Wake Me Up When September 5 Ends

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.

"What can I do...?" I spoke on my mind, frozen like ice. It seemed like my brain cannot fully process the things that are about to happen. As I opened my mouth to shout in shock, I barely had enough oxygen to catch my breath. But before the two car bumpers collide, everything went black - pitch black.

September 5 | Monday | 6:00 AM | The next thing I remember was opening my eyes while still catching my breath. I can still feel the tingles from my back. I can still hear the sound of horns, tires screeching. "Was that a dream?" the words I uttered, realizing everything was just a dream - or I hope it was. Suddenly, my alarm clock rang. What surprised me was not the fact that it is already 6 in the morning. What caught my attention was the date it projected, '09/05.'

It was the 5th of September just like in my dream. But I think everything was just a coincidence.

| 6:04 AM | "Beep, beep!" My phone rang, the same ringtone; the same feeling. Everything started becoming strange because it felt like it already happened before. The taste of air, the feel of tension - all were the same.

"Happy Birthday, John!" my phone literally reminded me. For the first time, I wished that it was not my birthday. I never dared to connect to the WiFi because I can still remember the chat heads that are about to pop.

| 7:25 AM | The next thing I knew, I was standing at the same spot in the middle of the intersection. I ate the same breakfast in my dreams, believing that my imagination is just extreme to carbon-copy reality. When the buzzing sound of a distant car starts to seep into the highway. I can't explain the sudden urge that made me look around for the cat - the same yellow and black striped cat in my dreams.

I was about to laugh to my paranoia when a cat of the same figure ran towards me. As it leapt, trying to cross the streets, I was able to catch it by the tail.

| 7:31 AM | I was amazed of how the drifting car looked very same but somehow it was unusual. This time, the driver has a companion seated at the front. I also saw how this foreign girl blurt out angry emotions with matching hand gestures ad‐dressed to the driver. Looking annoyed, I saw how the driver and his companion argued over the car's wheel. The car changed lane from left to right twice. Tires screeched - yet again and I had myself witnessed a painful memory for the second time around.

September 5 | Monday | 5:58 AM | The next happened was me on my bed, catching my breath crying. How can I have a dream inside another dream? "Why is this happening? Am I trapped in the loop? Why?" I had a lot of questions but what emerged in my pool of thoughts was the idea of preventing the accident to happen and save lives.

| 6:00 AM | I was able to turn my clock off even before it rang. I also greeted myself first a happy birthday before the world does.

I am not heroic. I am not larger-than-life like epic protagonists. Having Birth‐day greetings is already so much to ask for a nobody like me. But I know I needed to do something. I needed to change how the story goes.

| 7:20 AM | I walked down my way, two blocks away from my bus stop. If the cat is not the main reason then maybe I can turn the table If I stop the car myself before it reaches the intersection.

artwork by Claire Janson

I waited, readied myself for this heroic deed. Five minutes passed but there was no car. I checked around, no cat either. I felt something wrong. Maybe I forgot something. Maybe I missed one detail.

| 7:30 AM | Everything went crumbling down to pieces as sirens from a distant ambu‐lance bombarded the tense highway. As the rescuers passed me by, I shivered when I saw the man driving the drifting car now driving the ambulance.

Two blocks away from me, an accident occurred. Same spot, same time of the day but now, the reason was drunk driving.

I was able to change the cause but never did I alter, for just a tiny bit, the effect. I changed the means but the end still ended the same. Life is full of un‐controlled variables. Altering one might not shock the entire framework.

Change is a collective effort. Some things cannot be changed overnight.

Kamao ni Ashraf Khater