Doug: Mother Nature

Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt.

I hear my phone vibrating and come slowly and groggily to the world of the living. The sheets are soaked and my throat feels like the parched desert I call home. I try to mutter, 'I guess the fever broke' but my mouth is tha sticky mess of awful that comes from too little water and being sick.

SNAPSNAPSNAPSNAPSNAP!

Finally my brain registers the sound which had been pounding through my window like artillery fire. I cannot believe I did not notice it before, both because it was so loud and so familiar.

Mark 240 Squad Automatic Weapon. Light Machine gun. Someone outside is shooting a weapon.

More importantly, I can hear loud screaming outside, both male and female. Someone outside is killing people.

I am so sure of this that my neurons, which had previously been firing at the same rate that molecules moved somewhere around absolute zero, reached something approaching the speed of light in the space of less than a half second.

Self preservation and something almost resembling combat reflexes take over.

I roll out of bed, forgetting for a second that I sleep in a loft. I somehow manage to land without impaling myself on the ladder, the my desk chair, or the box of movie cases that I use as my bedside table. My head slams into a pile of clothes, and I realize that not doing all of my laundry last night has saved my life.

I am up and moving, adrenaline telling all the aching parts of my body that their pain could not and would not fuck with the gunfight I was getting ready for. I snag my phone off the ledge of the window while using my right hand to peek through the blinds. The window is fogged up. The heat of my room and the feezing cold of the outside has made my only portal to the world a hazy unreality.

I yank on the string to bring the blinds up, opening up my closet and grabbing my rifle. I breifly remember that i'd taken the sights off when I was cleaning it, and wouldn't be able to hit anything outside of ten yards with any accuracy. Marines make do.

Movements are decisive, the lock on the bolt comes off fast and easily and I grab a magazine and place it by the window. My left hand fiddles with the latch and the window slides open with a little difficulty.

I am prepared for carnage. I am prepared for blood and gore and murder and destruction. I am prepared to watch the world burn down around me while keeping everyone I can still alive.

I am greeted by something I am completely unprepared for.

The hail is coming down in torrents. Tiny pellets the size of ball berings are bouncing off cars, windows, the people screaming in joy and dancing below me on the street.

I am in shock. I saw this much hail once on top of a mountain while hiking with the scouts, but never in a city. It looks like more than an inch of ice balls had piled up in the space of less than five minutes. Thunder crashes, lightning illuminates the scene.

No Mark 249 SAW. No crazed gunman. Only seattle weather and loud fratpeople.

I glance at the clock. It is eleven thirty eight. I fell asleep around forty minutes ago.

The adrenaline drains from my body and I feel like ass again. I've been sick for the past day and a half, and it got bad that night. Fever, shakes, pounding headache. I have been sicker. but not very often.

Breifly I wonder if there really is an emergency, like god deciding to flood the earth with hail. I glance down at my phone. Message from That Guy. I text him back and he tells me a funny story. I breifly relate my apocalyptic hopes without relating the whole story of my almost full blown halucination. I can tell he approves.

I put the lock back on the bolt of my rifle and return it to my closet. Sweatpants are next. I step out onto the balcony and realize there is a good inch and a half of hail on the ground. I am impressed by mother nature's penchant for going completely apeshit. it was like, sixty degrees out earlier.

But not impressed enough to stay up and watch it.

I crawl back up to my bed, grunting with the effort. I beg my body for the adrenaline it provided earlier, and it responds with a dizzying wave of nausea. Fuck you too body.

Fuck.

You.

Too.

I fall asleep to the sound of "gunfire" and "screams".

-Doug

"This is Sparta."
-Abe