'The Choice is Yours'

Although I have no proof of it, no rain on my face, I know it's storming. I can hear it.
Not knowing why, I'm forced into it; drawn by something, or fleeing from something. It's impossible for me to know why. I know only that the noise is deafening. Screams, thunder, explosions.

The moon, my friend for so long is alien to me now. The storms are not coming from the sky. The night is clear. The normally tranquil, quiet, reassuring moon is red. I can't help but stare. It's not normal. As it comes more into focus, the face is clearly visible. No, not one, but many faces. Tortured souls, screaming in anguish. Pleading for release. Wailing for death, for an end to the torment.

I'm surrounded by others, but alone. How we all know where we should run to is beyond me, but we do. Like rats, or cockroaches with the abrupt shining of a light.

The old school is familiar to me. It's odd how after so many years of just wanting to be away from there, I find myself back, seeking shelter. The portable buildings were to bide time. Too many people. Too many young people, but there are none now. There must have been twenty of us. We huddled, scared, each of us cold and alone. Alone in a room full of people. Each to face our fears in our own way. The door is shut, and except for the panicked breathing, and muffled moans, the room is quiet.

What are they doing out there? The explosions don't stop, but they change. A ghastly sound. The destruction of flesh, the ending of life. Instantly erasing memories, the lives of anyone caught outside. We should be safe in here. I wish the others would just be more quiet. They're going to hear us. The room is dark, but I find my way behind some filing cabinets; one upright, the other knocked over. The fear and sweat make for an awful, thick smell. The whimpers become louder, questioning the intentions of the ones beating on the door. It was never meant to hold, and it doesn't. In an instant, the cold outside air fills the room and I know this is it.

The steps are heavy and relentless, almost mechanical. Pleas for mercy are met with immediate death. I can't see it, but I can hear it. A sound unlike any I have heard before. An electrical explosion and an end to the crying. Apparently methodically, the routine is played out many times. Steps, pleas, that awful sound and then silence. I'm petrified. Frozen by fear. I know it won't be long. The steps are on the other side of my hiding spot now. They stopped. The floor creaks with the shifting weight. A head, then a massive body appears in front of me. He seems to be enjoying this.

His hair is long and wavy. It's shoulder length, dirty blonde, but healthy. The skin on his face is all that is there that I can relate to me, a person, a human. His features chiseled, leathered, worn, hard. I know I'm going to die. As he raises the large barrel of this weapon I could not imagine, I have a revelation. If I'm going to die tonight, I'm going to stare death in the face. My heart hurts from the fear but I raise my eyes and meet his cool blue gaze. He pauses, surprised.

It's quiet now. And he speaks. 'Since you looked in my eyes, I will give you the choice.' It wasn't his words, but mine. His lips didn't move. An then, the dream.

A figure stood before me. A normal person, a man. As I watched, he became skinnier. His eyes became sunken, his flesh thinned. He became more brown, his skin more leathery. His hair fell out, he was turning into a corpse before my eyes. His distended stomach began to collapse on itself. The rot spread from the inside out. His core was rotten and it consumed his whole body. The agony on his face was indescribable. Like a time lapse video, his death was played before me. What was at first a man, was now pile of dust, scattered on the floor. Others in the background, walked about, oblivious. I knew then that this was the fate of all mankind; my family, anyone I had ever loved and those I didn't know. As a human, we were all facing a plague. A tortuous death. A disease that rotted us from the inside out. It's inevitability was understood.

With the man gone, and others still going about their business, I was holding the ferocious weapon I had heard before. It was large, but almost weightless. Even inactive, the feeling of power was overwhelming. In my hands was the ability to end suffering. I don't know who this new man was, but he was directly in front of me. I squeezed the trigger and that sound I had heard before broke the silence. A ball of blue and white electricity that must have been two feet across traveled quickly the length of the room and impacted the stranger. He ceased to be. His matter unraveled before me and dissipated. It was instantaneous. It was almost as if the air rushed in to fill the space that used to contain a man. I was impressed; Disgusted at my choice, but drunk by the power of that I now wielded.

'The choice is yours.' Kept playing in my head. I saw my fellow man, suffering and dying a painful, miserable death. For some reason, my emotional connection to him had been severed. The rest were unaware. Unaware of the disease. Unaware that soon, they would all be dead. Unaware that the flesh they had enjoyed for so long was soon going to begin the rotting. All mankind would suffer. all would die.

Almost awake, I knew this man and his comrades, this Nordic looking killer and the others, were not the merciless beings I first mistook them for, and I knew that the reprieve that I had been given was more of a curse. How could I make such a decision? To end the suffering, or to allow it to continue, to it's inevitable conclusion. To sacrifice my humanity, or to embrace it. To callously prevent suffering? That didn't even make sense to me. How could a killer be a hero? With no knowledge of the disease, the people wouldn't understand. In their eyes, the killing would be senseless. I would be a murderer. It was too much for me to understand.

I awoke. My arms cradling a gleaming alien weapon. I could see people moving, unaware beyond the glass doors. I was at the entrance to the mall and I had apparently made up my mind.