Freefall

Everyone has dreams where they are falling. A quick google search reveals that some believe it signifies a subconscious fear of losing control, a sign that one is about to give into some sexual urges, or that one is out of step with God's will. Perhaps there are some merits to those views. But what does it mean if the fall is out the back of an aircraft?

I was sitting down in a large metal compartment, a loud humming resounding in my ears. A red light came on accompanied by the blaring of a klaxon, and I was pushed roughly toward an opening in what I assumed to be the rear. Once at the edge, I was given another hard shove before I plummeted into the darkness. And silence. After a few moments, a heads up display lit up, and I heard the wind whistling outside my helmet. I saw the clouds below before turning up to look at the stars. My transport was nowhere in sight.
I was suddenly enveloped in fog, the stars disappearing from view. I reoriented myself downwards, droplets of water splattering against my visor until I broke free from the clouds, faced with the ground. The rapidly approaching ground. I reached over for a ripcord, but didn't find it where I thought it would be. After groping around a bit, I didn't find it anywhere. An alarm started beeping steadily in my ears. It sped up rapidly, turning into a piercing whine the closer I got to the ground. I was about a hundred feet up when I thought about how much it was going to hurt. As I hit, there was a flash of white. Then everything went black.
The next thing I realized I was running. Where, or why, I didn't know. It took a few seconds for my vision to come back, and when it did, I was in the middle of a wrecked city. It was as if downtown LA was hit by an air strike. And there I was, running through the ruins with a strange rifle in hand. I could hear the sounds of battle around me, the staccato of a distant machine gun, the echo of explosions, all muffled by the half destroyed buildings around me.
I entered a doorway to find something that felt very out of place in a scene like this. A bathroom. More specifically, the bathroom I have here at the house. Except this one had a large, retracting door next to the shower. I stepped into the tub and pressed a button to open it. And as it rolled on up, I saw another soldier shooting at a very large, minotaur-like mechanical monstrosity, like something out of DOOM.
His name came up on my HUD, but I already knew who it was, even though the black helmet he wore covered his face. Randy. He was a friend of mine back from the old neighborhood, about ten years back. I haven't heard from him since, though I recall someone mentioning he had served a tour of duty in Afghanistan before leaving the Marines to attend UCLA.
And he was about to be crushed by a giant metal minotaur.
I felt my blood boil at that, my rage suddenly switching me into autopilot. I hit a switch on my rifle, dropping the barrel and replacing it with a different one hanging off the pack on my back. I then extended the stock, switched out the cartridge, and worked the bolt back to feed a new round into the chamber. Then I took aim, and opened fire. I didn't think I'd do much damage, and I didn't, my rounds pinging harmlessly against it's armor. But I distracted it enough for Randy to get running in the opposite direction. And then it came after me.
I froze for a second before my legs got the message to start moving and I vaulted out of the tub as it's hoof came crashing down in the spot I had just left. Bursting through the door, I ran, and kept running as I heard it pounding after me. A loud puff of gas sounded behind me, and an explosion rained a ton of rubble down upon my head. A large chunk of concrete slit a crack in the middle of my visor, and I was buried in the debris. In between the sparks and jagged lines of liquid crystal in my HUD, I saw my arm reach out, pushing some of the rubble out of the way. My left arm wasn't responding at all, but once I was sitting upright, the alarm went off next to my pillow, and I was greeted with the shadows of my room, and the first rays of the sun coming through my window.

Randy. Of all people, why him? He was like a big brother to me, to all the kids in the neighborhood. I haven't thought about him in years, and he suddenly appears in a dream, and in mortal danger no less. I wonder what that's all about.