When Ever I Wake Up

The cupboards were bleeding again. Looking up from the steam of my Randall's Cup-a-Soup, I could see the red drips seeping through the closed cabinet drawer and pooling on the counter top. My heart pounding, I pushed my chair back from the kitchen table and made my way to the cabinet.

Flinging the cabinet open, I saw on top of the white plastic dishes a severed forearm, still bleeding at the elbow. From just outside I heard the shuffling steps and quiet moan. I knew I would soon have a visitor.

The room temperature dropped twenty degrees, and I felt a presence, one that brought tears to my eyes and bile to my throat. And then I saw him, only inches from me, reaching towards me, the ghostly pale figure, the stench of rot almost making me faint.

He reached past me, and grabbed the arm. "Oh," he said, through a loosely hung, only partly flesh clad jaw. "I wondered where I had left that!"

It was then that recognition began to penetrate my hardened soul. It was my brother Andrew. He had died when I was only twelve and he was ten. A failed attempt to cross a bridge with a train behind us. I made it. He didn't. And here he was. But not as a child, but as a fully grown adult. Well, at least the parts that had not rotted off.

"Is that Randall's Cup-A-Soup?," he asked, as he tried to re-attach his arm, using a nearby stapler. "Damn! I even miss that! That's pathetic, ain't that the truth?"

The truth was, this was not the first time I had seen Andrew. Sometimes I was in places where the wall between the real world and the spirit world was considerably weaker than other places. One thing did seem to be almost universally true. Almost everywhere I went, Andrew was dead.

I sat back down, weary, but no longer frightened. "How's it hanging, big bro? You look like crap, half worn out."

"Speak for yourself," I replied, staring at the vacant hole where Andrew's right eye should be. "Yes, after all this time, I still fight going to sleep. But eventually I have to surrender, don't I?"

"Crap. I wish I could sleep. Roaming the earth in a quasi-zombie state ain't all that it's cracked up to be, believe you me."

I sighed. Might as well get to the heart of it. "Well, you see, it's a little different for me. Every time I wake up, everything changes."

"Change?", Andrew asked, as he tried to stuff an intestine back in place. "What do you mean, change?"

"Whenever I wake up, everything is different. One time I have a family and I'm living in Seattle. The nest day that I wake up, I'm a single guy who's a clown in a rodeo. The next day I'm something deadly dull like an accountant."

"Please!," shuddered Andrew, part of an ear falling off. "You're giving me nightmares! So you wake up somebody different each day? Wow! Say, do you ever have a nice set of knockers?"

"No, I'm always me. It's like me, but in an alternate reality. One where choices made by me or others have led to different outcomes. Like you. You died in my original reality when you were ten. If that's true, how are you an adult here? Do ghosts age here?"

"Oh, H to the no! Last year I fell into the path of a commuter train at a subway station."

"Hmmm. You and trains...not a good match!"

"So how long has this been going on?"

"I don't know. Several years, I guess. I lost count at four hundred and ninety eight. It started at my fortieth birthday. I think someone might have put something in my drink."

"Geez, worst Mickey of all time! Well, I guess that's why you were a little surprised at seeing me. You really didn't know this version of me. And if this is your first night here, you may not have anticipated how things work here." Andrew turned and looked out the window almost wistfully. "You haven't seen Sarah yet, have you?"

"Sarah?" She was my wife, the love of my life before the great unmooring took place. I only rarely have seen her since. Often when I do see her, we hadn't married and she doesn't even know me. Sometimes, the heartbreak is more than I can stand. "Sarah's here? And she's connected to me?" Hope filled my spirit.

"Yeah, ya dope. You two were married for twenty years!"

"Were?"

"Oh, cripes! That's right, you don't know. She's...she's like me."

I couldn't take it anymore. I might soon see my dead wife, a rotting corpse. "Andrew, I..I...don't know if I could handle that."

"You might want to start wrapping your brain around it. Because..." And then I heard the steps and moans from outside, creeping closer, ever closer.




Someone was shaking me awake, violently. "Sir! Sir! Wake up! We're at Defcon Four and you're the only one who may be able to talk her out of it!" I rose from the couch I had been apparently sleeping on, blearily confused, looking at the woman standing above me. Where was I this time? Defcon Four? Somebody playing War Games?

She hustled me down the hallway. Historical paintings lined the hall, men wearing suits with firearms in their hands stood in front of a door I was being led to. A person emerged from the door and anxiously came over to me. "Mr. Secretary, please! She already has launched the codes! You only have five minutes to talk her down!"

Oh my God! Have I mentioned that I don't inherit the abilities of whatever alternative me has? There was one time I woke up as pilot and almost crashed a Jumbo Jet! And this was serious, more serious than not knowing how to a do a damn Balance Sheet. "You..you have get to someone else to do this! I...I don't feel like I can do this!"

You have to, Mr. Secretary! You're the only one who can save the world!"

He opened the doors, and there I saw the most frightening thing I have ever seen.




President Palin.


God help us all.