Carol Johnson Mornings Suck

Word Count 500

Sunlight filtered into my room, early in the morning. It was bright that my eyes were forced to open, the maid would hear about this later. Groggily I sat up and wondered if any of the poll numbers had changed from the previous night. Once I was fully awake, I decided that I would text my best friend and campaign manager Jeff.

A huge yawn came out of my mouth, scaring my cat. My hand reached out for my phone, but instead sent my keys crashing to the floor. The cat ran to the other side of the room, hair standing on end. Dumb cat, always being pissy about something.
Finally I got a hold of my phone and noticed that Jeff had sent me a text, as had a strange number. In fact they had sent me several text messages. I opened Jeff’s first and it was an apparent plea for help. “Someone’s in my apartment. Someone please call the police for me.”

Thankfully it had been sent in a group message and I was certain that someone else would have received the message and done exactly as he had asked. My friends and I were a tight knit group, always looking out for one another. One of them must have called the police, and Jeff was probably sleeping away the morning like I should have been doing.
Putting that to the side, I thought about cooking breakfast for myself but that didn’t seem like a great idea. Last time I had tried to do anything remotely connected to cooking, my washing machine had somehow broke. It took three weeks to figure out what had gone wrong and the staff had all threatened to quit on me.

Something drew my mind back to the unknown number that had sent 4 texts. I opened them and was astounded by that they said:

“Drop out of the race or we will kill your friend!”

“Bitch don’t ignore us, do you think we won’t do away with him?”

“Apparently you don’t care about your friend, so watch him die…”

The fourth text was a video. My hand was shaking, afraid of what I was going to see. Once I pressed play, I was shocked to see Jeff hogtied and gaged. A masked man held a gun to his head and counted to three. He fired the gun once, twice, three times. The blood leaked out of Jeff’s head and the masked man turned to the camera, “If you don’t drop out of this race, you are next.”

The screen went black and my thoughts were racing everywhere. My first instinct was to cry but I thought that wouldn’t do any good. The only way that these thugs would get what they deserved is not only if I went to the FBI and gave them everything I had but also if I won the Presidency. It’s what Jeff would have wanted and now it was my obligation to turn things around.

Mornings suck.