[Round 16] Wake Up

[kimstapledon]

PNPC - Jona: Wake Up

((Somewhere))

::The deep red swells and fades around Jona, breathing in and out in the darkness. He's falling still. Was it yesterday that he jumped? It's hard to tell. Maybe it was months ago. Swallowed by something familiar and monstrous, Jona sees nothing, feels nothing.

They say someone falling doesn't feel gravity. They never said someone falling doesn't feel anything else. He knows he's falling the way you know you're alive when you wake up in the morning. You take it for granted -- a condition that permits you to open your eyes, to hear, to walk. To drop?

There was something familiar about the dreams the night before, if you could call it that. Night and day mingle, spinning and gyrating, images flickering in indecision and then disappearing. He moves his hand in front of his face, brushes the palm against his nose as the fingers trace the ridges and the flash of the image comes back again. It was a starfleet man, he's sure of it. When the hell did he seen him? Yesterday. Or a week ago. Five minutes before maybe.

The face flickers into view, stepping down a corridor in a dilapidated city, Jona peering at him through the gaping maw. Someone's chasing him, yelling and raging against the rising of the light until he's gone, the face of the other man looking onward. He's familiar too. AX-47 comes onto him, a hallucination, and between waking and reality Mum steps into view, her angry redneck feminism chasing him away into the back-waters of the dead planet.

Uncers' voice weaves between the stalks of this wilderness of reads and blacks, demanding that he come back. He's worried and Jona can't do a [...]ed thing. And the other man, Kolk. How does he know that name?

Jona's closing his eyes again and the light's returning. It's that white that makes you too scared to open your eyes. What will you see? The moaning of the animals echoes and slithers up his spine and he takes one step out of the darkness.

Descending on him the light penetrates the small opening of the lids. A shadow moves slowly, infinite lines moving up and down from it as the water of his tears moistens his eyeballs. It's too late to stop. His eyes are completely open and he sees the reptillian man standing over him, a massive ridge of skin pouring down from his neck. He's like a disgusting version of a Cardassian, complete with inquisitive eyes that betray only apathy.

Jona swallows.::

Jona the Farm Hand

as simmed by

Lt. Kevin Breeman

Chief of Science

USS Ronin