Next In Line

“Little Teddy was next in line, he was pale, his palms were moist, he looked nervous.”

The deep melodious tone of the narrator in Theodore’s dreams said. This type of lucent dreaming only happened during these episodic sleep things.

“Why am I having this damned dream again?” Theodore asked himself.

Theodore asked his mom once when he was younger, if she had a narrator she could talk to in her dreams. “What’s that Teddy? I’m not sure what you’re asking me.” She had said smiling.

“In front of Little Teddy was Chris. Chris was a very intelligent confident child. His word in the class spelling bee this day was, Toe.”

“God, wake up man, come on. Hey but head I need to wake up.”

Theodore had become abusive to his narrator at sixteen after he had fallen asleep in front of the cake while friends and family sang “Happy Birthday”. He thought that insults and abusive language might help him wake on Que. It helped a little; now at eighteen, he needed better results.

“Next!” Theodore saw Ms. Holloway say in his dream. However, a sweet southern drawl entered from somewhere outside the dream.”

“They’re calling me. Wake up, man! Shit!”

“Next! Hey. Wake him up!”

The man behind Theodore smacked him in the back of the head.

“Hey!” Theodore jumped and moved to the counter where the sweet southern lady stood waiting.

“Sweetie, you best not fall asleep like that during training. Drill Sergeants don’t like slackers now. Here you go; follow the line put everything except your canteen in the Duffel bag. Make sure you get everything on that list now. Ok? Good luck now. Go on.”

“Next in line!” she yelled.

Theodore moved on, following the men in front of him, doing as they did. The counter was long and high, it worked its way around the interior of the long, wide building making turn upon turn, jutting out and then returning to shadow the wall. At each new station, he picked up a new piece of equipment. At the last station, men fanned out away from the counter, stuffing sets of uniforms into their duffel bags and then moving out the door, duffle bag in one hand and canteen in the other.

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