Moment’s Notice

One of the nice things about owning a laptop is the ability to journal with only a moment’s notice…

I am laying in bed. Not quite in bed, but across the bed. It was dreamlike. Half on my stomach, arm outstreched beyond and under my head, threaded through the loops and folds of my girlfriend’s lingere. Not far from my face, my wrist reappears from under the fabric, my hand covering one of the folded, padded cups.

The difference in texture, sensation, gathers a fragment of my attention and I mindlessly squeeze. Pulsing, gently, feeling how the foam rubber material does, and does not, resemble the feel of my lover’s breast.

From outside, the Saturday sounds of suburban apartment living leak into the ground floor of my lady’s domicile. Children playfully yell and scream on some distant playground, while the overlapping buzz of several radios and televisions create a foreign sound and I am displaced, on a traveller’s visa in an afternoon’s world of half slumber and pleasant rememberings.

Upstairs, I hear the movements of this apartment’s owner and my mind lazily drifts to all of the women I hadn’t quite failed with: a short but potent list of “once was” and “maybe still”. The light thru the window is cool with the growing shadow of the apartments across the street, and it slides easily into the colors of faces and happenstance and I slip briefly into dream.

There, there was that one woman, what was her name, beautiful blonde mane afire with strawberry highlights, her smile her countenance was an invitation to satiation — Renee! No, is that really it? I see her clearly and the name fits but somehow isn’t quite right and I am dreaming I am touching myself and a voice, maybe her voice, is saying, breathlessly, “Here, let me show you, something, I’ve always dreamed, of doing…” and in my mind, or maybe that part of me is awake, I am touching myself and preparing and reliving what she is preparing to show me.

I squirm slightly and I am aware of the light and the shadows and my comfort on the bed, and my girlfriend’s delicates there, and her movement upstairs and a part of me feels guilty for even thinking about things like this, like it is somehow a betrayal, but its only a dream and my awareness slowly shifts back to that otherworld and I am searching to bring just the right image into focus again.

And on some level maybe more dream than real I know suddenly that the end is rolling up behind me, the end of all things, like the end of a scroll let go to spool back in on itself, condensing time and all reality with it. I hear her short piercing scream. At the speed of thought I come awake and its the sound that makes the warning real, the sound of the scroll rushing up behind. I sense the compression of a universe of fabric bellowing towards me. The noise is like that of an ocean wave, of a passenger train with its brakes on, of every semi-tractor running me down, of a jet fighter’s sonic boom as it flies through me, of an echo of trumpets in magnitude harmony.

My eyes open and I see my body’s perspective change and I’m beginning to look down on the bed, from a greater height as it appears the bed is pulled from under me and particles of dust and microscopic glass are becoming visible at my periphery in the shadowy light. I am now heels over head with my abdomen bent at an impossible angle and my face, feet, and shoulder press the far wall and I am glad that I won’t have time to feel any pain, and I wonder, I wonder if this is nuclear and note that for myself it really won’t make much difference but in the back of my mind in that deep place I had been sojourning only an instant before, there I know completely within my heart of hearts as the tsunami of debris begins to overwhelm me and my world begins to brighten that the brilliance comes from more than an explosion.

As the wave roils over me, leaving me suspended in position, staring at the wall and floor because I am too small a thing to be moved by a force of such scale, that I am to be a speck in the fabric of the roll of the carpet of time, the glare changes from white with a sensory hiss toward intense yellow toward a fiery red. I press my eyes shut but I know it is pointless and all I see are flaring glows like lava, like my world is liquefying inside and out and just as I am completely engulfed in the wave, so too does my existence become quiet, muffled.

Moments then, I pray confidently, “Forgive me Lord, for my thoughts in the past moment, and for all my transgressions previously. Into your hands I commit me into your hands jesus i commit me” and my litany becomes an echo which collapses in on itself in an infinite repeat as my spirit too begins to leave this universe and the fact that I was last seeing red leaves me with a slight tremor.

And I wake up.

Crisis manager reports immediately that all telemetry is normal. I am lying in bed, my head resting on my arm in precisely the angle that I knew I should be, precisely where I had been when I had drempt I was squeezing a braziere. Hearing is normal. Sound range is normal. Glass breakage not detected, another thousandth of a second confirms there is no glass event occurring. No movement detected within the confines of my room, but I wait for a resample to confirm.

What the fuck was that?

Crisis manager cannot detect any subsonic vibrations, no high-frequency echos, nothing to confirm any kind of catastrophic event in realspace.

Resampling confirms no detectable motion in my room. I raise my head, continuing to look down my arm out the door of my room and into the room across the hall. WHAT WAS THAT??!?

My breathing seems normal, if a little shallow, and my body temperature, body telemetry shows no signs of sleep-apnea-induced microdeath. I have a history of horrific nightmares with spiritual overtones when I am oxygen starving, but when I have these, I usually wake numb and cold over at least half of my body, and my respiration usually takes several moments to restart.

And this dream was WAY beyond what was necessary to wake me from a near coma!

So what the freaking thing WAS THAT??

I glance at the clock. 1:33am. That may be significant. Has anyone else dreamed this? Maybe it was real. A really big truck zooming by… who am I kidding. And what about the scream? Crisis manager cannot confirm or deny that the scream occurred in realspace.

Maybe there was an accident? On the other side of this small town? Maybe a couple was coming home late this Friday evening, and they missed that one sharp turn and flew off the road and hit a tree? My hearing is sufficiently acute that I might have heard it, and I amplified it in my dreamstate.

Its possible. But I can hear no trace sounds now, except maybe distant dogs barking. If I heard it this far away, it would surely have woke the neighbors near the accident.

Maybe there really was a bomb? Maybe there’s been a nuclear event somewhere in the world. In the country. Maybe I’m sharing a collective subconcious event. Maybe others did dream this with me afterall.

Maybe it happened locally.

The light from my drawn blinds appears normal for night. I climb out of bed, the tenative walk of someone confronting their fears, and cross through the hallway into the living room. The light to the east, toward College Town and

Major Metro area looks normal, I would guess.

I peek out the window. I can’t see to the north or south, I can’t see my hometown some 15 miles to the south, but I’m certain if there had been a nuclear event, the sky over the house would be atmospherically charged; active, different. I guess thats reassuring.

As I reach for my laptop, I come to rest on the only other possibility, one that leaves me warm, and empty. Scared, but calm.

What if, THIS is the meaning of the message that God gave me, in response to my prayer, back in October?

That time is short

…and there is much that He wants to show me.