50 BOOKED V O L U M E 9 , PA R T 2
Consolation Prize Short Story
Wake Me Up When September 5 Ends by Charles Gabriel Gelotin
September 5 | Monday | 6:00 AM | As my dream of receiving my own Grammy by winning Album of the Year slowly fades, I started opening my eye - regaining my consciousness. When everything went clear, I realized how another far-flung dream ended with just the sound of my alarm clock blaring, 6 in the morning. | 6:04 AM | Two beep sounds then filled my messy room coming from my phone's daily reminders. Happy Birthday, John Awe - my first greetings. I unlocked my phone and connected to the WiFi then a surge of notifications lagged my phone, drown‐ ing the screen with chat heads of friends and acquaintances. | 7:30 AM | "Beep, beep!"the sound of the car horns echoed on the streets that are grad‐ ually filled by commuters. "5...4...3...2...1," I counted with the traffic light counter as I tried to have a buzzer-beater cross on the street. But I failed. A hundred-sec‐ ond mark started and I have no choice but to wait. A series of vehicles ranging from buses to private cars went against the music from my earphones. | 7:31 AM | Even far away, a loud sound of a car engine can be heard. In a split second, the distant vehicle starts to gain form in sight. As the fast-but-not-so-furious car paved its way near the intersection, a sudden leap of a blurry creature caught the right side of my peripheral vision. A cat, with yellow and black stripes, jumped towards the center of the streets. I vividly heard the tires screeching as the driver of the speedy car tried hard to counter-maneuver the surprise attack. In the blink of an eye, the car went to the other lane, free of killing the innocent creature, but heading straight to head-on collision with a school service full of grade schoolers.
