"King Of The Universe"

Why?  Don’t tell me you’re still having trouble keeping your food down?” Jason asked jokingly.

       “Jason, you know how pumped I am!  About it being today—this day,” Denis said anxiously.

       “No sweat my friend.  The sky is as blue as can be,” Jason went on.  “We’re taking off at seventeen hundred hours!  Bet on it,” he said, as his eyes zeroed in across the table; first, in the direction of his friend—then to the cross around his neck.

Jason’s eyes became fixated on the cross, but his subconscious mind peered beyond it, and to the prior night. Lost within the passage of just seconds in real time, he dwelled on a collage of thoughts and images...

The sex was great.  The last orgasm together was so intense, and so calming.  I think we must have fallen asleep by three.  But then I awoke.  I remember gazing at my watch.  It was four hundred hours.  It did not please me. I should have had more sleep than I did before such an important day.  I quickly reminded myself of how many times I went without sleep, sometimes as much as thirty six hours, when I flew sorties during Desert Storm.  It was no different than what would be expected of a surgeon performing triage and the like, in a M.A.S.H. unit.

I quickly sat up in bed. Heather was sound asleep, deep within the confines of R.E.M. . . . THAT IS WHEN IT ALL BEGAN.

For whatever reason, my attention seemed to be magnetically drawn to the left—towards the hallway.  AND THEN I SAW HER.  My deceased Aunt Rose.  Initially, I thought I might have been dreaming, but when I bumped my elbow into the corner night table next to my bed, the sharp pain revealed the truth.

She wore a long white-satin gown that fell below her ankles, but just above her toes.  She hovered.  Maybe two, three inches off the floor.  And affixed to her face was this most endearing smile, one that she almost always displayed, when I was a child.  She had this blissful aura about her as she waved to me, but I