Looking for Light

It was two nights ago that I had my first nightmare since being out here. In fact, it may have been my first nightmare in recent memory. It wasn’t a big deal, nor was it anything I’d consider foreshadowing, but it was terrifying nonetheless.

I woke up in my bed, freezing cold, confused and still in shock of what I’d just experienced. Not knowing whether it was real or not I started looking around the room for light, but it was pitch black. I thought I was dead, that a rocket hit during the night and took out our tent. I continued to scan the room until I locked on a small green light from someone’s laptop. I took that as a sign that I was still alive. (As if there aren’t green lights in the afterlife…)

I was still a little freaked out. A lot of doom and gloom thoughts raged through my head. My heart pounded like a cluster bomb fell inside my chest. I tried to clear things up with positive thoughts, to regain my composure. I started singing comforting songs to myself to quell the storm. It took about an hour before I had calmed down.

Afterwards I drifted in and out of sleep until the sun started shining through the vestibule of our tent. It was a real sign that there wasn’t anything wrong. But for a while there I thought to myself, well the afterlife really sucks, it’s cold, dark and scary… Have I really done that many wrong things in life?

AAANNNDDD Fast forward 2 days. I’m glad I didn’t post this yet because I found some irony in the third sentence of the first paragraph because last night we had a bit of a scare. It was around 1030PM and the lights were out. Suddenly there was a rumbling, whistling sound that roared from outside that shook our row of tents.

“What the fuck was that?” Someone said.

“I think I pooped my pants.” Someone else responded.

I had to go to the bathroom really bad so I got up and went outside. I found a group of others who were also awakened by the sound.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Rockets.”

Someone thought it was a good idea to set up the rocket launchers 100 yards from the living quarters. What we heard was outgoing munitions. Unfortunately for someone else it was incoming…