Musical Inspiration
He walked back into the medical bay, clutching an unopened bottle of Bushmills and two tumbler glasses. He pulled the chair forward so he could look at the man lying in the medical bed. Tubes and hoses, drips, alerts, everything working towards keeping him alive.
He opens the bottle, pouring an inch into the one closest to the young man; filling up the one closest to him.
“Cheers, kid,” he says before knocking back the full glass like a shot. He pours another drink before he sets back, propping his feet up on the patient’s bed. “It’s times like these that I could really use a good cigar, or a cheap pack of cigarettes, but I know I don’t want to get caught by Whitley doing that in here, no matter how I built the exhaust system for that very purpose.”
He sits for a bit, just listening to the night time sounds, waves crashing outside, interspersed with the medical devices chirping or whirring away. Other than that, pretty silent, especially in a fairly sound-proofed room. He sips the whiskey, “Not really my thing, but Shawna loves whiskey for some reason, especially this stuff.”
He sips again, before leaning forward and pouring another couple inches. “I might as well give you the report. Starts out with a bar. Some new club someone wanted to go to, I don’t even remember the name. I’m sure it’s in the video logs somewhere.” With that comment, he flips a middle finger to the camera in the corner to his right. “Another fucking alien. Bounty hunter apparently. Pretty much would have killed the new guy, John, if the rest of us hadn’t been with him. I’d like to criticize a sneak attack assassination, but really can’t what with the missions I’ve pulled. Captured the fucker, we did, even if I think the fangs shocked the hell out of the Red Ranger.” He laughs out loud at that. “Red Ring I mean.”
“Anyway, he hasn’t been shy about his claims towards John since we got him back here. Compared John to fucking Jesus Christ or some shit, or at least a murderous, thieving Jesus. Might as well be I guess, what with the sandals, healing, and the trans….trans, oh fuck it, changing shit into other shit. Just needs some long hair, long beard and a dirty fucking white robe to go with it.”
“So there’s the fucking report, if you really care you can read the damn details when you get off your ass and get back to work.” He looked at the half empty bottle of whiskey, before pouring another glass and sitting back in his chair. “I doubt you will remember any of it anyway. I sure don’t those months I was under, least I don’t think so, but who fucking knows. Shawna doesn’t seem to either. Maybe Henri, she’s got some weird ass skills since coming out, not sure how the hell she would have got them though. Who the fuck knows about Bryan, either. I don’t know. Whitley says you are ‘finding your way back, lost in the time loop;’ like anybody knows anything about time travel. Jesus Fucking Christ, I can’t even believe I said that.”
Absently he reaches for the cigarettes and lighter he had left at the front of the medical lab, knowing he wouldn’t resist later on. “Fuck.”
“I don’t know kid,” he pauses before finishing another glass and pouring another one. “The nightmares are getting worse, more frequent. I can’t seem to hold off sleep as well as I used to either. Henri thinks I should see her shrink, shocking of course. Whitley doesn’t really seem to want to be inside my mind for whatever reason, and Naoki still has issues with whatever she saw there.”
“I don’t know what to do. I never used to act them out before, and last week I was pretty violent. Not sure I can stand to see another head doctor though. The last one put me on six months of training duty with phrases like ‘negative automatic thoughts’ and ‘prone to excessive ruminations.’ Course the kicker was ‘moderate to severe post-traumatic stress disorder.’ Too valuable just to kick out I guess, don’t want to label someone with the fucking VC as bat shit crazy I guess. Course, training duty led to all this crazy shit, maybe getting kicked out would have been better for us all.”
He poured the last of the bottle into his glass, thirty minutes almost to the second after opening it. He rubs his shadowed eyes before running his hand through his sandy blonde hair. “I gotta know though, if all the dreams are true. I can’t lose any more,” he mumbles, whether to the comatose patient or to himself, it’s hard to tell.
A few minutes passed before he looked back at his kid brother. “Well, if you aren’t going to get up and drink that, then I guess I will. I don’t need any additional bad karma. Nothing attracts bad karma like a drink left untasted after a toast.”
He picked up the glass that still had some whiskey in it and moved towards the door. He stopped with his back turned, then shifted part way blending his form before he spoke again. “You gotta get better kid. This team needs hope to keep it together. And I don’t have any to give.”
He wiped the moisture from his eyes, hiding from the world, cameras or not.
Last Dreams 