


                                SIRENS
                                  BY
                             Black Sunshine

     Sean Theisson awoke with a start from a dream he couldn't
remember, his heart thundering like the inconsistent gallop of a
half-crazed mare on a worn, sun-baked trail.  His breathing had
quickened and the sweat-soaked sheet fell into the floor as he
sat up, wavering in a twilight somewhere between slumber and
consciousness.
     He looked around his room, shadowy pieces of furniture
positioned like sentinels around the bed.  A pair of headlights
swept purposefully through the room, making otherwise hidden
shadows dance at irregular intervals, then slump back into their
obedient concealment as the headlights passed on into the night. 
A slight breeze carried the curtains away from the window for an
instant.
     What woke me?  
     Sean glanced at the digital clock on his nightstand, blood-
colored numbers:  2:25.  
     He glanced at the shape on the other side of the bed, buried
in the covers:  his wife, Sheila, her long blonde hair covering
her face.  She was sleeping soundly.  He couldn't hear her
breathing, but his sudden display had not awakened her, and he
didn't want to awaken her now.
     Settling back down into his pillow, he looked once again
around the darkened room.  Funny, how a room could look so
different without the mark of daylight to give it color and
character.
     He was usually a sound sleeper.  In the mornings, if he
didn't turn his alarm up to a dangerous decibel, he risked
sleeping through it.  Sheila often complained how hard it was to
get him out of bed on Saturday mornings, teasing him by asking
him what dreams he was having that he didn't want to come back to
reality from.  He literally went somewhere else when he slept. 
It was a kind of death for him.
     For some strange reason, he shuddered.  He reached over the
side of the bed to grab the sheet, then rolled over and tried to
go back to sleep, though he was no longer sleepy.  Something was
on his mind, turning and clicking in there, gnawing away,
burning.  
     God, what is it?
     Had he forgotten something?  Was it someone's birthday?  Oh
God, was it his anniversary?  No.  That was four months away.  An
appointment?  Was there a phone call to return?  Business left
unfinished?  There was nothing, nothing at all that he could
recall.  What then? 
     Was it--
     Was someone in trouble?  
     He'd heard of it before.  Some kind of ESP.  A premonition
type thing, where the person having the forewarning could feel
the pressure of an underlying iniquity that was occurring or
about to occur to someone else. 
     No way.
     But he didn't believe in things like that.  It was a
ridiculous--
     In the distance, several miles away, Sean heard the first
screaming of sirens.
     His heart began pounding again, and he was suddenly struck
with the oddest feeling, a sense of urgency, of foreshadowing. 
Something was wrong.
     The sirens grew closer as he rolled over once again. 
"Sheila.  Honey, wake up," he said.  She didn't stir, and his
panic caused him to reach over and shake her.
     "Sheila!"  He threw back the covers and looked at her.  She
still hadn't moved.  Brushing her hair away from her face, he
noted that it didn't look like she was breathing.  Oh God.
     The sirens were right down the street now.  Red splashed 
the room in color as the lights pulsed through the window.  
     Sean jumped out of bed and hurried through the house and out
the front door.  There was an ambulance and a police car right in
front of his house.  But how?  Why--
     "You've got to help me!" he shouted, bursting into the yard. 
"My wife!  It's my wife..."
     Two paramedics, emerging from the ambulance, ignored him and
proceeded up to the front porch and inside the open door, Sean
right behind them.
     "Hey!" Sean yelled.  "She's--"
     Over their shoulders, Sean saw his wife emerging from their
bedroom, her face streaked with tears.  "Oh God, in there," she
moaned and pointed to the bedroom.
     "Sheila!" Sean cried, but she too, ignored him.  Instead she
burst into tears again, and Sean was more than a little hurt when
she turned to a police officer for comfort and not him.       
     "What?  What is it?" Sean asked her, but still she would not
reply or even look at him.  "Why won't you talk to me?  What is
going on?"
     He gave up trying to talk to her, and decided to find out
for himself.  The two paramedics had entered the bedroom, and he
could hear their urgent conversation, but couldn't make out any
words.
     He walked into the bedroom.
     One of the paramedics stood up straight from his position
over the bed.  "Gone," he said and shook his head.
     Once again, Sean looked over their shoulders...
     ... and saw himself lying in the bed.


@ 1994, by Black Sunshine
