New Flash Fiction

Wednesday, September 21 2006

Parson Residence, Titusville, FL

There was no doubting the conventional wisdom – I should have gone straight to bed. I was nineteen hours into the day, and I’d be into tomorrow the same. And then the weekend would come.

And things would ease up.

A little. . .

The problem was, I’d spend what little night there was dreaming about work or school if I didn’t decompress a little, and that was worse than missing sleep entirely. I knew it wasn’t sustainable, but I also knew my limits.

I didn’t need volume on the TV. I knew the movie I was watching twenty minutes a day by heart. It was predictable, given I’d watched it an uncountable number of times. From a certain standpoint, I’d dreamt about it through the better portion of my life.

I was serious about Star Trek because the people in the shows (even the bad guys) were ostensibly explorers. Sure, they often found themselves in the middle of interstellar hijinks, but at the core, they were motivated by a desire to see what was out there and try to tame it.

I wanted to do that.

I was rational about it. I would never have the chance to discover something new in my lifetime the way they did almost weekly, but it didn’t stop the desire that had burned in me since I was old enough to discover that Mr. Scott was actually far cooler than Captain Kirk.

While marrying a woman like Stephanie had been a dream, it wasn’t myy only one.