The Other Night...
Chapter 1: Nightmares
Mike cried out loudly as he sat bolt upright in his bed. No longer restrained, his arms flew to protectively hug his middle where Dr. Mordary had started in on him. Gasping for air and a bit disoriented, he looked around. It had seemed so real! But now he was back at the station, in the dorms, instead of a hospital-like basement laboratory. He was in his bunk in the dark room, and not on a cold metal operating table. Across the room from him, Cap slept on his stomach with one side of his face smooshed into his pillow. Quickly pulling up his white shirt, Mike put tentative fingers to the soft smooth skin of his tortured abdomen and probed. Nothing. No blood; no knives; no unwilling organ donations. No madmen. No dissections. He was fine. He was fine. Everything was all right now. It was just a dream. 'It was just a dream.' This fast-paced mantra continued on in his head until he had slowed his racing heart and controlled his too-rapid breathing some.
Closing his eyes for a second, Mike could still see Dr. Mordary's face leering over him, the "lovely specimen", with a surgical scalpel in one hand and an evil gleam in his dark eyes. Even after a few moments, the image did not go away like it should. He needed to wake up some more, do something – anything – to make sure of himself that he was back in the real world before even trying to go back into the sleep one. He had the perfect idea. He had never done this before, but right now it seemed the best option to distract himself from the lingering images of his nightmare.
"Chet," Mike growled, throwing back his covers. The sheets were already mangled from having tossed, turned, and kicked in them for most of the night. Twisting around, Mike sat up on his knees. Crossing his arms on top of the brick wall divider between his bed and the next, he glared down at the figure who was sleeping peacefully in the bunk on the other side.
"That is the LAST time we are watching one of your horror movies before bed!" he began ranting in a loud whisper to his shiftmate. Pointing to himself, he continued with, "Next movie night, I'm picking the flick!"
Marco cracked an eye open a bit to watch the quietest man on their shift rant to his amigo. Lopez couldn't help a small grin as he listened and observed.
"It can be about rainbows, flowers, ponies, little blue bunny wabbits and pink unicorns for all I care! Just no more horrors, comprende?"
Chet was totally oblivious to his stationmate's ranting.
"And another thing-"
"Shhh!"
He didn't know who that had come from (although he suspected it was his Captain), but it warned him that he had steadily been raising his voice. Now speaking softer than when he had started, he continued, "And another thing: why is it that whenever there's actually something good on the tube that you have to call it a movie night and pick something scary? Why couldn't we watch the one about the dinosaurs, huh? I wanted to see that one. Dinosaurs would have been better. Least it wouldn't've given me nightmares. And who knows? Maybe it would actually have had an interesting plot!" Mike spoke that last part through clenched teeth. "Hate to break it to ya, pal, but... Okay, you know what? I apologize. I lied. I don't hate to break it to you and for the record, just because I apologized it doesn't mean I'm sorry. If it weren't for all the big things that jumped out at you through the movie, and I speak for everyone when I say this, we all would've been falling out of our chairs from pure boredom throughout the whole thing!"
Somebody snickered from across the room. DeSoto, most likely, since he almost literally had fallen out of his chair. But whether his falling asleep was from boredom or mere weariness from back-to-back runs in the squad that day, only Roy knew the answer.
"And the special effects were Lauw-Zee. I mean, come on! I don't know anything about computer generated effects, but I bet even I could do better."
Someone was trying to cover their faint chuckling with a quiet cough, but it didn't quite work.
"Not to mention the beast that was supposed to scare everyone out of the forest. Anyone could tell that that was a guy in a big, bulky costume. It was so obvious that it took all the scary out of it. And thinking about how much the guy in the suit was being paid to do that? It made me wonder how much time it took him to practice getting those corny attacks right, so it ended up looking more silly to me than scary!"
Mike was so caught up in his rant that he was completely unaware that by now, Roy and Marco were wide awake and listening to every word he was saying.
"And don't even get me started on the stunt men! Several times they screwed up and fixed their faces on the camera – you could tell it wasn't the real actors – again I say: so obvious! And location! The quote-end-quote "haunted" forest had patches of light everywhere in it! It's not very scary if it's as bright as any other old wood. Makeup? It looked as if those guys' faces were melting like wax candles! Oh, if you want me to get really picky, the costumes were totally inconsistent with the time frame. And tell me, what direct relevance to the movie does the main character's affair with Princess Shauna have? I'm tellin' ya, I didn't see where their midnight smooching fit in anywhere! The moment wasn't right, either. First, they're saying there's this monster out to get them, and then they're kissing? Seriously? That's not likely to happen! If you want my opinion, they were just trying to fill up space there. That thing they dare call an award-winning movie was a complete waste of time! What kind of idiot critics dared review it and give it good marks, anyhow? Geeze, those guys must've felt sorry for 'em or something, because a good critic would've slammed 'em - I know I would've. Unless, of course, they're all idiots too.
As Mike went on to point out all the flaws of the terrible movie, he was, at the same time, reassuring himself of how totally unscary it really was. And to his surprise, it made him feel better. Maybe ranting could be considered a healthy thing to do every once in a while. Whenever someone annoyed him, all he usually did was drop a subtle hint to, in more or no words, back off. And technically, he wasn't even directly annoyed at Chet Kelly right now, just annoyed that Chet Kelly's choice of entertainment that evening had resulted in Mike's restless night.
When he was finally through, he flopped back down on his back and pulled the covers up. Rolling over onto his side, Mike continued to mutter in the darkness. His complaints gradually softened to unintelligible mumbles before ceasing altogether.
After drifting for a few minutes, Mike was finally about to fall back asleep, but was woken once again by the ringing of the dorm telephone. Groaning quietly when it broke the silence, he hoped fervently that someone would pick it up instead of letting it ring loudly all night. The klaxons they could deal with – the very sound of the alarm instantly brought them out of the land of nod and gave them an adrenaline rush which quickly woke them up enough to do their jobs. But phones? At this time of night, phones were just downright annoying.
