Hallucinogen

I woke up abruptly with an underlying sense of urgency. It took me a few quick seconds to realize that I was not in my own bed. Propping myself up with my elbow, I looked over the arm of the couch that I slept in towards the noise that had awakened me. Crouching by the sink on the linoleum floor of the outdated kitchen was a Rastafarian plumber, who had just dropped his toolbox of tools. It was that clatter that jerked me out of sleep.

As I struggled to piece together this bizarre situation I had awoken to, I suddenly realized that it was daylight. I had overslept. I was very late for work.

I sat up, frantically found my pager nearby on the coffee table, and looked at the time, and let out a short string of explicitives. It was past 10 AM. I was very late for work.

I bolted upright to start looking for my keys, when a voice calmly floated over from my left, "Calm down mon, relax."

I whipped around to see a second Rastafarian sitting on the recliner, who appeared to be calmly rolling a joint.

My brain gave up trying to decipher what events must have taken place for me to have ended up in this situation. I could only focus on the fact that I was very late to work and I needed to get my ass to the hospital now. But it slowly dawned on me that I couldn't remember if I even drove here or not. In fact, where the hell was I? Who the hell are these freakin' people? Why am I in their house? And why the hell didn't my alarm on my pager go off?

"Yeah mon, I turned off the alarm on the pager."

In a combination of anger and disbelief, I stammered "What the hell did you do that for?!"

"So you could sleep mon!" came from the voice in the kitchen. "You had a rough night!"

Then, slowly coming to terms that there is nothing I can do about being late for work, or of ever understanding what the hell was going on, I began to focus on something I had some remote control of and I began to wonder if there was any way I could appease my upper levels by bringing them donuts.

Krispy Kreme! Of course, everybody loves those donuts. But first, where the hell was I? Am I in Houma? I don't think they have a Krispy Kreme store in Houma. What the hell as I doing in Houma? It'll take at least an hour to get to Charity from Houma!

I tried to clear my head, trying to remember what had happened last night. I looked from the goofy smiling face of one Rastafarian plumber to the other, both who seemed to share no part of my sense of panic, confusion, or urgency. I looked outside through the patio door and noticed that my car wasn't parked outside, just a beat-up, beige Ford LTD in the driveway.

I slumped back down on the couch, hopeless. I wasn't quite sure how I was going to explain to my team why I was late when I couldn't even figure out where I was or what I was even doing here.

Then I woke up. Again. But this time for real. It was 4:24 AM. I had 6 minutes left before my alarm would go off. I groaned with a combination of relief and fatigue, and closed my eyes. I laid there quietly, remember this bizarre dream, thinking, "I've gotta blog this..."