The Strike

The Strike
Chapter One



This Idea came to me randomly while in the car. I hope that you like it. FYI: Throughout this whole story, dreams will take place in italics. When I read this, I realized that I kind of made the main character sound like a girl. Just to let you all know, he is a guy.
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I sat over the toilet seat, my head almost all the way in it. Chunks of food from this morning and last night flew out of my mouth, dirtying the water in the toilet. My mom rushed in, worried.

“Are you okay?” she asked with a look of shear terror on her face. I gave her one of those often used ‘Do I look like I am okay?’ looks and she backed away.

“Are you up for going to school today?” she asked as her face tightened and her veins protruded from her face, making it look like she had more wrinkles than she really did. You see, I hadn’t been feeling well lately, and my mom has been insisting on me getting ready every morning. “Just in case,” she would say. Every morning I would either throw up, like today, or my temperature would shoot up to 102 degrees Fahrenheit. The doctor wasn’t sure what was happening to me. He said that my immune system was drastically failing and that every time I would get to feeling better another virus or disease would attack me. I was taking pills that were supposed to make my immune system stronger, but none of them seemed to be working.

“I am going to go back to bed,” I told my mom as I got to my feet and almost slipped on some throw up that had missed the toilet and ran out the door. The walk to my room felt like it took a lifetime. This was only because I was light headed and was holding in throw up the whole time. It was really just a few quick seconds around the corner and up the stairs. If you could even call them stairs. It was more like a carpeted ladder to me, leading up to the attic. My family didn’t have enough money to build a top floor when our house was rebuilt, so they only had an attic. This was where I slept.

When I entered my room I plopped down onto my bed and was whisked away to a sleepy dreamland. Of coarse, at the time, I had no Idea that it was all just a dream.

I was sitting in front of the toilet, yet again. This time it was different. The lights in the bathroom were flickering on and off, disturbed by something or someone. I glanced at the light switch to see if anyone was playing a crude trick on the sick boy. Yet, no one was there. “Mom,” I called. No sound came out of my mouth. My lips were moving wordlessly. I tried to scream. Nothing came out of me. It was as if the whole world were silenced. The lights flickered on, tantalizing me. Then I heard something. Something soft and from a distance. It was steadily becoming louder until it was as if it was in the same room as me.

“Wake up!” My mom screamed, “It is time for dinner. Haven’t you slept enough lately?” My eyes flickered open, just as the lights had done in my dream. I steadily gained consciousness and sat up. I grabbed a small red notebook from my beside table and moved the papers around to find a pen. I found a pencil and figured that it would do even though I hated working with things that weren’t permanent. I quickly jotted down a detailed version of my dream, before I would forget. My doctor had suggested to keep a diary of dreams in case any of my physical sicknesses would be displayed through my mind’s eye. So far, nothing had been deemed useful in finding out what I had.

I slowly got out of bed and walked down the very steep “stairs”. My older sister, Caroline, was already at the table which was presumably set by her. She always did my chores for me when I was sick. And it was my day to set the table. I pulled out a chair from under the table that was next to my sister.

“How was your day?” she asked me with sincerity. I knew that she genuinely cared, which was uncommon around people I knew these days.

“Same as usual. Got up, got dressed, threw up, slept, dreamt, woke up. Routine,” I answered, “You?”

“I got detention from Held because I asked a question that he didn’t know the answer to. How lame is that?” she asked.

I quickly pretended that I was listening and said, “Ya.” It wasn’t that I didn’t care what she had to say, it was just that I couldn’t listen to anything. I was still half asleep and very incoherent. My mom interrupted our conversation by bringing a to large plates of lasagna over. By the time that the delicious scent made it’s way to our noses, our mouth was already chewing the third bite. Mom’s cooking was amazing, even if I knew that I would throw it up later.

“This is really good, mom,” I said.

“Wewe goo. Wewe goo,” Caroline said with a mouthful of lasagna in her mouth, blocking out her words. My mom just smiled. I think that she felt a little under appreciated and that it why I try to compliment her so much. Her self esteem has been pretty low lately. When dinner ended, we all went to bed. Caroline had school early in the morning, mom had the early shift at the hospital and I was just plain tired. I climbed into my bed and fell right asleep with the thought in my head that I never wanted to wake up again.