Room 101, about 10ish PM

[apocalypsesoon.livejournal.com]

John lay on his bed, an unread textbook in front of him, face pressed against the pages, asleep.



He dreamed of the future and of the past. Childhood. Weaponry. The night before, acting silly and getting some action in Kripke's basement. The day after.

T-800.

John running. "You can't run from your destiny, John," his mother says as she shoots a sniper rifle from the hip, narrowly missing him as he jackrabbits through the desert brush. He's 8 again. "You can't change it." Blam. "You can't stop it." Blam. "You can't slow it down." Blam. "They're machines, John." Blam. "They can't be reasoned with." Blam. "They don't get tired." Blam. "Or sick, John."

He trips and lands in a pond. "Your life is your fault. All of this is your fault." Ed stood at the top of a waterfall, watching the liquid fall down and snake back up to the top. "It happened, it will happen, it has happened. He claps his hands, and John falls into a hole.

Mike Kripke hands him a beer. His basement is dark and smells like hormones and nervousness and fermented hops. "The things you do cause the things you don't. If the future changes the past into the present." John drains his drink and puts it on a table near a cute gal who smiles at him.

He turns to get her a beer and the bartender is an aging muscleman. "We don't leave. We ahl come bahk." John gets on his dirtbike and drives away, the ground crubling behind him as the shockwave recedes. He falls, burning.

Instead of a white rabbit, at the end of the hole is a puddle of mercurial liquid, all shapes at once, all people at the same time. "Time is constant," it said, fluidly morphing and undulating. "Time stops for no man."

"Or machine." Sam Carter steps in front of him, effortlessly holding two machineguns. She pulls the trigger, and each bullet impacts near John's feet, miniature mushroom clouds.

He dives to the right, rolling in the dirt. He looks around; he's in a field, alone.

"It is your destiny." He whipped around to see Kiki standing behind him, pale as death, wearing a black bow. "Your destiny, your life. Make it what you will." Before his eyes, she turned black, darkness creeping over her face as her skin and clothes tore themselves into a new shape, ichor and ebony and darkness, a creeping shadow that screamed and flowed across the weeds in a circle around John as Ol' Blue Eyes stood there, drinking amber fluid from a highball glass, smoking a cigarrette, and tapping his watch. "On break, kid. 2 minutes."

He turned again, and Sydney approched his bed, becoming silver and fluid. "Action. Reaction. Life is destiny, John," she said in the voice of his mother. She stabbed him in the gut, her face upon a silvery humanoid form with spikes for hands and puddles for legs. He could feel the pain radiating inside of him. Screaming, he looked down at his rent flesh to see broken computer chips instead of organs, and sand running out of his torso, wires sparking and mechanical bits whirring in his once-human frame.

He looked up, beyond words, to see his reflection looking back, titanium skeleton protruding from his weak and useless flesh, one eye red.

"Welcome to your death, John. Have a nice life. It is your destiny."

John woke, screaming, his hands digging red furrows in his stomach.

This was definitely much more strange than the dream about Kiki and Sydney mudwrestling while Sam Carter hand-fed John grapes. wtf?

Comments

[apocalypsesoon.livejournal.com]

John somehow gets caught up in the sheet and falls off the bed, flailing. His pillow follows, skittering a knife across the floor.

"S-Syd?" Heart racing. Lungs burning. Fight or flight, John, fight or flight.

[apocalypsesoon.livejournal.com]

"I'm workign on it!" He shouted, probably too loudly. "Holy fucking Jesus on crutches. What the fuck? What the fuck happened?"

He opened the door, sleep marks on his face, shirt touseled, and draped in a sheet like a drunken freshman's idea of a toga.

[apocalypsesoon.livejournal.com]

"I'm workin on it." He doesn't mean to shout, to sound angry, but he's still not himself. He steps back into his room to give her space to enter, and trips over the trailing sheet. Falling, he hits the chair with his left ribs and gets the wind knocked out of him as he sends the chair rolling into the corner, knocking various things over.

Oh the curses he would say if he had the breath.

[apocalypsesoon.livejournal.com]

Doubled over on the floor, John is wheezing something that sounds an awful lot like he's taking the Lord's name in vain with a couple gallons of O Negative.

Breathing again, he looked at Sydney, face pale and eyes watering. "It's all my fault. They'll all die, and it's my fault. It almost killed her, because of me." His voice is weak, a whisper.

[apocalypsesoon.livejournal.com]

"Everyone." Hoarse whisper.

"Judgement Day. Machines. Nuclear war. All from me." He tries to sit up.

[apocalypsesoon.livejournal.com]

"Not yet. The machines. Skynet. In the future, on Judgement Day. Oh, God, that hurt." He tries to laugh. It doesn't work.

Daybreak... (NFB)

[apocalypsesoon.livejournal.com]

...the sun shines as only an explosive ball of gas can.

Morning. NFB

[apocalypsesoon.livejournal.com]

The sun does this daybreak thing.

[apocalypsesoon.livejournal.com]

John is sweating, and it's not from the heat. There's a pained expression on his face.

[apocalypsesoon.livejournal.com]

John doesn't answer, because he's dreaming, and it's not a pleasant dream. It's the desert, nothing but sand and dead sagebrush, decaying machines, and lonliness.

[apocalypsesoon.livejournal.com]

John jolts awake, sitting up in one smooth movement and reaching for a boot knife that isn't there. He's awake but not, in that halfworld between nightmares and daylight.

[apocalypsesoon.livejournal.com]

John focuses his eyes. Bed. Hot chick. Defensive.
"Um. Sorry about that, I haven't been sleeping well. Y'know."

He rakes his hair back from his forehead and lays back down, feeling his heart racing. "How's you?"

[apocalypsesoon.livejournal.com]

"The worst. Been havin' 'em off an' on for years, but it's usually few and far between." except for that summer when he showed up.

"I dunno, I think something's wrong with me." He yawned and laid his head back on the pillow, eyes open.