TITLE: WOKE UP THIS MORNING (1 of 1)

AUTHOR: DAVID HEARNE

CLASSIFICATION: Post-ep for "Within"

RATING: PG

DISTRIBUTION: Can go anywhere.

Send feedback to ottercrk@sover.net

Website is located at http://members.dencity.com/hearne

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Half of the blues songs ever written begin with the phrase "I woke up this
morning..." The song then describes the awful thing encountered upon waking
up. Usually it's the disappearance of a lover. The listener is provided with
the contrast between the routine of waking up in a bed and the disaster of
the empty spaces in that bed.

You woke up this morning...

You had a shower...

You brushed your teeth and did your make-up...

You got dressed...

You had breakfast...

You went to work...

....and everything else was wrong. Up until the moment you reached the
office, you still faintly expected to see him there. That's where he should
have been, preparing the slide projector, looking over a file, or talking to
a visitor. He should have greeted you at the door with that familiar smile
as if to say, "Guess what's cooking today?"

Instead you find men packing up the remnants of his life...your life...and
hauling them away like garbage cans. You discovered that you're surrounded
by trap-doors again. That's an old story for you, but this time it hurts
even deeper. You watch a friend tear himself up with the words he wants to
say.

Such difficulties have been intertwined with your life. However, in the
past, you had a hand to hold. You had a shoulder on which to lean. You had a
routine -- a tortured, ambiguous routine, but it was your stable center in a
world gone crazy. It helped make even the nightmares manageable.

Now you have new nightmares, but he's not here to help you through them.
He's in them. He's bleeding and screaming and helpless.

Someone else is with you. He's devious and intrusive and speaking horrible
things about the man you love. Worst of all, he might be right. Or just
right enough to make you wonder how much you knew about the person who had
seemed so honest and close. Nothing is certain anymore, except for the hole
in your heart and the cells assembling themselves in your body.

You woke up this morning...

....and you're still trying to wake up.

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