I'm warning you now; this is long.
This is the 2nd piece I submitted to OBW... read it and email me with what you think.
Sunrise
From somewhere deep within the fogs of my dreams I hear the phone. I check the caller ID with sleep-filled eyes: it's her. She's calling me from somewhere out in the cold. She's lonely and upset, she says, and she needs someone to talk to. I groan, roll over, and stare at the clock. It glares at me angrily. 3:52, it tells me in blood red numerals. The voice at my ear grows from a worried whisper to a near-frantic yell. I tell her to calm down and explain to me what she wants; it's too early for this, I think to myself. She says that she's been up all night with nowhere to go and wants me to come and pick her up. I listen, all the while trying to rouse myself from that mental state that's not quite catatonic, but really damn close to it. Eventually, I tell her that I'm coming to get her. I hang up and fall back onto my pillow. Five minutes later I sigh and pull myself out of the warmth and security of my bed into the freezing air of my bedroom. Did I forget to turn on the radiator again? Oh well, no time to worry about that. I flip the switch on the heater and it begins to glow a fiery red that almost seems to flicker like the flame it wants to be when you stare at it for too long. Shuffling over to the other side of the room I pull on the jeans that I discarded last night and look around for a shirt. There are none on the floor, so I head to the closet. I don't want to turn on the light for fear of blinding myself, so I grab something random and pull it on over my tousled hair. I fumble in my pocket to check for my car keys, reassuring myself that I haven't forgotten them, and head downstairs. Quietly I open the front door and slip out into the cold I had forgotten to brace myself for. Then I run towards my car, in the hopes that the heater will be working when I turn the key. I pause at the driver's door and glance upwards. A blanket of stars covers the sky, so thick that I'm surprised I can discern between the individual pinpoints of light. I bring myself back, enter the car, and turn the key. The harsh chugging sound this simple action produces reminds me of a tank I saw on the Discovery Channel, and I feel a jolt run through me as I hope that it isn't as loud inside the house as I think it is. Three, no, four turns of the key and the 39-year-old engine finally decides to turn over and burst into it's song. I sit silently for a minute, giving the engine time to warm up. We all need some time to get up to speed when we first wake up, I tell myself, why should an engine be any different? Eventually I engage first gear, hear the engine's song drop half an octave, and pull out into the street. The speed is steadily increasing and I shift into second gear before the engine gets too loud. I roll to a silent stop at the end of the block, and look both ways before continuing. I notice that the heater is warming up; thank God for that, at least she won't be cold when I pick her up. I remind myself that yes, I have a reason to be doing this, and head for where she told me she was. 15 minutes later she's sitting next to me, on the verge of bursting into tears. I tell her to put on some music and I'll drive her around for a while. She obliges and picks out the one cassette in my car that she likes, a worn out copy of Pink Floyd's "Animals." It's loud, but not loud enough to drown out the sound of that engine I love so much as it climbs higher and higher into fourth gear along the expressway that seems to be closed to all other traffic. She starts to talk, and tells me that she's had a fight with her parents and left. They want too much from her. She tries hard, but it's not enough for them. She's not what they want her to be and they can't realize that. Why are parents so stupid? I let her finish and start talking. I know what she's going through, I tell her, because my parents are the same way. Like a broken record, I say, they just say it all over and over again. All parents do. She's silent as she realizes that I'm telling the truth. There's a downward slope on the road now; I engage the clutch so that I can coast along and save some gas. I keep my foot near the brake in case the 3000 pound car pulls itself downhill too fast. I start talking again, telling her that she needs to go home. Her parents are worried, so they won't yell at her, and if they do, then it's only because they're scared. She says nothing. I decide to pull over at the bottom of the hill. We both get out of the car and lie down on a blanket in the grass that seems to be flowing like water over the ground. We stare at the stars and I realize that they've faded since I saw them last, standing in the street by my ancient Mercedes. Day must be coming. I turn towards her as she turns to me to tell me that I'm one of her best friends. I only say that I should take her home now before her parents get any more worried. I think that the stars in her eyes are almost as beautiful as she is, but I could never say that. We return, wordlessly and breathlessly, to the warmth of my car, and I turn the key. It starts on the first try. The tape continues where it left off and I listen as if hearing it for the first time. Everything sounds better when you've got something you need to say but are too afraid to. I turn the car around and head back towards the lights of the city. Suddenly she turns to me and tells me that she wants to see the sun rise. She's never seen it before. I have no idea where to go for this, so I just pull over and we sit on the roof of the car facing east. It's seven before we know it, and a ray of light shoots from between two trees in the distance. We watch the sun rise, and although we think it's beautiful we both wish that it hadn't. Nothing's the same once the sun's up and the stars have faded.
That's it. True story or not? We may never know, muahaha... ;)
--Fiend
