Nightmare

“Yeah, well, we all die eventually,” Bret mutters. “And now they want to blame me so they don’t look stupid themselves. A fine mess this is.”

His slight slur gives away the fact that he’s already had a beer or two before Charlotte arrived, and he takes a swig of a new one. He knows he needs to leave so he can be totally sober by this afternoon, but he was just having a hard time getting away. “We lose it all eventually. Why not now. I don’t have anything anyway, so I guess the timing is alright.”


Jason heads to the main floor, spotting Katie just getting to her desk. Arriving at her cubicle, he looks over her wall. “Psst.” He gets her attention. “I need to talk to you…can you come to my office?”


Scott is just rounding the corner, having wanted to catch Katie right when she got to work, but stops, giving a little sigh as he sees Jason beat him to it. Turning back around, he makes a mental note to come back in a few minutes.


Carson and Misty make it to TJY and start their work day, Carson finding it hard to concentrate. He hated himself for the lies he was weaving…they were coming easier and easier now. From excuses about his injuries, to lying about seeing Rick, to lying about where he would be tonight. But he couldn’t tell anyone the truth…there would be too many consequences that he just couldn’t deal with.

It doesn’t take long for him to lose his concentration on his work, sinking back into a state of contemplation that he hates.

Getting up, he heads outside and around the corner to the spot he’s claimed as his own. Sitting on the ground, he sits for a while, lost in thought. Finally reaching for his pack of smokes in his pockets, he lights up, attempting to settled his nerves. He had to see it through. He had to. No matter what.

Leaning his head back against the building, his mind drifts back…so far back… He didn’t often thing about when he was a boy. But today he did. There were good things there…he’d been carefree at one time. Pure and untouched by the world. Not yet given himself away to the temptations that had lured him to the wrong side. And there in the midst of it was something so precious to him…something that now had become a nightmare of worry.