15 Minutes

Today I had 15 minutes to make it from pure sleep to the hotel lobby: from 5:45 to 6:00 AM. I lay still after the first heart-jolting buzzer; I sacrificed some time to inertia, a counterfeit peace. But the phone cruelly rang; the electronic, mystifying voice was Josh, checking if I was awake. I feigned sentience. I struggled over to the armchair and put on my shirt. My pants seemed arduous and I postponed them. Bathroom; toothbrush; toothpaste. My cell phone alarm went off. Its sound was muffled, mournful, as if a phone from another life; time passed (hours, years?) while I sorted out this mystery; where could it be? Ah, reality: it called from between the covers, where I had left it, next to my Sudoku puzzles. I was stabbed as I grabbed my phone, by my mechanical pencil. Blood of Sudoku. Pants on. I decided to try to zip up my suitcase. I was sitting atop, crushing my belongings into a convenient volume, when the phone rang again--my horrible, evil backup wake-up call, loud and vehement, a post-apocalyptic rooster of the pre-dawn. Back to the bedside I flew, picked up the phone, put it down... I fell on the bed, exhausted. And then passed 3 minutes of danger, when sleep's siren called. Now there was no time to waste; everything had to be done at once. Most of my 15 minutes had elapsed simply turning off the alarms I had set into motion. Let us hope our lives will not pass in the same fashion.