The Edge of Tomorrow

His heavy eyelids slowly fluttered open and at first everything seemed too bright it made his eyes snap shut again, the cool darkness smoothed them and he floated off back into darkness.

Then...there was light.

But this time it was gray light, he found himself looking up at the gray cloud covered skies that he laid eyes on back at the moors.

He was in East England, vast countryside's of never ending fields and empty forests. To some people like John Koenig, it was beautiful and seemed to have a stillness around it, the cloudy gray skies made the moors look as if there wasn't anything else on the planet but the land around them.

He found himself standing in the middle of a thick forest, lush pine trees lined the soft cool dirt and made the scent of fresh spring water and soil even stronger.

He had no idea how he got there, and what had happened.

A cool breeze brushed up against him and he around at his surroundings

Something about the mid morning cool air made his lungs fill with fresh oxygen and make every muscle in his body feel outstanding.

Then without even a second thought he started running, his booted feet pounded the soft ground as he dodged trees and let the cold wind try and catch up, he ran faster and faster, letting his black hair blow out of his dark eyes.

Then he stopped, right near a soft slope that looked down at some moss covered ground, he kneeled down and saw something.

He breathing became low and then he saw it... a deer.

It was as beautiful as it was peaceful, just standing there.

John's contemplation was disrupted by the sensation of something sliding across his chest. His eyes wondered over to Helena Russell who had now repositioned herself, her arm slung over his neck lightly, unintentionally in her slumber.

A smile slowly reformed his facial appearance as he scanned over her face gradually in unsystematic patterns with his eyes, taking it all in, every signal feature.

His thoughts molded themselves at this and he began to wonder how a woman could be this beautiful...

How God could create one single creature so perfect... and fate bring him to her... out of all the other human's in this frayed tapestry we call life... how he was chosen to receive her abiding love...

And am I to be given the gift of her love?

He snickered at this.

Hell I sound like Shakespeare

He fell asleep once more and dreamed he was running through the forest again, he darted up and down the steep hills that were covered in moss and lush dew covered grass.

His booted feet pounded as he ran faster and faster, the cold air passing him and his lungs filling up with fresh oxygen... it was the best feeling in the world.

He then stopped and saw in a small clearing of the trees something unusual.

The harsh winds and blinding grit that blew through the endless wasteland, that covered nine-tenths of the surface of the planet, blasted across the blighted terrain, weaving around hazy blast craters and wide pools of jagged black glass that used to be sand before the endless barrage of some catastrophe blasted it into it's current shape some centuries earlier.

A high rock overlooking a barren, burning landscape was seen.

John tumbled out into the open desert night and he lied down to see Helena, his lover holding her torso up with her hands and her legs straight along the ground. Slowly the wind made the sand from the desert cover them up. After they were fully covered, the figures disintegrated away from the wind until the sand was flat.

It made John and Helena feel impermanent and disconnected from their nude bodies.

It was almost the feeling of a good meditation.

A beautiful sequence with naked bodies being eroded by sandstorms. The atoms of their bodies diffused and were scattered throughout the Universe.

Followed by him and Helena passing through a Heavenly corridor of stained glass windows and ethereal angelic forms.

A cathedral-like crystal tunnel.

A chasm of Gothic glass windows accompanied by an angelic choir and a brilliant wash of white light spilling over them.

He saw Helena looking up at her own image on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel ... the painting of Michelangelo's The Creation.

Her face was recognizable in the background of the painting, suggesting that both had experienced the beginning of time.

John awoke once more

Looking around his surroundings, both he and the sound asleep Helena were in their quarters on Moonbase Alpha, dressed in their pale blue pajamas. Their surroundings were still the same.

All sterile, antispetic, monochromatic, with a few personal touches here and there.

That's the last time I drink one of Tony's latest brews, he silently reflected. Along with that wine that Eddie Collins and Shermeen Williams concocted.