Just Routine

Posted on 18 Dec 2012 @ 10:29am by
Edited on on 21 Dec 2012 @ 8:45am

1,723 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Episode 02 - Resupply
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 2, Quarters of Lieutenant Stone
Timeline: MD 14 2237 hours

[ON]

Jeremy was not asleep and that bothered him. It was the appointed time for him to be asleep in his scheduled routine. He had followed it very closely this evening due to his lack of medication. At 2030 hours he put away his work and called up his nighttime playlist, this being Monday, he listened to Das Rheingold, the beginning of the Ring Cycle. He straightened the couch cushions, placed the chair back into its accustomed place. Made sure to clear away the dishes from his nighttime snack and ordered a glass of warm milk and honey. He drank the warm milk while cleaning his quarters and making sure it was in order in case he would have to suddenly leave.

After finishing his milk, it was precisely 2100 hours. He put the glass back into the reclamator, and dimmed the lights to half luminosity before going into his bedroom. There he stripped off his uniform, took a seven and a half minute sonic shower before brushing his teeth, each quadrant thirty two brush strokes and then changing into his Monday sleepwear. His dirty uniform went into the reclamator and he ordered a fresh uniform for the next day, specifying precise conditions for starch, crispness and creases. This uniform was hung on a hanger and left in the otherwise empty closet. Undergarments were folded and placed on the counter next the sonic shower. His boots would be given a quick brush polish (if he noted during the day they required a full polish, he began his night routine at 2000 hours). He then turned down the covers and made sure the commbadge and phaser aligned on the side table to his battered PADD. He had three pillows on the bed. One lying flat, one folded to three quarters on top the flat pillow, the fold aligned to the right edge of the flat pillow. The third lay perpendicular and offset from the first two.

He was even able to perform the 2150 voiding of his bladder so that he would not have to worry about being woken to do so. At 2155 he was in bed, rolled in the blankets as he liked and laid his head on the two pillows while pulling the third to his chest. One thing he did without remembering but never failing, was removing an old Bajoran betrothal bracelet from its black velvet case in a locked drawer of the cabinet and wrapped the bracelet around his wrist. It fit snugly on him, even with the additional spacers, but that was alright, he wanted to know it was there.

At 2200 hours his routine called for him to be asleep. He was to sleep for the next five hours where a personal alarm was set for 0300, where he would wake up and ready himself to begin an extended duty shift at 0345, precisely.

He had followed the entire routine and now it was 2237 hours and he was awake, sweat pouring off his body while his heart battered his chest and he screamed anguish into the pillow shoved against his mouth. Tears streamed down the side of his eyes and soaked the pillows under his head. The dream, again. One of the two variations.

The first was him standing on a series of striated red cliffs overlooking a wooded valley of blue-tinged trees. An emerald green river flowed at the base of the jut of rock rising from the planet's floor. Several light green waterfalls flowed off various clefts and turned to foam before landing in the ribbon of river below. The sun would be high in the sky, and was always warm on arms and legs bared in (and even in his dream, Jeremy shuddered to discover he wore) a t-shirt and shorts. Red dust lightly coated his hiking shoes.

A flock of birds wheeled overhead, the sun glinting bright off their dark bodies as their cries sounded like the laughter of children. But scuffling movement catches his attention and he turns to discover the laughter was that of children, not the birds. Two children, a boy and a girl. The older, the girl, had long, bright honey gold hair and dark eyes. Her face was bright, intelligent and curious and seemed to radiate from an inner warmth. The boy was dark of hair and eyes, but his features were shadowed and blurred. All he could make out was the raised nose and line of forehead that showed a mixed Bajoran ancestry. An ancestry that he shared with the girl. Both laughed as they chased each other. Why, Jeremy would think, did they had so much energy when they should be tired after the climb was something he could not explain.

