Evergreen, Maryland.

Rodger made it to his house on Reams street, panting, exhausted. His bare feet were bleeding and his hospital gown was soaked through with sweat. His head wouldn't stop pounding as he made his way up his front steps. Marie's car was in the driveway, and he could see the kitchen light on peaking through the curtains of a window. The events of the hospital had shaken him considerably. Yanking the screen door open, Rodger grabbed the other doorknob and gave it a yank.

It was locked.

Rodger began to frantically pound on the door and ring the bell over and over again. He kept looking behind him. The night was too quiet, and ever since he stopped running, he had the distinct feeling that something was coming to get him. He couldn't stop thinking about those bodies at the hospital, and the man driving the car that careened off the road.

The puddle of blood with the nurses smashed teeth. The drivers smashed face.

Rodger shook the thoughts away from his mind.

"Marie!" he called out, slamming his fist into the door harder and harder.

He pictured her sprawled out on the floor, lying in a puddle of her blood. His daughter, Madeline, collapsed next to her little pink desk-

Rodger shoulder slammed the door open, splintering it open as he all but fell inside.

"Marie? Madeline?!" He began to scramble up the stairs, crawling, using his hands and feet to push his tired body.

He reached Madeline's door and pushed it open. Her tiny bed was empty, its sheets and blankets perfectly in place. But where was she?

"Marie?" he pushed his bedroom door open and entered.

What he saw made his heart drop into his stomach. He fell to the floor.

There, on his bed, in his room, was his wife. Having sex with his neighbor.

There were two lit candles on his dresser, and there was soft music playing. The two of them were motionless, still as death. Jim was on top of her, his bare ass pale and white, barely wrapped in their thin sand colored sheets. Marie's legs were wrapped around him, her dark hair tossed about the bed. It seemed as though he had collapsed onto her and died.

Rodger felt his whole world come crashing down around him. His only crutch through this terrible experience was naked, ******* his neighbor on his own bed. This entire time, he knew that so long as Marie and Madeline were alright, then everything would be fine.

He felt a scream rising up in his throat. A deep and terrible rage surged through him, boiling to unimaginable pressure. His hands gripped his sand colored sheets so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

He lost control.

He frantically grabbed Jims neck and dragged him down next to the bed. Over and over again, Rodger slammed Jims face into his bedrooms hardwood floor. His neighbors head began to splatter blood outwards as his face was crushed soft by the floor. Jims body twitched once, but Rodger didn't stop. Over and over he drove his face into the floor, until there was blood all over his own hands and arms.

Rodger screamed the entire time.

Finally, he let go, slumping against his dresser, exhausted, crying.

After a few minutes, he rose unsteadily to his feet. Jims blood was everywhere. Pieces of his teeth and face were splattered about, red and pink chunks of his brain stained his once nice floor.

Rodger stared at his wife. Lying on her back, Marie's right breast was exposed by the bed sheet. Her mouth was hanging slack and open, and her eyes were open and vacant.

How could she do this? How could she-

She moved.

Rodgers heart began to beat wildly out of his chest. His head pounded with thunderous pain. He couldn't believe his eyes.

The movement was so subtle, just a twitch in her lower lip.

Slowly, tentatively, Rodgers blood soaked hand reached out towards her thin neck. His fingers felt for her pulse.

She was alive.

"Marie?" he sobbed, shaking her shoulder. "Marie?! Open your eyes!"

Nothing.

He shook her harder. "Marie! Marie, please!" Rodger put his ear against her chest.

"Marie!" He began to shake her violently about the bed. "Wake up Marie! Why did you do this to me!? Why did you do this!?" he screamed. "What's happening?!"

Rodger backed away from the bed, and tripped over Jims body. He landed hard, hitting his side in his dresser. He found himself staring right into the crimson mess that was Jims face. Frantically, he rose to his feet, his hands slipping on his bloody bedroom floor. Rodger ran into the hallway, tripping and falling down his stairs.

Exiting his house, he passed out on the front lawn.

* * *

Rodger went quiet. The powerful spotlight poured down onto him from above. Marcus, and his audience in the auditorium seating, was silent. Rodger wiped tears from his face.

"I snapped," he said. "I...saw them there, and I, I just..."

"You snapped," Marcus finished simply.

Rodger shoulders slumped, and he tilted his head forward.

There was a long moment of silence.

"Rodger," Marcus began, a bit uneasily. "You didn't pass out on your front lawn. You were...tranquilized. Shot with a sedative."

Rodger raised his head. "What?" he asked hoarsely.

"We had been trying to track you down since you were at the hospital. It took us a while to figure out who you were, since you didn't have any identification on you. The hospital thought you were a John Doe. The cab driver had written your address down in his log, and we tracked you down that way. That's how we found your house. You were aggressive and angry, covered in blood. We couldn't let you come near us, and we had to tranquilize you. "

"I don't understand," Rodger began. "What was happening out there? What was wrong with all those people? In the hospital, and the car driver?" His head began to pound.

