruises here and there. You are very lucky that you didn’t break every bone in your body. From what I have been told, several of your friends dared you to ski down the Olympic training ski jump, and you foolishly obliged them. I am also told that your form coming down the jump was fantastic, but your landing was obviously disastrous. We’ve had you under observation for approximately 12 hours and we’ll keep you for another day or so. I would suspect when you start moving around that you will be quite stiff and sore.”

“You know what? Just before I opened my eyes, I thought I was having a fantastic dream, but apparently, I was replaying my epic, disastrous and only ski jump. I was soaring through the air like a beautiful bird. Unfortunately, the beeping sounds interrupted my playback and I didn’t get to the replay of my disastrous landing. So, thanks, Doc, for letting me know how I scored, or rather, how I landed. ”

Wake Up Call  by Noelle Rose 

Waking up in a strange room was not something he expected when he left the Nightingale Club the previous evening. Everything had seemed fine when Jacob left his friends, after tossing a crisp twenty on the bar to cover his two beers. That tip was more than he usually left but a win in his business the past weekend had left him feeling generous. 

He recalled hearing the familiar click of his truck door unlocking and, after that, nothing. He rubbed the back of his neck trying in vain to remember what happened. There was a window directly ahead of him but he soon realized that it was not a window at all, just an amazingly good painting of one. To his right Jacob saw a red door and walked toward it. He reached for the doorknob and whacked his hand. There was no doorknob, there was no door. it was nothing more than an especially well-detailed 3-D painting. 

Jacob experienced a brief moment of panic then anger. His friends were doing this, he was sure of it. He banged on the walls and realized they were not wallboard but steel. He received silence in response to his yells. 

It was during this act of tempered desperation that Jacob noticed another strange thing about this room; it was circular. He rubbed his hand perpendicular then vertically down to the floor. Where the wall and floor met was a smooth arc; without seams. The only other items in the room were a blue table with a drawer and, on top of that, a green-covered book. 

Jacob picked up the book. It was very heavy. It also was not a book. The noise it made upon contact with the floor sounded like the tossing of bowling ball against a steel drum. Even the table wasn’t real. 

He turned his attention to the cot and, pulling back the blanket, found a stone slab deceivingly painted to look like a mattress.. 

Had he been abducted by aliens and being held captive on some futuristic space ship? Were little green creatures with oversized heads and tiny bodies going to dissect his body to see what made it work? Maybe all his memories were going to be sucked out of his brain and they would leave him a muttering, imbecilic fool in some cornfield in Iowa. 

This can’t be happening. Not to him! Jacob was the guy everyone wanted to be seen with, the guy who could con the mud off a pig. He needed to find a way out. 

His second look at the room showed something in the ceiling above the cot. Why had he not noticed that before? He struggled but managed to put the small table on top of the cot and, bracing himself against the wall, climbed on top of it. Using the keys which were still in his pocket, he began prying of the square cover. He soon lost his balance, fell off the table and landed with a thud on the steel floor. 

Jacob came to with a searing pain in his left elbow and someone or something spreading gooey liquid all over his face. He jumped back in horror. There in front of him, on the floor next to his bed, was Montgomery, his yellow lab. The dog’s blue leash lay at his feet. 

While walking Montgomery down the city sidewalk, Jacob made a vow; he would dispose of his counterfeit money machine and start living legal. He’d had enough of ‘fake’ stuff to last him a lifetime.