Free The 11th Floor: Awakening by Charles Culver Page B

looked up and saw a man standing behind the counter looking at him.
    “I need sleep and I just have so much trouble lately. You’re a pharmacist, right? What do you suggest?”
    “Well, that depends. Are you taking any other medications?” asked the pharmacist, as he came out from behind the counter and approached Luke.
    “Nope.”
    “Then I’d suggest this one,” he said, picking up a box. “It works very well with practically no side effects.”
    “Practically none?”
    “Maybe dry mouth, but you look like a young kid in good health. You already said you’re not taking anything else, so you should be fine. There’s no interactions . Just make sure to try one first, don’t jump straight to two.”
    “Okay, thanks.”
    Luke paid for the medication, got back in the car, and drove home. He parked his car in the apartment lot. At the end of the sidewalk, he stopped at the mailbox and grabbed his mail. He flipped through it on the way to his door.
    “More junk. Never anything good in the mail,” he thought.
    Once inside, he tossed the junk mail into the garbage can and placed the sleeping medication on the kitchen counter. He made dinner that night as usual and watched some mindless reality shows to take his mind off other things. As he got up to grab a soda from the refrigerator, he saw the pills on the counter.
    “Well, here goes nothing,” he said as he swallowed the pill and chased it with a few gulps of soda. “I hope this works. I’m just exhausted.”
    Luke turned off the television, picked up his laptop from the table, and headed into the bedroom. Lying on the bed, he surfed the web for a while. The Internet was his main source of news and entertainment. His favorite website was Reddit . Whenever he had some free time, he would pop on there and check out the “new” section. There was something about up-voting a new post that gave him satisfaction. Even being surrounded with all the cute cat pictures and ridiculous memes, his mind drifted back to his session with the doctor earlier that day. He couldn’t get the doctor’s words out of his head. Lucid dreaming. Dream control. Curiosity eventually got the better of him and he did a Google search for some of those keywords. The number of results was astounding. Maybe there was something to it after all?
    “Wow, that pill works quick ,” he said with a yawn. “I guess I’ll read those tomorrow.”
    He closed the laptop lid and placed it on the nightstand. Before he had a chance to turn off the lamp, he was asleep.

Chapter 3
     
    Tom pulled open the curtain on the balcony and stood admiring the view while drinking his morning coffee. His wife, Mary Beth, was still in the bathroom putting on the last of her makeup. Tom was used to waiting for his wife getting ready to go out. Now in their mid-60s, it never seemed to get any faster. Having been married for 40 years now, he had learned to just accept it as part of daily life. In the past, he might have made snarky comments but now he knew that no good would come out of it. An angry wife is an unhappy husband, or so he always told his buddies whenever the subject came up.
    Shortly after Tom finished his coffee and placed the cup on the desk, the bathroom door finally opened behind him.
    “Are you ready now, babe?” asked Tom.
    “What do you think of this outfit?”
    Tom spun around and looked at his wife. If anyone had ever asked him when he was younger if he could have been attracted to a 64-year-old woman, he would have said no for certain. Perhaps it was something that happened to older married men where something in their brains went haywire, or perhaps it was just a side effect of 40 years of love.
    “I love it,” Tom responded. “You look fabulous. Happy anniversary, babe.”
    She gave him a huge hug and kiss in return for his correct response.
    Mary Beth and Tom never had children, which they had decided upon before they were married. Neither of them was much of a fan of children and to