"Roger," Marcus said. "The car accident you were involved in from the airport sent you to the hospital. The head trauma you sustained brought you to the ER in a coma. An MRI was administered. It revealed an aggressive tumor."

"Brain tumor?"

"Yes Rodger. As far as I understand, it's a type of glioma that is believed to originate from the oligodendrocytes of the brain or from a glial precursor cell, but we don't know yet. We have the worlds top neurosurgeons reviewing your case. You are a very rare man, Mr. Vidmar."

Rodgers eyes lost their focus. A brain tumor?

"What do you mean, rare? How rare is it?"

Marcus cleared his throat and spoke up from the distance. "Rodger...your tumor is the result of some sort of viral cause. The aetiology of oligodendrogliomas are still unknown, even to this day. It has left you with some very interesting side effects."
Rodger could barely hear Marcus now. A brain tumor?

He had to get out of here. He had to go see his daughter, and even Marie. He needed them right now, more than anything else.

Rodger rose from his seat and began to struggle against his wrist shackles.

"Sit down, Rodger," Marcus' voice boomed from the audience seating.

"I need to leave!" Rodger called out, his voice edged with tension. "I need to see my daughter. Don't you understand? I need to see her!"

"Rodger, you cannot leave our care. You are far too valuable, and far too dangerous."

"What? What do you mean valuable? I'm a ******* human being, and if I'm sick, I should get to see my family. What's more valuable than that?"

"The side effects of your tumor are some of the rarest known on the planet," Marcus answered. "It causes your brain to emit some sort of wave frequency, an invisible energy that washes over those around you. We don't know why, and we don't know how, but your brain, when your awake, causes everyone around you to loose consciousness. It is a constant emission, and when your awake, it never stops. But when you're sleeping, that's the only time anyone can come near you. You're like a powerful, living, breathing sleeping pill. Your brains energy flows through closed doors and walls, through steel and iron, even underwater, rendering all living beings around you unconscious. Coupled with the viral tumor, the head trauma you sustained unlocked some sort of dormant key to your brain, unleashing brain energy that was only speculative. "

"Shut the **** up," Rodger pointed into the audience. "You keep me locked up here like a ******* monkey, and this is the best excuse you have? Take me to ******* prison if you want to, but don't feed me this bullshit. I'm up here, and you're awake. Explain that Professor Dildo."

"The distance of your forced unconsciousness is exactly fifty-five feet and four inches. No more, no less. We're calling it your SR, for Sleep Reach. At one hundred and ten feet, we, and our other team members, are well out of your SR."

"Bullshit," Rodger scoffed.

Marcus spoke softly into his radio. Almost instantly, two double doors at the far end of the auditorium opened, and a large man dressed in black fatigues strolled in with a massive German Shepherd. The man gave the dog a command, yanking on its leash a few times. The dog barred its teeth, growling viciously and barking, leaping and pulling against its chain.

Rodger tentatively moved behind his desk once more.

The man released the German Shepherd.

Rodger heart started to pound in his chest. "What the **** are you doing?"

The dog tore down the center isle of the auditorium seating, snarling viciously, closing the distance in an instant. The dog passed Marcus' section.

Rodger started to back away from the desk. The dog was heading right for him.

After all he'd been through, all he'd survived, its going to be a ******* dog that kills him. And Rodger couldn't be quite sure, but he had the vaguest presumption that the dog wanted to bite his nuts before his throat. Its started to get close enough for him to see the saliva dripping from its curved canine teeth.

In mid stride, the dog collapsed and slid across the gradually downward sloping isle, face first. Then, it just laid there, motionless.

The auditorium was silent.

Rodger thought about the hospital, the bodies. He thought about the girl lying face down, her teeth cracked out of her face, little pale white islands in the puddle of her own blood. She fell, and she didn't even have time to put her hands out in front of her to break her fall. They had all seemingly collapsed in the middle of whatever they were doing. And the station wagon he had flagged down outside of the hospital parking lot.

The driver was fine until he neared Rodger.

And...Jim. Jim and...Marie.

Caught in mid-fuck.

"This is insane," Rodger moved back to his seat and slumped down. "This can't be happening."

"I assure you, Rodger, this is indeed happening. You make anything that lives and breaths fall asleep if it comes to close to you. This power is real, and it's never ending. There was only one other person in recorded history that shared your symptoms."

"How'd it work out for them?" Rodger asked, feeling as though the answer wasn't going to be good.

"It was in the early seventies. She was a four year old Laotian girl who had been trampled by a carthorse in her village...Her SR was only nineteen inches Rodger. She died three days afterwards of her injuries."

"Nineteen inches," Rodger said softly.

"So," Marcus said, "perhaps now you see how important you are."

"How important am I?"