But the mystery would have to wait. There was another figure, a woman. Her long, blonde hair done in a complicated pattern of curls and braids, with a few strands artfully arranged and loose. Those freed strands floated in the slight breeze, the same as the gauzy fabric of the blinding bright white dress the woman wore. Made of light gauze and maybe silk, it shimmered in the sunlight as if it were rippling water. Her lips were turned up in a smile, her face radiating a brightness that turned the sun into a mere shadow. Her eyes sparkled like diamond chips, tears caught suspended from formation and shedding. She came toward him, her arms lifting and that bright light shining and Jeremy burned in it. The children ran toward him, each tackling onto a leg. For a moment Jeremy laughed...for a moment Jeremy remembered.

He woke from this dream, his body flushed in sweat, the sobs blocked by the material of the pillow he tried to shove in his mouth. He cried silently as his heart battered his chest and he lie in bed, his mind blank as he thought breathe in, breathe out and only that until the darkness of oblivion caressed around him, soaking into him and robbing him of all that he remembered, erasing the dream as if it never happened.

This would be the lucky dream and on these nights, Jeremy would eventually roll over and go back to sleep. He slept fitfully, restlessly until his alarm went off and he began his morning routine.

The other dream, the terrifying one, began the same. Only when the children ran to him, the cliffs shook hard enough to knock him to the ground. His breath flew from his chest while the woman's gown turned from blinding, bright white to dull, smoky ashen gray. Her skin darkened and her mouth opened in a rictus of horror. Fissures formed in the cliff, allowing large, gray snakes to slither free, their fangs dripping with venom. Looking at the snakes, Jeremy found himself held tightly, his body unable to move. The snakes slithered to him, coiling around him, their slow, jubilant hissing almost drowning out the screams of the woman and children. Jeremy could turn only to see the three falling off the rumbling cliff.

His paralysis would break and he threw himself to the edge, reaching out and futilely trying to grab them. He was always too late, they were always too far. Holding each other against one another, they fell to the burning river below. Jeremy would reach for them, regardless, but the snakes bit into his legs, their toxic venom burning through him, scarring his body and tearing apart his mind. Hooked on the snake's fangs, they dragged him back, away from the edge, away from any chance of saving - or joining - the three.

After waking from these dreams, screaming so loud he thought he must wake the entire ship, or starbase, or quadrant, the sound only muffled as he bit hard into the pillow, Jeremy would be unable to sleep. Agitated and full of unsupported panic, he got out of bed, ensured that each and every corner was tightly tucked and not a single line of the coverlet was wavy or bent before he brushed his teeth (each quadrant seventy two times) and then dressed in is uniform before polishing his boots (never noticing how hard his strokes were and how ruined the brushes would be afterward) until they gleamed like the wet sheen of....like a wet sheen from something he almost remembered. Leaving the bedroom, he ordered the lights to full and sat on the couch, his hands in his lap and waited for the images to fade for the blissful oblivion of forgetfullness to overtake him once more.

Again, if he was lucky, he would remain sitting on the couch, hands folded in his lap until his alarm went off. Then Jeremy went on duty.

If, after fifteen minutes, he was still unsettled, he left his quarters, feeling them confining and suffocating and only able to breathe freely again once inside the corridors. He would seek out areas where the crew might gather and sit in a corner working on reports, working on translations of a German opera (that he had already translated fifty-four times previously, each version carefully marked and notated as a file on his PADD. During these times he scowled and shook his head at those that tried to approach. Sometimes he might fall into a restless, uncomfortable nap where he was. Most times he would wake on his own when he detected noise and movement. Sometimes, however, someone might try to wake him. Jeremy had learned, in the first years of the dream, to stop himself when his fist drew back and scan to recognize the clothing and uniforms. He'd spent too many nights and days restrained to a bed unable to control the rage that came over him at being woken.

But more and more, as he gained more freedoms and authority, as he found more and more actual help for his conditions, he found himself able to control his waking reaction better. He found ways to begin to cope until he forgot. Then, often times, he would forget that he didn't sleep the night before or that he needed to sleep.

If he didn't keep to his routine, a routine carefully regimented on his PADD, he knew he would forget small, unimportant things. Like eating. Like sleeping.

Like coping.

[OFF]

LTjg Jeremy Stone
Chief Security/Tactical Officer
USS Galileo

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