S.M.A.R.T. (The Subject of Mind Altering Research and Testing)

Chapter Four

The helicopter was high in the sky when Michael came to. He had only been out for twenty minutes, but he had dreamed of the cell and it felt like whole other lifetime. In the dream, two guards came to get him from his cell and he was being taken in circles, around and around the tunnels, blindfolded, and they were lost. The guards couldn't figure out where they had taken the wrong turn. The three were lost together so long that they started working together, and then suddenly it was just him. It didn't make sense but the guards weren't there anymore, they had just vanished. He didn't remember them leaving - or that they had even existed - once they were gone. He was lost and alone. He kept trying to find a way out, but every door he went through led to another tunnel of red mud, puddles and torches. With every door he went through his anxiety grew until he got to a door he couldn't open, and his fear abandoned him the same as the guards, as if it had never existed. He kicked at the door and slammed it with the bottoms of his fists to no avail, and then his hands turned into welding irons and he burned it open. And then he woke up, right before he could step inside.

The General was still sitting in his chair. He had taken off his face mask. His head was clean shaven with a faint through, exposing his mildly receding hairline. His face was flat, his cheekbones lacking definition. His nose was slightly crooked, and mashed in, and his face was covered in smoke wrinkles. He had a large scar that cut down from under his left eye to his jaw. He sat swirling his whiskey with one hand, the rocks clinking on the thin glass.

"Finally up?" He said, shooting Michael a mocking look. Michael was a solider after all; passing out of exhaustion on a helicopter floor wasn't exactly his greatest moment - but then again neither was sitting in his own piss and shit for days at a time until somebody deemed it time to hose him down and give him some new rags.

"I hope so, unless this is a some cruel dream within a dream." Michael replied. He knew he looked terrible. He hoped there would be a change of clothes waiting for him, and a shower wherever they landed.

"What were you dreaming of, home, or that cave?" The General pried.

Michael didn't answer. If I don't talk about it maybe the dream will fade out of memory. 

He looked around the helicopter. He hadn't noticed in the adrenaline of his escape but this was no typical military helicopter. The inside felt more like a private jet, but a lot less roomy. The seats were high class blue and white leather, with cup holders and arm-rests, and all sorts of things that seemed to suit a luxury helicopter rather than a military one. There was a shelf with an ice bucket, next to expensive whiskey bottles and dozens of fancy glasses. Michael wondered what its purpose was for the army. He didn't see any weapons or gear. There wasn't even a parachute.

There were two pilots, one had a bald shaved head like the General and the other had a short standard military cut, cropped down to a half inch all over. Michael didn't recognize them. How much has changed since I went missing? He wondered. He hoped nobody else he knew had been killed or injured while he was gone. It was an only too real possibility in his job. He remembered far more times than he would have liked when his friends had returned from missions in flag draped boxes. He thought again about how lucky he was to be alive before realizing he was still on the floor and getting up to sit in one of the seats.

"I could go for one of those drinks," he tried to joke, but it was food he wanted most of all. Some real food. And nothing canned. 

The General smirked and got up. He walked to the shelf, took a glass, put one large cube of ice from the bucket into it and poured out the rest of one of the open bottles overtop. The ice crackled and cold steam rose as the General brought the glass over to Michael and placed it on the table in front of him.