"...You're the most valuable man on the planet."

Rodger paced his small concrete janitors cell as best he could, the slack of his chain trailing behind him like a dragons tail. He took a sip of water from a small plastic bottle.

He had to get out of here.

The first thing he had to get out of these ******* chains. But how?

They had him hooked up to some goddamn machine that pulled him back if he strayed too far. A powerful machine. He couldn't fight it. After all, it kicked his ass the last time he tried.

That's when it hit him. A colossal idea. Brilliant and stupid, obvious and cunning. It was perfect.

He hoped, for Marcus' sake, that he really couldn't make people fall asleep when they got close to him.

Rodger was about to find out.

* * *

Rodger gathered up his chains slack in his arm and bolted from his room. It was fifteen feet to the intersection of his first steel ring. He sprinted towards the ring. The red tape he was ordered to follow bent to the right, towards the stage and his desk.

He heard the machine fire up somewhere behind the double doors on his left.

Reaching the steel ring at the intersection, he went to the left of it and worked his entire body over and underneath the chain, pulling the slack of it with him as fast as he could. He had pulled about ten feet of it through when it snapped tight against the wall.

Rodger could hear people screaming from the auditorium, but it was too late.

With his chain tangled behind the second steel ring bolted to the concrete wall, the machine continued to pull. The tension that built up was too much for the first steel ring out on the stage, and the machine had ripped it out of the wall. Rodger fell backwards as he regained a huge amount of slack on his chain.

Rising, he began to run towards the double doors and the rumbling machine that was still working behind it. If he didn't reach it in time, or if it was too far away, his slack would disappear eventually and he would be pulled to the second ring, pinned against the wall of the intersection just like before out on the stage.

The doors were only ten feet away now. His chains slack continuing to be pulled through, scrapping against the two doors with repetitious clacks.

Rodger could hear more screams and shouts from the auditorium behind him, but he focused on running as fast as he could.

He slammed the doors open.

The machine was there, some sort of giant steel spool, winding his chain up in high revolutions. There was a large man lying next to it, unconscious and unmoving. He was dressed in black fatigues similar to the dog handler from before, and there was some sort of compressed air gun hanging around his neck by a shoulder strap. His radio was lying on the floor next to his outreached hand, crackling and spitting angry and urgent commands that he wouldn't have a chance to answer.

Rodger reached the machine and started to frantically press its buttons until the spinning stopped. When it did, he breathed a sigh of relief. After another moment, he found the button that unlocked the chain, giving him all the slack he could ever want.

No more red lines, he thought

He bent over and picked up the handheld radio that belonged to the machines operator. Pressing a button, he held it to his face.

"Hey Marcus," he said, releasing the button and waiting. All the voices ceased.

"I've got some new ground rules to go over: I'm going to leave, and if you follow me, I will murder you in your ******* sleep."

Before hearing a response, Rodger smashed the radio against the floor.

* * *

It took Rodger fourteen minutes to find what he was looking for, and his chain trailed him everywhere, its endless slack was comfortable, but he would have been more comfortable if it were off. The high school he was in was still a high school, and the room his red line led to was still a janitors office, even though all the belongings had been removed from it. But he assumed that they were taken somewhere, and he was right.

He had found a locked closet door down a long hallway. Kicking it open, he stood before it like an archeologist who had found the lost city of Atlantis. There was a veritable cornucopia of custodial tools. Mops, buckets, chairs brooms, sawdust, desks, lamps, and even an American flag spilled out of it.

The janitor must have been a war vet.

He held it up in his hands, its sheer weight filling him with confidence in its abilities. There was a tool that a janitor was expected to become skilled with, in much the same way as his or her talent with the mop and bucket. Every day, some young boy or girl would forget the key or the combination to their locker, and Mr. Janitor would come to the rescue. His weapon of choice?

Bolt cutters.

Rodger placed the cutters teeth over a link in his heavy chain and pushed the handles together. At first there was no movement, and he thought that perhaps his chain was too thick. But then he felt the handles softly bite through the steel with a clip. Again he snapped the bolt cutters through his chain, and his leash fell to the floor with a clatter.

Rodger exhaled a deep breath. He felt lighter without the chain.

He heard a whisper behind him and turned. Something bit him in the neck. His hand came up and touched his throat. There was something hard and small dangling from it, and his hand came away with a bit of blood on it.

Down the long hallway, through vision blurred with tranquilized induced sleep, was a lone figure. The air gun he gripped fell to the floor.

Rodger slumped to the floor, and before his eyelids closed against his will, he watched Marcus take a single step towards him and all turned to blackness.

"I'm sorry," Marcus whispered...

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Keyword: Waking Up Is Never Easy

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Posted by bubbly 2008-07-05 04:19:01 sad hi! david. rodger had as it is suffered enough. and then he too died in the end. sad. lol. ;-) + Report this comment

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