REM // Van McCann

5. The Flyer

The thirst woke me up in the middle of the night. It was still dark out and I forgot to close my curtains so I sat up, feeling something fall. I turned on the light and saw that it was my journal. I picked it up along with the letter and put it away.

It was 2 AM and luckily I still had plenty of time to go to bed so I walked towards the kitchen for a glass of water. I filled the glass to the brim and gulped it down until I was no longer thirsty, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. I was craving something salty for some odd reason but chose to brush my teeth to stop myself from eating. Once I was done, I went to the toilet, changed into joggers, and crawled back into bed sighing. The covers were now cold as I wrapped myself in them.

-

My body was starting to wake up so I slowly opened my eyes, blinking rapidly. Turning towards the clock, I realized I woke up half an hour before my alarm. Instead of wasting it lying in bed and trying to go back to sleep, I decided to get up.

I had my morning cigarette and got ready, taking an early morning shower having missed it last night and put on a change of clothes. The redness in my eyes went away for the most part so I looked one last time in the mirror to make sure I looked presentable before going to the kitchen to make breakfast. The kettle was going and while waiting for the water to boil, I placed two slices of bread in the toaster. After eating and drinking tea, I grabbed my bag and stepped out the door.

The group chat was silent. Usually someone's running late but today, it was quiet. Figured one of them would call out sick but surprisingly, none of them did. I'm sure they feel like shit though.

How are yous holding up?

I put my phone away and unlocked the door, stepping in and turning on the lights. The room looked the same as I left it but Bondy's and Larry's belongings were gone. I put water in the electric kettle to boil and looked for a clean mug. The mug I found had tea stains in it so I cleaned it again.

Once a week, we take stock of what we have in the fridge. We were getting low on bread and milk but figured we could stop by the store to get more. There was some salad dressing that was expired so I grabbed the bottle and tossed it in the bin. We practically live at work but don't do the best to take care of it. The kettle turned off and I poured hot water in, waiting for my tea to steep. My phone buzzed so I took my phone out and looked at the message.

Larry: I feel like I'm dying.

I chuckled to myself. It doesn't matter how many times this happens. They never learn their lesson that hangovers get worse with age. We're not teenagers anymore drinking behind our parents's backs and able to go to school the next day. It was now past our normal start time and the others showed no signs of coming anytime soon so I took out my laptop and turned it on, connecting it to power.

My mind was working, trying to figure out how to enroll participants in our study. Our technology is still in its early stages and there's no way in hell it would be approved for an actual study because what we're doing is probably illegal, putting people under and taking a look inside their dreams. We have to be careful about how we do this. I opened up Microsoft Publisher to make a flyer with tear-off tabs and tried to think of something interesting to write.

Do you want to understand your dreams?

I leant back thinking about my question. It was vague and made it out like we were psychologists able to interpret dreams which we aren't. I put my head in my hands trying to find the best thing to say.

Do you want to visualize your dreams?

Much better. What I wrote was the truth. We can visualize dreams but I didn't dare tell them how we were going to do it. Not everyone will be comfortable going under nor feel comfortable having someone else sit in on their dreams but someone will. Curiosity will get the better of them. I googled photos of dreams to find a photo to catch people's attention. For your information, most of the photos were cheesy but I did eventually find one that was okay.