"What Now?," too!

 

CAPTION: Look at the smiles carefully and you can tell which one already has a job.

So here goes with a series of short stories titled, "Life in the Middle Lane."

By Paul Reinertson circa 1984?

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY BIG GUY"

It is the night before his seventeenth birthday. Mike walks to his bedroom to lay to rest a day of burdensome thought. He characteristically sleeps "like a log." He has always been able to set aside  events of the day and drop into a peaceful bliss. There is no reason to think this night will be any different. He tosses his clothes in a lump, and slides into the comfort of his water bed. The waves of plastic soon settle around the stillness of his weary mind and body. He is quickly off into the frozen state of energy he knows so well.

Well in the middle of the night? A strange thing happens to Mike. It is frightening simply because it has never happened before. He just pops awake with his eyes yanked open. He sits up in bed scrambling to make sense of it all. His bed has turned into a tsunami and he is forced to grip the edge to get his balance.

He looks over head and notices the lights are on, and unusually bright and hot. But could that be it?

"I am so tired I just forget to shut the lights off?."

He rocks to the side of the bed and flops his feet over the side to reach solid ground. He reaches for the light switch to solve the problem when he is overcome with a startling paralysis. His hand will not move toward the switch.

Mike feels this strange presence behind him, pulling his interest to the other side of the room. He turns his head toward this odd source of energy. He tries, but can't resist the pull. And now, for some unexplainable reason, he finds himself standing in the door to the closet, feeling naked in his underwear. He feels cold, but can't move. He blinks his eyes and pinches himself to make sure he is not dreaming.

Suddenly the closet? It starts to expand! Before he can sort this phenomenon out, a shadowy image  begins to take form just a few feet in front of him. It is a person, a woman, dressed apart from the norm. She is in a uniform of some sort. Oh,my god, its a nun, Sister Elizabeth. She speaks!

"Come on now, it's late. Get into your gown. If you are not in your seat in in five minutes you won't get a diploma."

WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT? WILL MIKE WAKE UP? WILL THE NUN GO AWAY? TUNE IN TOMMORROW TO FIND OUT, MAYBE. ( I should write teases for TV, huh?)