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| Justin shot up ramrod straight in his bed, the tangled sheets around him damp with perspiration and his chest heaving with dry pants. Staring across the span of his bedroom he saw that it lit with daylight. Still frantic with the flickering remnants of the dream, his eyes shot to the digital clock set on the nightstand. A little bit past ten. Taking in a deep breath and holding it in an effort to calm his racing heart, Justin slumped back down in relief. He hadn't planned to get up until around eleven, that day being a Tuesday and having only the one performance of CATS beginning at two. Rolling onto his back to stare up at the ceiling, Justin shivered from a cold chill and pulled the one blanket back up to his chest which had sometime in the night gotten kicked down past his feet. Small wonder with a nightmare like that... |
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| Justin had never thought he dreamed very much, and when he did it wasn't dwelled upon afterwards. But last night's images as he slept had been so vivid, so realistic, he was afraid to go back to sleep lest they start up again. Folding his hands behind his head as he stared up blankly, he tried to remember all that had happened...where it had started. |
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| He thought it had began in Times Square, but he wasn't sure. In the dream Times Square had been entirely empty and void of all things, all people, and Justin knew that was virtually impossible. All around him the lights still flickered and ran their messages, their ads on the enormous billboards or on entire sides of buildings themselves. Through this empty Times Square Justin could remember himself running. Always running. Not from or towards anything, but directly through the streets of the Square, as though he were searching for something. And there was...something, or someone--a presence--always right there: running next to him. Yet he never turned to see who or what it was. Probably the strangest aspect of that part was that he knew he was searching for the Winter Garden. Justin had known where he was, and he knew like his heart where the theatre was, but he couldn't find it no matter how much he ran. Up and down Broadway, through the Square, around an island entirely empty of life as he knew it. And always there, breathing on his shoulder, was the other presence. |
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| Justin couldn't remember at what point in the dream he finally found the theatre, or how, but the next thing he knew he was standing in front of the box office lobby, across the street from the front glass doors. Through those doors he could see them, all of them. Russa, Zach, Anthony, Desere, Alexandre, all of the cast members of CATS decked fully in their costumes, screaming and clawing at the doors as though to get out. Their voices were blocked by the row of glass doors, but Justin could see the words forming on their painted lips. Cries for help, to let them out, for him to run for his life... There had been an explosion, somewhere from inside the theatre, and that was when Justin had woken up. |
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| Reflecting back on the dream, more like a nightmare, Justin couldn't recall what exactly had scared him so much. After calming down he felt better, laughing at himself for being so childish. Rolling over onto his side, he let one arm dangle over the bed's edge to scratch at Duke's belly. The black Labrador dog lay entirely oblivious to the world on his back against the bed's side, four legs spread-eagled in the air without a worry in the world. Justin chuckled at the sight, stretching out beneath the sheets. "That's the last time I let Mike talk me into a shot of whiskey," he mumbled to himself. |
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| It wasn't but a few minutes later when someone pounded on his apartment door...hard. In automatic reaction Duke flipped over, wide awake and on his paws, growling as he shot off to bark uselessly at the thumps on the door. Startled himself, Justin looked up, but the pounding continued. Three rapid slams of what sounded like a fist against the wood, and pause and then again. Groggily cursing beneath his breath Justin pushed himself out of bed and pulled on a pair of jeans over his boxers, stumbling as he did to answer it. "Arright, arright..." |
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| "Justin!" came the frantic voice from the other side of the door, a voice Justin could recognize anywhere. "Justin! Open up! Hurry!" |
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| Pulling the insistent dog back by his collar, Duke quieted down as Justin unlocked the apartment door and admitted his friend, who rather than waiting decided to barge on in. "Mike? What's the deal-hey!" Stumbling back from Michael's shove, Justin caught himself from falling against the wall, pushing the door closed again to glare at the other man strangely. "What are you doin' here?" |
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| "I called three times and you didn't answer," Michael said breathlessly, already darting into the apartment with a frantic intensity. Catching on to the feeling, Justin followed. "You sleep like a log, Jus." Swiping up the remote for the television in Justin's living room/kitchen combo he flicked the TV on, hurriedly flipping through channels at a dizzying pace. "You're not going to believe what's happening." |
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| Justin stared at the other man for a moment, dubious, until in an extremely rare show of temper Michael shouted: "Do it!" |
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| Still only half awake, Justin did as he was told, swiping up his CATS t-shirt slung over the back of one chair and pulling it on as he crossed over behind Michael to the window of his small apartment looking out over the street. |
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| "It just happened awhile ago," Michael was saying, voice rushing with some kind of excitement. "I called Russa, too. She's coming over." |
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| "Why here?" Justin asked, his eyes sweeping the street before him. He didn't see anything unusual. He glanced up at the sky. Bright and blue. What had Michael so worked up? |
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| "Because your place is furthest away from it." |
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| Justin turned back, seeing his friend and coworker standing before the TV now, hand that held the remote lowered, blue eyes fixed in wide open fear at what it was showing. "New footage has just arrived," the announcer was saying, "along with reports of a second plane which has just crashed into the second building of the World Trade Center..." |
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| Both men were fixed, frozen, as the images played over the screen. What Justin could see was an airplane, an enormous commercial airliner, flying in a deliberate arc around one of the Twin Towers, the other of which was already pierced with an enormous hole and burning. The plane vanished from view, only to be followed by a second, equally large explosion through an entire side of the building. "Oh my God," Justin heard himself gasp. He glanced up, meeting Michael's eyes. He saw there the same thoughts and feelings, a crooked grin spreading over his friend's features. |
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| "Who'd have thought?" he grinned. Justin didn't say anything. What could he say? He was struck in a dumb silence, a mix of fear sweeping over him like a shadow, not only from what he was seeing on the news--something happening only a few blocks from where he worked--but the memory of the dream coming back and hovering over him. Each person on Earth had a way of dealing with such situations. For Michael, it was to laugh and joke, making light of things no matter how bad they got. Justin's was silence. His defense, conscious or not, was to clam up in his own thoughts and feeling, finding a way among his own mind to rationalize out what was needed. Without a word, Justin turned and headed out of the apartment. Michael followed. Duke barked. |
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| It was difficult to believe at all, that something like what he had seen there was indeed happening. Things like that didn't happen in America, as far as Justin knew. At least, not to him. It was with that in mind that Justin headed out of the apartment building, stone-faced in a mix of worry and doubt, and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Michael followed, steadily at his side as both their gazes turned up into the sky. From the ground level neither could see the Twin Towers, but what they could hear were the wails of sirens in the distance, the screams of people, and see up in the blue sky nothing but billowing black smoke. "Oh my God..." |
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